WESTMOUNT CHARTER SCHOOLPlease note - this website will be down for scheduled maintenance on July 6-7, 2009.
Westmount Charter School is a K-12 school for gifted students in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Our publicly-funded school began as ABC Charter Public School in 1996 with 116 students in grades 1-3. In 2002, our name officially changed to Westmount Charter School and we have now grown to a student population of over 1,000! As a Charter School, we are expected to develop and share innovative practices in education, and our History and Innovations web page outlines some of our contributions to the education of gifted learners. As well, Charter Schools undergo a thorough evaluation every five years - click here to see the very positive report of the Alberta Education review team (95 pages), presented to the Westmount Charter Board in February 2009.
Congratulations to Westmount's own Ms Rona MacEachern, one of 23 creative and innovative teachers to win Alberta Education's 2009 Excellence in Teaching Awards! Included in the list of 134 semi finalists are four members of the Westmount teaching staff: Ms Patti G-Noble, Ms Nicole Brayton, Mr Paul Monaghan along with Ms MacEachern.
Westmount Charter School, the Centre for Excellence in Gifted Education, is happy to announce that all seven of our abstracts submitted to present at the World Conference on Gifted and Talented Children (WCGTC) have been accepted. This represents an important next step in our pursuit of excellence in gifted education, and in fulfilling our Charter School mandate: becoming more visible within the world-wide community of gifted educators. Members of our Admin team have attended the annual conference of the National Association for Gifted Children for the past three years, building connections with gifted educators throughout North America and hearing of their innovative practices. Now, our school’s teaching staff will build on those North American connections by presenting this summer in Vancouver at this world-wide conference. Click here for more details!
We hope that you will find our website helpful in answering many of your questions about our school and about gifted learners. There is an FAQ page, or you can follow the links along the right-hand side of each web page, or you can browse the student, parent and educator links at the top of each page. In addition, currently-enrolled Westmount students, their parents, and Westmount staff, are able to "log in" to additional password-protected areas of the site!
Interested in attending Westmount? Our main registration period has now concluded, with hundreds of students coming for admissions testing/assessment on March 6, 2009. New applicants are still welcome to submit applications, but please be aware that these applications will not be considered until assessment of the March 6 group has been completed. For specific procedures and forms, click here.
The basics
Our Vision:
"Westmount Charter School, "as a partner in the best learning system in the world", will be recognized as the centre for excellence in gifted education."
Our Purpose:
"To provide qualitatively differentiated educational programming for Kindergarten through Grade 12 students who are gifted." (The Charter, 1998)
Our Definition of Giftedness:
"Students are gifted when they perform, or show potential for performing, remarkably high levels of accomplishment in learning rate, depth of knowledge, and reasoning and problem-solving abilities when compared to others of their age, experience, and environment."
Our Program provides:
- an established program, now in its thirteenth year of educating gifted learners
- a multi-faceted understanding of giftedness
- small class sizes and a caring learning environment that honours differences
- differentiated programming where teachers and students make modifications to process, product and /or pace within the Alberta Education Curriculum to best reflect the student’s learning needs
- an emphasis on developing the Whole Child
- an emphasis on teaching students how to learn
- an emphasis on understanding concepts, and on developing a variety of creative ways for students to "show what they know"
- a qualified and dedicated staff
- school bussing and good access via Calgary Transit
- opportunities for volunteerism and humanitarian involvement in the world
- the opportunity to stay at the same school from the beginning of elementary grades to high school graduation, a huge difference from many gifted programs which focus only on the middle years.
Our Admin Team
Martha Faulkner, Principal
Marylyn Waters, Vice Principal
Hal Curties, Vice Principal
Dani Sever, Vice Principal
Chris Hooper, Vice Principal
Merv Kurtz, Superintendent
Megan O'Hara, Secretary-Treasurer.
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