With schools shut down for the remainder of the school year, students and parents are worried about how this will impact their education. Thankfully, online education programs are being offered to help kids stay on track with their schooling. Junior Achievement ((JA) has started offering online programs to help make sure kids receive the education that they need to be successful.

President & CEO of Junior Achievement Southern Alberta, Melissa From talked about how important it is for online programs to be offered at a time like this, “School boards and educators are working hard to make the Alberta curriculum available to parents right now. We are grateful for our partnerships in education and we are glad that we can help to bridge the gap with some online education resources that have clear linkages to Alberta Education learner outcomes.”

From said their programs offer a wide range of educational tools to students, “JA programming teaches numeracy through financial literacy and business training, but it is so much more. Most of our programs have learner outcome links to Social Studies, Language Arts, Math, CTS, and CTF curriculums and Entrepreneurship classes for the high school students. Students learn about their community, business, economics, and they have the chance to exercise some creativity.”

When asked what people should know about their programs From said, “Currently, the programming that we have available is all self-directed learning. This means that parents who are trying to work from home, or parents who just need a break, do not have to feel any guilt about putting their kids in front of a screen for an hour.”

She went on to say, “We have an incredible group of 2500 volunteers across the province who typically go into classrooms and help us to deliver our programs. They are anxious to continue working with your kids. We are working hard on developing some online programs that will incorporate a volunteer teacher. These will be ready sometime in April.”

During a challenging time for students all over, From offered some advice, “Every generation faces challenges. At JA, when we talk to employers about the skills that they are looking for in their future workforce, resilience is always a key skill that they desire. This is a tough situation for everyone, but it is also a great opportunity to learn and exercise our resilience.”

All of the self-directed learning resources can be accessed through their website at https://jasab.ca/self-directed-learning/