Off the Beaten Path

Lynne Buret has never been afraid to step out of her comfort zone.

In her 25 short years, she’s earned a black belt in karate; she’s bungee jumped and learned to salsa dance in Costa Rica; she’s jumped out of a plane, with a parachute, in Hawaii; and she’s gone scuba diving in several locations around the world. She’s also a skier, certified both with the Canadian Ski Instructor’s Alliance (CSIA) and with Canadian Adapative Snowsports (CADS).

She’s a traveler too, which she says may have something to do with her early upbringing. “I was born in Australia to two Swiss-Canadian parents,” explains the recent grad of the Werklund School of Education’s Bachelor of Education program. “From about the age of two and half, I grew up in Canada while traveling abroad often with my family.”

Buret credits her family life with giving her a sense of adventure, and she says it’s fueled her love of learning about new cultures, traditions and languages.

So, when it came time to choose a school for her final practicum, she recognized the opportunity to think outside the box to look for a unique placement. And she set two criteria for her final classroom selection.

First, as she comes from a Francophone background and is based in Calgary, Buret sought a school where she could work in the language of her family while remaining in the province; a second consideration was that her placement be in a rural setting.

“I decided to go up north because I wanted to take advantage of my practicums to see and try something new,” she explains, “and I heard from a few people that Peace River was amazing.”

She applied, and the next thing she knew, she had a placement at École des Quatre-Vents. And she says she knew, right from the start, she had made the right choice.

Buret says she expected to find a strong Francophone community there and she was not disappointed. She explains that the community and its allies are determined to maintain their language and culture, and that efforts are made to keep the roots alive and to remind the rest of the community that their ancestors were just as much part of settling Alberta as were the English settlers.

“I loved it more than I could imagine,” she says, “so much so that when my practicum was over, I accepted a job offer to stay at the school, and I moved north at the end of summer.”

“I am so excited to start my career and am lucky to start it at such a wonderful school.”

Lynne Buret’s advice to other pre-service teachers? “Don’t think too much about it. Just take a chance and go. You never know what or who you are going to find, and you are so well supported as a student teacher that it is easy to go on an adventure and try new things.”