Allison Belt: From a Burgundy Pamphlet to a 34-Year Legacy

Sometimes an illustrious career begins with a small, unexpected moment. 

For Allison Belt, it was a burgundy pamphlet she flipped through during her job interview for a Rundle College science teacher. A simple piece of cardstock that captured exactly what she envisioned for education.

“I had always wondered what it would be like to be part of a British college-type school. This was before the internet, so I couldn’t do any research on Rundle before I walked in for the interview,” she recalls. 

While waiting for her interview for that science position, Dr. Rod Conklin passed Allison a folder that outlined Rundle’s mission, vision, and values.

“I looked at the mission statement: help students discover their potential, challenge them to attain their best, and celebrate with them when they do. It immediately resonated with me. Although I had never put into words my own teaching philosophy, these words profoundly impacted me.”

Fast forward 34 years, and Allison is set to retire as one of the longest-serving and most impactful staff members in our 40-year history. She has spent her career living out Rundle’s mission, vision, and values every day, touching the lives of thousands of students and families and leaving a legacy on our school, our community, and on alumni around the world.

“Rundle is Allison, or Allison is Rundle. She is truly the bedrock and the lifeblood of this place,” says Head of School Dr. Jason Rogers. “It is unbelievable in this day and age to see one human being give so much to an organization and never ever ask for anything back. This deep, selfless contribution should be an inspiration to anybody who hears the story of Allison Belt.”

A Circuitous Path to Teaching

Allison was born and raised outside of the very small town of Bowden, Alberta. As a student, she was community-oriented and prioritized the relationships she built in all facets of her life.

“I was the baby of the family, so everybody knew me because of the reputation of my siblings. For me, it was very much about building connections with teachers, connections with my friends, and connections playing basketball,” she recalls. “I was very studious, probably an overachiever. But I had to work hard to get good marks; things didn’t come easily for me.”

As someone with an enduring curiosity about the natural world, the creatures that inhabit it, and the wonder of anatomy and physiological systems, the sciences – biology in particular – were her favourite subjects. When it came time to decide her post-secondary pursuits, she naturally gravitated towards something in that field: physical therapy.

During the second semester of her first year at the University of Alberta, Allison realized her chosen career path wasn’t for her.  

“Although I soon discovered that physical therapy was not for me, I discovered I enjoyed the aspects of my courses that involved collaborating, leading groups, and teaching others,” she says. 

And so began Allison’s path into education. By pursuing an education degree with a focus in biology, she set her sights on a path that allowed her to stay rooted in her love of sciences. 

She also knew the kind of teacher she wanted to be for her students: “Teaching was always about engaging kids in their learning; helping them, making it make sense to them. Because I always had to work hard to get the results I wanted, I approached teaching with the goal of unpacking a hard concept, making learning real and fun!”

Through practicums in much larger school communities than she’d experienced in Bowden – Camrose, Grande Prairie, and Edmonton – Allison realized that small town teaching was the direction she’d want to go.

“I had no real desire to teach in a big city school. I think that was from the experience that I had as a kid,” she says. “I’ve always felt that Rundle was a small-town school in the middle of a big city.” 

But we’ll get to that.

Allison’s Path to Rundle

Allison’s first job after graduation was as a teacher in Eckville, Alberta, with a population of 830. She was 21 years old teaching biology, physics, and chemistry to students only a couple of years younger than her.

“I was all excited because I really had this vision of being this small-town teacher,” she recalls. And while she learned a lot in her year-and-a-half in Eckville, small-town teaching also had challenges. In 1989, her next job brought her to the larger community of Three Hills, Alberta. While still a small town, even today Allison says she could have seen teaching in that community as her long-term plan.

She grew significantly as an educator in Three Hills. Primarily teaching biology and some junior high sciences, Allison was always looking for opportunities to enrich her students’ outdoor and environmental education, and build roots in the community.

“I worked with a collaborative and supportive group of teachers and was given many opportunities for professional growth,” Allison says. 

During her time in Three Hills, Allison married her husband, Kerry. Together, they moved into a farmhouse and enjoyed the small-town, rural life they had always dreamed of.

In 1992, Kerry accepted a job in Calgary.

Allison recalls: “Teaching jobs were not plentiful at the time when I set out finding a job in or near the city. I knew I couldn’t commute to Three Hills, so I quit my job. And that’s when I found this little ad in the Calgary Herald: ‘Science Teacher Wanted, Rundle College.’”

“I have just one question, Allison…”

With the burgundy Rundle pamphlet in hand, Allison sat with founder Dr. W.J. Collett, then-Head of School Dave Hauk, and board member Pat Smith for her job interview. With a mission that aligned with her own, Allison was confident Rundle would be the perfect place for her – but Dave says he had a slight bit of hesitation.

“To be honest with you, given her stature and how calm she was, I thought there was a chance the kids would just tear her apart,” he recalls. “But her academic knowledge was unbelievable, that was so noticeable in the interview. We were trying to beef up our high school sciences at the time, and her knowledge there was very evident, and of course she came with glowing references, so the job was hers.”

For Dave, he immediately saw that everything Allison brought to Rundle was not just a strength, but a breath of fresh air.

“Her demeanour and intellect in front of the students became such a calming presence for the students. She always got them to settle in, pay attention to what she was teaching, and she always knew how to present the material to these kids so they fully understood it,” he says.

For Allison, starting at Rundle really was everything she was searching for. Even though her first classroom and science lab were in an ATCO trailer behind the school, that didn’t prevent her from falling in love with the place and the community.

“The Bridgeland school was small, but I loved it. It was in a beautiful community, on a quiet city street in an older brick building. There weren’t a lot of staff and we were less than 100 kids in grades 7-12. It was kind of what I thought independent school would be. Even then, it was all about just taking kids from point A to point B. That’s what it always was,” Allison says. “But there weren’t very many resources. It was simpler days, we made due with the little we had and engaged in simple fundraising initiatives to raise additional funds.”

But that feeling of Rundle being a small-town school was always there, too, for Allison.

“I loved teaching lots of different subjects and trying to make it exciting. And in those early years, everybody had their hand in everything – sports, Christmas productions, and other community events – that was just what you did. And I got to work with influential people who had been at it for longer than I had been and who were great mentors,” she says. “These were really still the founding years at Rundle, we were just kind of on the cusp of becoming something.”

That “something,” Allison says, was evident as soon as she arrived and had to teach in the trailer because the school had outgrown its space.

“We were either going to make it and start to really grow, or stay in this state of what we were, which was quaint and cute. Dr. Collett and Dr. Conklin had the vision, but Dave Hauk was the one with the feet on the ground who actually was able to make a lot of things happen.”

In 1994, the school moved into a 90,000-square-foot industrial warehouse that finally allowed Rundle to grow.

“Although our new school was an industrial style building with quirky spaces, we were excited to have room to grow,” she recalls.

Through the 1990s and the early 2000s, Allison positioned herself as an exemplary, beloved, and inspiring teacher in a school community that kept growing and growing at the Barlow campus.

“It’s too bad we couldn’t have cloned her because when you’re looking at somebody that you want in your program with all the mastery and care that she has, we would’ve been fortunate to have a full staff of Allisons,” Dave says. “She was the type of teacher who got every other teacher to try to pick up their socks and work really hard to come up to her standard.”

Allison says it came back to her mission as a teacher that she had had since university, the same one that aligned with Rundle’s.

“Because of the smaller classes, I could focus on the craft of teaching.  It was about making learning make sense to kids and figuring out how to support them when it didn’t.”

One afternoon in 1998, as the population at the Barlow campus continued to grow, Dr. Collett approached Allison – someone he came to trust – and simply asked, “I have just one question, Allison: do you think we are getting too big?”  

“I think I said, ‘We’ll be okay’ because I knew that the school was grounded in the belief that we should have a small environment where no kid falls through the cracks,” Allison recalls.”He had a valid concern and I was committed to not losing the vision the founders set in 1985. As a teacher, that means knowing students and knowing how they learn best and helping them see what they are  capable of.”

It was a simple hallway conversation that became a pivotal moment in our history. That question has become a guiding star for Rundle since it was first asked to Allison nearly 30 years ago: retain that small-town school feeling and our original mission, while continuing to grow and evolve.

In 2001, Rundle purchased a plot of agricultural land in East Springbank off 17th Avenue to become the permanent home of Rundle College. Following years of planning, the Junior and Senior High moved into a new purpose-built building for the 2005-06 school year.

“That was the moment I thought, ‘We’ve arrived as a school; now we’re set.’ We were pretty excited to have this shiny, new building,” she recalls. “I remember thinking I was going to make the kids take their shoes off when they came into my classroom!”

Through her teaching career across multiple campuses, Allison was also a basketball coach, yearbook facilitator and photographer, and helped organize and supervise international trips to Greece, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Namibia, Botswana, Kenya, Peru, Thailand, and the Galapagos Islands. She also became Head of the College 10-12 Science department.

In the fall of 2012, the opportunity to take on a more formal leadership role in the College community arose, and she was named assistant principal at the Senior High.

“I really felt like it was almost an academic dean role which I really liked. I did a lot of work with students in the academic and the post-secondary side of things. That’s probably where I thrived the most as an administrator,” she begins, “because it was all about students and being really involved with them, helping them, guiding them to a certain purpose. That’s what I had been doing for the last 20 years in the classroom; now I was taking those skills and applying them to a different setting.”

In 2016, Allison was named Principal of the College Senior High and worked alongside the school’s leadership team to help shape and guide Rundle as a whole community.

“I admire her and I love working with her because she has this quiet, calm, contemplative style of leadership that makes it so easy to follow,” says Jason Rogers. “A couple of things you notice right away when you sit down with her are that she’s always listening, she’s reflecting deeply, and she is willing to put in the work. Anything that Allison puts her mind to always turns out to be pure gold.”

“I always say, ‘Our teachers are the most important people in this organization because they’re the people with the students in front of them.’ So I try to create a platform for them to be the best they can be and not stand in their way,” Allison says about her role as principal. “And as it’s been since the very beginning, I do that with our original mission and vision carrying through everything.”

Allison’s Legacy

At the end of the 2025-26 school year, Allison will step away from Rundle and into retirement to start a new chapter in her life. 

“What a privilege it’s been to spend so many years in a job that I’ve been able to constantly grow and develop and feed into people. I’ve been able to teach the way that I thought a teacher should teach, and I’ve been able to teach and work with people who have been very supportive of me and care about me and have the same vision as me,” she says. “It’s a privilege to be part of a student’s journey; it’s a pretty important part of their life. For me to have a little bit of influence on them and get to walk alongside each of them on their path, that has been the biggest joy for me.”

In August, as Allison settles into retirement and volunteers more actively with Mully Children’s Family, Rundle will start a new school year without Allison’s compassion and leadership directly in our hallways for the first time in more than three decades.

But long after she physically leaves our school, Allison’s legacy will continue to live on. 

Beyond Belt Hall, the social space in the College 7-12 building named in her honour, Allison’s reputation will benefit Rundle students, staff, families, and alumni for decades.

“When I started as a teacher at Rundle Academy, I knew of Allison Belt only through her reputation. Everybody knew of her because of her ability to draw out the best in students, we knew how dynamic and strong her classes are. Even before meeting Allison, we all knew that if we wanted to be great teachers, we needed to be like Allison Belt,” says Jason. “Allison’s legacy is the legacy of Rundle. Her legacy lives in every moment at our school when a teacher helps a student discover their potential, challenges them to be the best version of themself, and celebrates with them. We are building the next chapter of Rundle on the backs of giants like Allison, and we owe it to every one of them to remind the stewards of the future about the spirits of the leaders of the past to create a lasting legacy for the future of our school.”

For Allison, she humbly sees her roles at Rundle over 34 years as nothing more than a steward of the mission, vision, and values that Drs. Collett and Conklin originally set.

“Integrity, honesty, believing in people – those are important to me. I’ve always seen this as more than a job; I’ve always felt that this is what I’ve been called to do. I really felt privileged and honoured and called to steward a mission that two gentlemen started back in 1985” she says. 

“So many different businesses and organizations lose their vision; even schools go different ways. Rundle, as I’ve known it since 1992, our mission still holds true; those values that they set out are still as pertinent today as they were back then. I’ve tried to steward that the best I can during my time here, and that’s what I hope for Rundle beyond my time; I want there to always be the why behind every decision and conversation. Change in education is inevitable, but I hope Rundle continues to be hinged on that original mission, vision, and values because that is our best path forward.”