If an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest, as Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying, then a pair of St. Albert graduates have positioned themselves to earn about twice the average return on three years of high school.
Evan Shillabeer, 17, and Alain Gervais, 18, just graduated with more than 200 credits each, a rare achievement in a province where 100 credits gets you a diploma and few students exceed the 130 range.
The buddies managed to pile on the credits by maintaining a full course load at St. Albert’s Ă©cole Secondaire Sainte Marguerite d’Youville while taking extra courses online and earning credits through extracurricular activities like work experience and student council.
Gervais will graduate with 215 credits and Shillabeer with 207.
“It’s for education,” Gervais said. “There’s a lot of interesting things out there that are offered by Alberta Education.”
The pair decided in Grade 10 to push their limits and have been able to maintain their pace throughout all three high school years. Both have been able to work part-time at Sobeys and pursue outside interests: Shillabeer is involved in karate and Gervais is an air cadet.
“It’s not like it takes every waking moment of the day. It’s all about time management,” Gervais said.
The pair have each immersed themselves in a long list of subjects ranging from the sciences to religious studies, outdoor education and physical education. There’s been an element of competition and desire for prestige but mostly it’s been a thirst for knowledge, Gervais said.
“It was just a desire to do the best that we could and achieve maximum learning instead of going with that bare bottom minimum,” Gervais said, “that, ‘I’m going to scrape by’ kind of attitude.”
“It really helped me broaden my horizons a lot,” said Shillabeer.
In Grade 10, he had no clue what kind of career he wanted to pursue but now he’s registered to begin working toward a psychology degree in the fall, thanks to exploring the subject in high school.
“I don’t know if I would have necessarily come to that conclusion without being able to look into these different kind of courses,” he said.
Gervais plans to take a year off before applying to the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont.
The pair have heard that Gervais’ credit total is a record but there’s no official way to confirm it. Alberta Education doesn’t track that type of information, said spokesperson Carolyn Stuparyk.
“Most kids will take what they need to do. They don’t go looking for a record,” she said.
Extra learning of this scale generally costs a school division money since the province funds schools up to a maximum of 60 credits per student per year.
“We’re just students,” said Gervais. “It’s not our job to be concerned with the finances of Alberta Education. As far as we’re concerned, we take our courses, we get our credits and we learn.”
Students like Gervais and Shillabeer are usually self-directed and need little extra support, so the extra cost isn’t significant, said Catholic division superintendent David Keohane.
“At times we have to transcend the economic reality and say the educational gain is the greater good,” he said.
He applauds students who take the initiative to go above and beyond the minimums as long as it’s driven by a desire to learn.
“We hope the student isn’t driven just to set some kind of record,” he said. “We have to be really careful that it is really the love of learning and the student realizing their gifts.”
Edmonton resident Rory Koopmans believes he was the first to reach 200 credits, which he achieved earlier this year. Like the ESSMY grads, the 35-year-old autistic earned many of his credits through St. Albert Catholic’s online school.
“Like all good gunslingers … any record will be passed,” he said.
