Rene Bibaud: One of Canada’s top 40 principals.
Rene Bibaud, principal of the Adult High School on Rochester Street, has been named one of Canada’s “40 Outstanding Principals” for 2014 by a national advocacy group.
The Learning Partnership, an organization created 21 years ago, promotes, supports, and advances public education in Canada.
“We believe that a strong public education system is the foundation of the future of this country,” says Akela Peoples, president and CEO of the Toronto-based organization.
Canada’s Outstanding Principals is a national award and training program that celebrates leadership and invests in the development of current leaders in public education.
Every year, 40 educational leaders are chosen for the award out of more than 13,000 principals in secondary and elementary public schools across Canada.
“Being a principal is a very complex role. It’s a very busy role, but it’s an extremely important role in education because you can’t have a great school without a great principal,” says Peoples. “We are looking for principals that go above and beyond.”
Bibaud started teaching history, politics and social sciences at Merivale High School when he was 23 years old. Thirty-seven years later, having served as principal of Earl of March Secondary School, Nepean High School and now the Adult High School, the 60-year old is being hailed as an “educational champion”.
Bibaud has raised funds and worked with community partners to support mental health initiatives. His staff began intensive training with the Partners for Life program that focused on demystifying mental illness, in 2008. He has made extensive programming available for students in his high school whose main language is neither English nor French.
He introduced a Canada Achievement Test to identify gaps so that students’ individual needs could be better met, and he redesigned the exam schedule so students will have no more than one exam per day.
Bibaud says that a lot has changed in education, but one fundamental thing has stayed the same.
“One thing that has not changed is that students who go into any school want to feel welcome and want to feel safe,” he says. “I really believe that our students come through our building once. They deserve the best experience we can give them.”
Bibaud served as principal at Nepean High School from 2007 to 2012, then moved to the Adult High School. He says that it has been a big shift but a nice change because he can serve the school district in a different way and hopefully move the school in the right direction.
“This school is very exciting, it’s very diverse. We represent over 40 languages. Our classrooms are made up of all kinds of different, interesting individuals. You just have to walk our hallways to visit the world,” says Bibaud.
Adult High School has about 1,200 students, with the majority being new Canadians or refugees. The school focuses on the specialized needs of older students whose educational path might have been disrupted by immigration, a mental or physical disability, language, and other personal reason reasons.
“We have a lot of students that have come from all over the world. Many in their young lives have seen too much sadness and too much devastation but they have a great sense of resolve and resiliency that it emboldens us to do the best we can do for them,” says Bibaud.
“So this school is a very unique place and I couldn’t be happier at the twilight of my career to be in a place like this, because it reflects truly what not only our city is made up of, our province, but really our country.”
Bibaud will receive his award on Feb. 25 in Toronto.