Roger Aubin, founder of Education Enrichment Center, is an experience educator who has taught grades K to 12, plus a stint as a guest university lecturer.

Roger has long been inspired by the challenge of overcoming his own learning difficulties: ADD and dyslexia.

"I researched the teaching methods of ADD and Dyslexia and discovered a system that works - a system that makes learning relevant, attainable and best of all fun!"

Roger's frustrations with the system as a student were:

• He was bored.
• His instruction focussed primarily on his weaknesses.
• He was withdrawn to a Sp. Ed. room.
• He was labelled.
• He lost confidence.
• He never saw the relevancy of what he was expected to learn.
• He was excluded from many class activities and teams.
• He saw himself as a failure, never as a leader.

How much has changed?

With Education Enrichment Center, his aims are:

• To excite the students about learning.
• To make learning relevant.
• To work at the student’s ability and pace.
• To help the students problem solve.
• To help connect for the students the subjects: science, reading, writing, math, history, geography, arts, and social skills.
• To help the students to use their strengths to pull up their weakness.
• To help the students to become leaders.
• To help the students take responsibility in their learning.
• To help the students become team players.

"My passion in life is watching students grow and learn, to see that light bulb that goes on with the confidence that follows."

“Helping students succeed and preparing them for a world of opportunity!”

The center’s focus is on teaching students how to develop:

• Effective research methods,
• Strong teamwork and leadership skills,
• Creative problem solving abilities,
• Transferable goal setting and time management strategies.

Our challenge is to provide a creative and fun learning environment where students can be successful, therefore promoting the students' self esteem and self-confidence.

The center's environment is to recognize and reward levels of participation while allowing opportunities to learn relevant subjects and skills. Character development, accountability, and leadership are paramount to the centre's activities. Our currently available Project Based Themes are: Tall Ships, Alien, and Travel.

Our Mission Statement: Helping students become the leaders of our society by teaching teamwork, responsibility, and knowledge acquisition.

"After a day of sailing a 17th-century tall ship, making maps and transforming raw jute into three-strand rope, even armchair sailors get hungry."

The following is an exerpt from an article published in the February 2001 issue of Pacific Yachting. It was titled "Classroom Cuisine" and written by Dyan Dunsmoor-Farley.

I met a group of sailors recently who appeared to have done it all. Not only had they built a 17th-century tall ship, but they had sailed it to Japan, China, Mesopotamia, Greece, Italy and Peru. No matter that it was an imaginary trip; it had the feel, colour and taste of the real thing. Swahbuckling sailors wearing bandannas showed me their ship's layout, described their days at sea - from captain to cook - and even fed me the local cuisine.

Roger Aubin's grade six and seven classes had definitely been places, even if only through research - on-line and the old-fashioned way with books! Every square inch of their classroom at Craigflower Elementary was festooned with maps of the 17th century world, scale drawings of the interior and exterior of wooden vessels that plied the open seas three centuries ago, and pictures of the flora, fauna and food eaten by those early voyagers.

By the time the project was completed, students had applied learning in a variety of ways. Art and math skills were developed while creating the drawings of ship's cross-sections and sail plans. Public speaking skills were honed as each group had to present their voyage to the class (and a couple of unlucky groups had to present to a Pacific Yachting writer - you could tell the adrenaline was up for that one). Map-making demanded some basic understanding of geography, particularly where one continent was in relation to another and how things had changed in the last three hundred years. Doing the project meant going back in history, with lots of reading and problem-solving along the way. And because nothing is really much fun without food, students researched and prepared authentic dishes from the countries that they "visited" and shared them with their classmates.

But food wasn't the only thing that was made from scratch. The kids learned about what went into building a tall ship, right down to the rope. I was amazed when five students took a bag full of raw jute and turned it into a tough three-strand rope. It also made me very grateful that we don't have to rely on prickly, skin-abrading jute anymore.

Michael and Sharon O.

Our daughter Ashleigh enjoyed the course facilitated by Roger Aubin of Education Enrichment. The program challenged her to learn and develop new skills for researching and planning. Her ability on the computer, particularly in doing research on the internet, has improved immensely. Roger made the course interesting, challenging and fun. We are happy that we obtained Roger's services and will most likely do so again.

Jennifer B.

I found that this program:

1. Brought my family closed together.
2. If projects like this were used in school it may help to kept children involved.
3. The project works as a family activity because its pace is driven by the group.
4. It sparked my interest to learn more about the place we wished to travel too.
5. It expands how I did research.
6. I found myself day dreaming happily about our trip and thru this project it got the whole family involved in the planning, from how to get there, costs, where to stay and what there was to see.
7. It is useful for everyday life.

Chelsea M.

1. It brought me closer to my mom.
2. I enjoyed learning within this system.
3. It became clear how I could use what I learned in other aspects of my life.
4. I learned new ways of doing research with this system.
5. Because I want to travel when I finish school it gave me a good outline of what, where and how to plan the trip.
6. It was a worthwhile exercise. The homework was fun!

Older Student (AM)

1. I love it.
2. I enjoyed learning with this system.
3. It is enjoyable and educational at the same time.
4. It is harder than university, more useful, and a lot more enjoyable.
5. I had a ton of fun!

Teacher (KG)

1. This is a great way to learn!
2. It is closer to real life than any teaching method I have seen.
3. I am having fun too!
4. We are using a variety of research techniques.