Shirley Giroux

I am the school counsellor (Grades K-12) in Valemount, BC, a village of 1500 people in the Canadian Rockies. I am a teacher and a Registered Clinical Counsellor. In 2019, I completed a PhD in Health Sciences for which I researched resilience in teachers who were simultaneously raising their own children while teaching. This work clarified what has become a vocational calling for me:  figuring out ways to better support the emotional aspects of work teaching. In 2020/21, my interest, research, and work in educator well-being led me to train as a Compassionate Systems Leadership master practitioner through the Center for Systems Awareness at MIT. This training was particularly salient to my work in British Columbia because Compassionate Systems Leadership is the framework through which the provincial Ministry of Education and Child Care is seeking to support staff well-being in schools. My project for that training can be viewed at:  https://systemsawareness.digication.com/shirley-giroux-project/about. I love my job in Valemount as I get to work with the entire community of families and the staff at both schools. I see working on behalf of educators’ well-being from a school’s-eye-view as key to keeping my work grounded in the realities of the classroom. I live with my family on a hobby farm in Tête Jaune Cache, BC.