Testimonials

Thank you so much for offering your services to our school district. We are excited to learn and implement the collaborative response model for our school. Making sure our students’ needs are met is our priority and it was great to see that it was a core value in the CRM.

When coming to Winterburn, it quickly became apparent that Marilyn Schmitke has a core belief in the power and potential of people to affect change when they work together. She presented staff with the opportunity to look at school supports through a lens of student-centred conversations and a targeted approach to interventions - Collaborative Response. Through a strategically crafted plan, creative scheduling and outstanding instructional leadership, Marilyn ensured the implementation of Collaborative Response was successful and sustainable. By her careful design, this strong collaborative environment has resulted in a profound shift in school culture to where teacher collective efficacy drives our work with students. Because of Marilyn's leadership, vision and commitment to supporting all students, we continue to use Collaborative Response as our framework to create structured supports to respond effectively to student's unique needs.

Lorna Hewson has created a caring response to address needs she experienced first hand! Her thoughtfulness and attention to detail engages her audience and inspires them to believe they can implement the program successfully. She is such a warm and wonderful speaker!

We had Kurtis Hewson come to our school for a PD Day and inspire our staff with the Collaborative Response Model. We have already embedded time for common meeting time within our week, but I think our meetings didn't really have any structure. After this PD day, we are excited to have a method that was clearly explained and that we can use going forward so that we are doing our best for ALL of our students.

Marilyn Schmitke from Jigsaw Learning facilitated a professional learning opportunity for my teaching staff in August 2019. She prefaced the meeting with multiple conversations with myself to identify staff and school needs and draft a framework for the activities for the day. Marilyn was instrumental in providing me support, who, as a brand new administrator, was uncertain of how to move forward and apprehensive about how to address the sense of team as a new leader. Marilyn was a wealth of knowledge, providing multiple suggestions as to approaches that could be considered as first steps. Marilyn spoke with confidence and supported me through the process. Marilyn facilitated team building activities and then norm-setting with the teaching staff so that I was able to be a participant and work alongside my staff. Marilyn remained positive at all times while being realistic and addressing concerns of the staff through the process. It was an excellent day and set the foundation for an excellent start to... Read more