As the 2024 school year comes to a close, a whole new platoon of excited high school graduates are getting ready to take on the world. The Citizen interviewed four of these seniors, from both the Niverville High School (NHS) and École Régional Gabrielle-Roy, to talk about their future plans.
Emma Ginter
Emma Ginter is an inspiring young NHS grad who’s found a way to blend her future career path with the passion she feels for her planet.
This upcoming fall, Ginter will be entering the preliminary engineering program at the University of Manitoba with a focus on environmental and biosystems engineering.
“I’ve always been really interested in the climate crisis and how my generation is going to work on fixing that,” Ginter says. “My hope is to take that pathway and somehow contribute to saving the earth.”
Ginter is inspired by engineering feats such as wind turbine power and solar power and hopes to explore and help develop more of those kinds of greener options.
Her Grades Nine and Ten years in project-based learning, she says, also made a big impact on her decision. Most specifically, she recalls the projects that revolved around learning about the earth’s carbon cycle.
Ginter says that her first year at NHS was a rocky one thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic that forced her and her classmates to take a more distanced approach to their education. Even so, the teaching staff at NHS made the experience more palatable through their dedication to the students.
At the close of her four years at NHS, three of those teachers really stand out for Ginter. They include Brett Schmall, Danielle Marion, and Tony Clark. These teachers, Ginter says, were willing to invest their spare time into the Student Action Club, which also played a huge role in Ginter’s career choice.
“Really, all of the teachers, I owe them a lot,” Ginter says. “But those three teachers definitely helped me on my journey and pushed me to know that I can do whatever I wanted.”
As for choosing a local university, Ginter says that she can’t place enough emphasis on the value that comes from the loving support of family and friends as she studies.
Téa DesRosiers
Téa DesRosiers received her high school diploma from the École Régional Gabrielle-Roy on June 25.
From here, she’s headed to the University of Regina, registered in the Faculty of Science and majoring in Applied Math and Stats. Her goal is to become a high school math teacher.
For DesRosiers, her career decisions were highly influenced by one special teacher.
“The teacher that impacted me the most would have to be my pre-cal teacher Monsieur Roger Vermette,” DesRosiers says. “He was the one to seal the deal for me to choose math teacher as a future profession. I really liked his teaching style and hope to be as good of a teacher as he is one day.”
DesRosiers says that her choice of university felt like the best of two worlds. Regina is close enough to home to still be within reasonable distance of family and friends. At the same time, it takes her just far enough from home to build some independence.
“What helped guide my decision to attend university outside the province was seeing how well it impacted my sister,” says DesRosiers. “The biggest thing I noticed was that she learned to cook proper meals, no longer just eggs and toast but steak and chicken. I really want the experience of living on my own, to rely on myself more and not mostly on my mom.”
She plans to experience dorm life on campus while she pursues her bachelor’s degree and then anticipates a return to Manitoba to complete her education degree at Université de Saint Boniface.
Looking back, DesRosiers says that her senior years at École Régional Gabrielle-Roy can best be described as fast and fun and some of the most memorable years in her entire school life.
Landon Nickel
For Niverville graduate Landon Nickel, getting in some life experience before heading to post-secondary felt important. This is why Nickel will be taking a gap year and heading off to fulfil some important mission work both close to home and abroad.
Immediately following graduation, Nickel will undertake a summer of counselling at Red Rock Bible Camp. In the fall, he’s heading to Hawaii for a six-month term with Youth with a Mission (YWAM).
“I felt really called to [do that],” Nickel says. “I know a couple of people who have been there and I’ve heard really good things.”
Nickel will begin his YWAM experience in Kona, on the big island of Hawaii. Here he’ll spend three months in missions training. For the rest of his term, he says, he’ll be stationed in another country carrying out the mission work he trains for.
At this point, he’s unsure where that will take him.
Nickel is hopeful that the YWAM experience will not just help to shape his character but provide the headspace he’ll need to determine what his future career choices will look like.
Like Ginter, Nickel is leaving NHS feeling deeply indebted to some of the teachers he learned under.
“The relationships I built with the teachers really stand out for me,” says Nickel. “There’s a few teachers that I have really close relationships with, that I like to talk to because they’ve become good mentors for me.”
The first that comes to mind is Richard Toews, the high school’s gym teacher and basketball coach. Throughout high school, Nickel was an athlete, drawn into virtually every sport the school offered.
Toews, he says, was always approachable and available for good conversations throughout those years.
Another was teacher Chris Dombroski.
“He was a lot of fun and we always talked about various things,” says Nickel.
Jack Grantham
Niverville’s Jack Grantham was honoured by his peers with the esteemed role of valedictorian at this year’s grad convocation.
“It felt good to know that people thought I would be able to say something intelligent and uplifting and powerful on what is one of the most important days of our lives,” Grantham says.
Like Ginter, Grantham is headed straight for his post-secondary education this fall at the University of Manitoba, studying accounting. He says that he was inspired by his mother, who is also an accountant.
Looking back at his high school years, Grantham would describe the COVID year as life-altering, but not in the ways that most others think of it.
Grantham was a self-proclaimed introvert entering Grade Nine. Ironically, he says, it was this global crisis that pushed him beyond his comfort zone.
“I made friends with people that I honestly don’t think I’d have been friends with if it weren’t for COVID, which sounds weird,” says Grantham. “But I just got to know people better because of a global pandemic.”
There were other influences which shaped Grantham, too, including the project-based learning model of his first two years at NHS.
“I gained so much from it,” says Grantham. “My people skills grew because of project-based learning because it forced me to work with other people. It helped me learn so much about myself and what a potential work environment might look like.”
Undoubtedly, there were a couple of teachers whose influence cannot be overlooked. For Grantham, these were Brett Schmall and Janelle Malech.
It was under Malech’s direction in the NHS drama program that Grantham says his biggest personal change occurred.
“[Miss Malech] basically turned me from someone who was a turtle in a shell to a peacock,” Grantham says. “Just putting myself out there and wearing my colours proudly.”
