Northlands Parkway Collegiate bidding farewell to principal, vice-principal
Current and former students and staff at Northlands Parkway Collegiate gathered last week to bid farewell to principal Tammy MacDonald and vice-principal Jeff Osinski, who are retiring from their roles next month.
The May 21 come-and-go celebration paid homage to the pair’s long careers as educators—28 years for MacDonald and 31 years for Osinski—including serving as the leaders of Winkler’s second high school right from when it first opened its doors in 2013.
They duo were integral in the creation of NPC’s culture from those early years to today, and both feel the time is right to pass the torch on to the next generation. (Donovan Giesbrecht, current principal of Border Valley School, and Charlie Siler, NPC’s guidance counsellor, will step into the principal and vice-principal roles respectively this fall.)
“I wanted to make sure that I retired while I was still able to do things,” says MacDonald, citing a keen desire to travel. She also intends to continue teaching driver’s education and already has plans to train future driver’s ed. instructors with curriculum she has created at Red River College Polytech’s Winkler campus.
Osinski has long had plans to retire this year and MacDonald says she couldn’t have imagined staying on without him.
“I don’t know if I want to, if I could find somebody as good as him to do this with, to be honest,” she says. “So it seemed like a natural time—why don’t we do a clean sweep of the whole admin team and let someone else come in and put their own stamp on it?”
Osinski says he’s ready for a new adventure.
“I had put this plan out years ago that the year my youngest daughter graduates, I’m going to retire,” he shares, noting both his kids will be in university this fall. “It just felt right … now I can move onto other journeys and support them in a different way.
“Plus, I had hit 31 years in the education business. So I was thinking maybe retirement’s in the cards and it’s time to let a new team take over with fresh ideas,” Osinski adds, noting he has no firm plans beyond spending time this summer at his family’s cottage.
“I’m so ready for this,” he says. “The worst feeling would be to be burned out. I’ve still got lots of energy and lots of ideas, but it just feels like the right time to go.”
Looking back on a lifetime of teaching
MacDonald originally planned to become a doctor, but then found herself volunteering with various youth programs in her hometown in Ontario.
“I was teaching skating lessons, doing all kinds of stuff, and I liked working with the kids,” she says. “It seemed like [education] would be a good path for me.”
She came to Brandon for her teaching degree and ended up falling in love with rural life in Manitoba.
“I stayed out here because I liked the pace, the slower pace compared to Toronto.”
She spent time as a French Immersion teacher in Western School Division in Morden before moving into a vice-principal role at Garden Valley Collegiate in Winkler, a position she had for a decade.
Osinski’s path to becoming a teacher started when he was a teenager.
“What actually inspired me to be a teacher was a Gr. 11 teacher I had in high school,” he recalls. “I just loved his demeanor in the class, how he ran the class, how the kids respected him.
“That was a fairly unique experience for me. Most of the teachers were a little more standoffish—they’re the teacher, they’re the boss—but this one seemed to give some ownership to the kids, and I just loved that.”
His first teaching job was up north on Garden Hill First Nation. It was a bit of a culture shock for the Winnipegger, but he came to love the area and ended up spending five years there, teaching and eventually serving as principal as well.
He then spent eight years at a school in Norway House before deciding to move his young family to the Winkler area in 2007. He started out as a teacher at GVC and then later became one of its vice-principals.
When the opportunity to head up Winkler’s second high school came up, both MacDonald and Osinski jumped at it.
“I don’t mind change,” says MacDonald. “I was at GVC a long time. You just wait for the right moment and then you go for it. It seemed like a natural progression—I had just finished my master’s degree in leadership and you kind of want to put what you’ve learned into action.”
“There’s always a hunger there when you’re moving into an admin role,” agrees Osinski. “You want to make a difference in a different way … you’re not teaching kids directly, but you’re part of every decision in a school, and all those decisions are to make teaching and learning better. So I was very excited to be able to move over to a new school to do that.”
But that first year at NPC was a challenging one—the building wasn’t even fully finished when classes began. The school community also suffered the death of several students. On top of all that, the facility played a role in hosting the Manitoba Winter Games, stretching everyone thin.
Amidst all those trials, NPC began to build the foundation of what it would become.
“The excitement on everyone’s part is what stands out,” Osinski recalls. “It didn’t matter that the minute we’d leave at 3:50 at the end of the day the construction crews were coming in to work. We made the best of what we had and there was such a general excitement amongst everyone about the newness, about carving a new path with this school.”
Looking back, MacDonald agrees it’s the people that stand out most to her from those early years.
“Just being able to work with a group of talented people to come up with the start of a new building—all the policies, the procedures. We really had nothing. It was an exciting time.”
“You’re looking to develop a new school culture, a new identity,” says Osinski “That’s the thing that probably took the most effort, the most time, and has been an ongoing piece.”
As they prepare to leave NPC behind, MacDonald and Osinski are proud of the community they’ve helped build there.
“I’m very, very happy with where we’re leaving the building. I’m happy with who they’ve hired,” says MacDonald. “And the kids—the kids are all great. That’s the toughest piece, is leaving the kids.”
“It’s been a work in progress and will always be a work in progress, but I’m leaving here very happy about where the school is at,” echoes Osinski.
“I’m going to miss the relationships,” he says. “You work so hard to build them and I hold them very dear, both students and staff.”
MacDonald and Osinski have both been very intentional about making themselves accessible at NPC, setting up shop in the commons area every day to chat and field questions.
They’re not sure if they can give that up just yet.
“We’ve joked about the first day of school next year, just kind of creeping into the commons and sitting there with hoodies on and having coffee to see if anybody notices us,” laughs MacDonald. “It’s been such a great place to work.”
