My name is Scott Malcolm. I'm a caretaker at Winston Knoll High School, the newest high school in Regina. I've been doing it for about three years. I make sure the school is kept clean and also take care of a lot of the operations around the school.

I decided to get into caretaking mainly because of the job securities and the benefits. Basically, it varies what type of shift you have to start a typical day. One shift starts at 8:00 o'clock and you are more on less on call to help teachers and the students and the staff with the different tasks they have like setting up for…plus keeping the school clean and the grounds clean.

Then if you start at 12:30, that shift, you more or less take care of the lunch clean up and then you do your normal routine. Cleaning your college or a series of classrooms you would have, which would contain sweeping, garbage pickup, cleaning the chalkboards and also washing, plus entrances, the bathrooms. And then after that you have a different routine. You would clean the staff room. And then the last routine from 3:00 to 11:00 consists of a typical routine of cleaning your college, and then another full routine of cleaning maybe the checkroom or the gym area.

The challenge is your day-to-day demands, your day-to-day spontaneous situations. Every day is different in some ways as far as what has to be done. Every day seems to be a learning day as far as some new activity that happens.

The satisfying part of my job would be the gratification from the people that I serve or that I help, plus being able to keep the school clean and looking almost like brand new. At Winston Knoll, here the staff is really good that work together with us. They don't treat us any worse than…any less than themselves. We are part of the team. This whole school is a team.

Mainly teamwork skills are good with the other caretakers. You've got to work together in different situations. Plus with the staff, the teachers and even with the students you have lots of situations where you've got o work as a team.

Grade 12 is a necessity and it's also good to have some trade time or firemen's papers. It really helps. Firemen's papers, it's a course that you take to understand the fundamentals of the boilers and just the work safety around the building. The Regina School Board is very good at throwing in-services to us and they teach us a lot of trades, and a lot of on-hand safety and repair information. There is one course, WHMIS course, which teaches you how to treat the chemicals or how to work with the chemicals with a safe attitude. Next (more or less) even scaffolding. Just how to deal with hazardous situations dealing with breakdowns.

Keep a positive attitude, be very friendly and set goals to improve your services at the school.