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Recipient Bios (wz00813)

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Year: 2001 – Province: Alberta

Certificate of Achievement Recipients

Barry Hertz

School: St. Mary's High School
111-18 Avenue SW
Calgary, Alberta  T2S 0B8

Principal: Simone Gratton
School Telephone: 403-228-5810
School Fax: 403-229-9280
School website: www.stmaryshs.calgary.ab.ca/index2.html
Grades/Subjects Taught: Grades 11 and 12, biology

Teaching approach:

Nurture a positive learning environment that supports the learning of all students.

Outstanding achievements:

Delivers International Baccalaureate (IB) biology program at the school. This involves extensive teacher training and program development. Mr. Hertz has gone beyond those requirements to

mentor the senior students through their extended essay, support their search for an appropriate post-secondary institution and arrange mentor partnerships between IB students and University of Calgary mentors.

Draws on his background of beekeeping, winemaking, music making and field work to bring biology alive for his students. Provides students with many concrete learning opportunities through field trips and classroom activities. Students exceed provincial standards and score high on IB exams.

Founded extracurricular groups to help students further develop their interests.

  • Environmental Action group encourages responsible environmental stewardship.
  • Aquatic Ecology club was set up with the Calgary Aquarium Society to establish a Species Maintenance Program for endangered or threatened tropical fish.
  • Outdoor Pursuit club students experience the natural world through a wide variety of outdoor activities.
  • A website that encourages students to explore current biology topics is a model for other school science websites in the school board.

Rave reviews:

Like Johnny Appleseed, Barry Hertz carries a passion for the earth and he lives it through his academic pursuits, his vocational choices and his expression of his art. He sows the seeds of this passion in all that he touches and, most importantly, in the students he teaches. Principal

Mr. Hertz is an awesome teacher. He always knows the answers to my obscure questions and when he doesn't he puts in the effort to find out. He always has interesting bits of information to share with us that we won't need unless we're specialists – or biology teachers. And he brings the curriculum alive with analogies about exploding root beer. Student