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Malcolm Fleeton has been a teacher and principal in School District 85 for 34 years. He has spent his entire career living and working as an educator on the North Island and will be retiring at the end of the school year.
“I’ve enjoyed my career working up here in the North Island — it’s been a great place to work and I couldn’t envision any other place I would have rather spent my career,” said Fleeton, who added he has worked at just about everywhere in School District 85, including Sea View Elementary School ,North Island Secondary School, Sunset Elementary School, Woss, A.J. Elliott Elementary School, Fort Rupert Elementary School, Robert Scott Elementary School, Holberg, Eagle View Eagle Elementary School, and Port Hardy Secondary School.
Fleeton spent many of his 34 years helping to mentor new teachers and administrators, which he attributed to “having enough experience to give them the support and help they needed — sometimes teachers get thrown in the deep end without being given support and I wanted to see them not make the same mistakes I made at the start of my career.”
Fleeton has led student councils and leadership groups at many schools, organized dances and track meets, run Christmas concerts, plays, book fairs, school carnivals and fun fairs, and organized district-wide events such as track meets and science fairs. He started off as a member of the leadership for the teacher’s union and then became part of the leadership for the local principal’s association. He has also run the School District’s ABC program for most of his career, which involves hiring performers to do shows in local schools.
“I think that our students deserve to have all the same opportunities they do everywhere else in the province,” noted Fleeton. “It’s those extra things that make a difference — the abc’s are important, but it’s also about the memories the students get from doing the extra things, and the programs help to keep kids in the school system.”
Outside of the school system, he has helped run the Mount Waddington Regional Fall Fair for many of the last 20 fairs, and is a founding member of the North Island Concert Society and is responsible for the new stage at the Civic Centre.
Fleeton has also served on boards such as the Infant Development Society (now part of Family Services), and is an adult sponsor for the Junior Canadian Rangers of Port Hardy.
“I saw this as a value added to our students by providing them with organized activities in the outdoors,” he said about the junior rangers program. “It gives them a chance to learn leadership skills and develop outdoor skills, and I like the fact the program was free for all students to participate in.”
Fleeton went back into the classroom as a teacher after spending years in administration as a principal, which he says was like “the circle of life — to be able to have that time in administration and then to go back to teaching in the classroom and work with the students to finish off my career, it’s very rewarding.”
When asked what he will remember the most about being an educator on the North Island, Fleeton said “It’s something I have done as a job and it’s something I’ve enjoyed doing for many years. It’s nice to see the students grow up, find careers, and sometimes come back to the North Island to say hello — seeing the students have success, that’s the biggest reward.”
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