Bruce MacNamara

As an educator, I began championing community engagement and experiential education long before I was familiar with either term. This started when, as a young teacher in BC, I found myself choosing to plan outings to recycling plants, law courts and to various places of worship within our community. I soon learned that such experiences were made much more meaningful when supported by thoughtful and focused pre and post-experience scaffolding. Discussion and guided reflection were paramount, I decided. Over time I refined my approach and developed specific tools and materials to support such experiences.

Eventually one of my experiential education projects — The International Witness to War Project — was granted the University of Hong Kong Knowledge Exchange Award, which "recognises outstanding social and cultural impacts on the local community." Inspired, by this, I sought out and received formal certification in experiential education and then founded a Community Engagement Committed at my school.

Later, in 2011, I founded Educational Excursions, a Hong Kong-based travel agency catering to schools, and left the classroom to pursue this full-time. I found that I had the ability to recognize potentially synergistic relationships as well as the interpersonal skills to turn them into sustainable partnerships. By 2020 the company had a client base spread across nine countries and a regional partner network in 10 others. Our motto was, "Making a positive difference through community engagement," which we managed to succeed at with regularity. Unfortunately, COVID-19 halted international travel in March of 2020. This has since caused me to close our office and begin winding-up the company.

My family and I are now back in BC where I was born and raised. I've been back in the classroom on a full-time basis for more than a year now, which feels quite natural. This is likely because while running Educational Excursions I had the opportunity to travel with student groups in order to formally observe the programs that I'd developed and the staff carrying them out. This gave me natural opportunities to interact with students and their teachers and to facilitate certain activities.

Despite my comfort in the classroom, I aspire to full-time work in the areas of education that drive me most — student advocacy, student leadership, experiential education, community engagement and service learning. When reviewing the required skills, experience and responsibilities associated with York House's Coordinator of Community Partnerships & Programs, I find a remarkably strong correlation with my own strengths. I hope that I have an opportunity to learn more about this exciting position.

• Professional Certificate of Qualification — BC Ministry of Education
• Creativity, activity, service (CAS) Certification — International Baccalaureate
• Certificate of Corporate Social Responsibility — New York Institute of Finance
• Certificate in Inclusive Education (Formerly BC CAISE)
• History Certification (DP) — International Baccalaureate
• Geography Certification (DP) — International Baccalaureate
• Humanities Certification (MYP) — International Baccalaureate
• Outbound Tour Escorts Certificate — Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong
• Certificate of Registration as a Teacher — Hong Kong Education Bureau

• An experiential educational project of my design and management was awarded the University of Hong Kong Knowledge Exchange Award, which recognizes outstanding social and cultural impacts on the Hong Kong community
• The South China Morning Post newspaper featured my experiential education projects as photo stories on three separate occasions
• Built Educational Excursions up from a non-entity to a government-registered travel agency with clients across 9 countries

Ms Jenn Gallop, Principal

Fairview Elementary/Odyssey

Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows

email: jennnifer_gallop@sd24.ca / phone: 604 465 9331

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Mr Dean Croy, Head of School

Stratford Hall, Vancouver

email: dean.croy@stratfordhall.ca / phone: 604 808 0096

Mr. Chris Coates, Secondary Principal

Victoria Shanghai Academy, Hong Kong

email: ccoates@vsa.edu.hk / phone: +852 6011-2072