Entrepreneurial education management advisor
With over 40 years of experience in education, Yvan Valence is convinced that the best way to improve pedagogy and youth success in Quebec is to develop entrepreneurial education, since it strongly contributes to youth identity building and motivation.
Yvan Valence holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in remedial education from Université de Sherbrooke and he started his career as a teacher. He also worked as a lecturer in the special education program of the university from which he graduated. Later, Yvan Valence obtained a school principal position and led several educational institutions until he retired in 2010. He became a mentor for young school principals at the beginning of their career. Overall, Yvan Valence pursued this profession for 26 years at both the elementary and secondary level and worked as a principal in 13 institutions and three school boards in the province of Québec.
In addition to his work, Yvan Valence joined the board of directors of the Association des directeurs d’école de l’Estrie, ultimately as the president for a period of two years. He then became involved at the provincial level as a member of the organizing committee of the annual congress of the Fédération Québécoise des directeurs d’établissement (FQDE) in 2009. Yvan Valence was locally recognized by his association.
During his last mandate as a school principal (elementary school Sainte-Marguerite in Magog), Yvan Valence discovered the beneficial effects of entrepreneurial education not only on students and teachers, but also on the perception of parents towards the school. In 2009, the school received the two most significant recognitions of the province in educational entrepreneurship at the elementary level. The school quickly becomes the favorite throughout the region and requests from parents to admit their child to Sainte-Marguerite became so numerous that the school has to put into place a waiting list.
This outstanding experience brought Yvan Valence to get involved in the development of entrepreneurial education through a provincial network of entrepreneurial school institutions, of which he assumed the presidency for a period of six years. He is therefore active throughout the province and with a growing number of school principals that he guides in their appropriation process of this innovative pedagogy. This expertise in the management of an entrepreneurial school brought Yvan Valence to act as a consultant for several organizations ad to support various schools in the implementation of an entrepreneurial pedagogy. He built a structured support methodology for school principals and developed, based on the demonstrated needs of the schools, a set of practical tools, making this type of entrepreneurial development easier for school principals.
