College Certificate - Education Assistant & Community Support Worker

The College Certificate - Education Assistant & Community Support Worker at Selkirk College’s Castlegar campus is a 9 month college certificate including a practicum preparing classroom and community support professionals in nine months.

Students learn child and youth development, learning-support strategies, positive behaviour approaches and inclusive practice for both school and community settings, completed with practicum experience. The dual school-and-community focus widens the graduate job market beyond classrooms alone.

Selkirk College, founded in 1966 as British Columbia’s first regional community college, is a fully public institution in the province’s West Kootenay region. The 65-hectare forested Castlegar campus offers genuinely small classes, on-campus student housing, and some of the lowest combined tuition-and-living costs of any BC public college. University courses transfer to UBC, SFU, UVic and other BC universities through the province’s formal transfer system, and graduates working in the region can pursue the BC Provincial Nominee Program toward permanent residence.

This program is registered in the field of CIP 13.1501 (Teaching assistants/aides, general) and is offered to international students under Canada’s post-November-2024 PGWP field-of-study rules; two-year programs support a Post-Graduation Work Permit of up to three years. Selkirk College maintains a live list of PGWP-eligible programs and seat availability changes by intake — verify this program on the official list and with IRCC before applying (final decisions rest with IRCC).