Excited About Teaching and Learning

I traveled out to two of the more unique schools in our district yesterday.  Peace View Colony School and South Peace Colony School are run in partnership between SD59 and the two Hutterite colonies.  It's always interesting to visit the colony schools and experience a different culture right here in our backyard.

My visit started with a 35 minute drive to Peace View, where I met up with Renee Elliot, the principal at the school.  We spent a few hours going over her planning for next year and discussing how unique the two schools are when compared to our other community schools.  Renee was not in the classroom yesterday as she had her "principal time" when I was there.

I then traveled another 20 minutes out to South Peace Colony where I spent about 45 minutes visiting with Nancy Hazelwood, the principal at that school.  When I arrived her students were all engaged in listening to Nancy as she read aloud from a novel they were enjoying together.  Shortly after I arrived, the students were off to the little library to gather the books that they were reading independently, and then they spent about 20 minute reading quietly.

This may sound like any other school, but colony schools are anything but ordinary.  Peace View has 19 students and South Peace has 24.  Students arrive sometime around their sixth birthday, usually not speaking or understanding any english.  A large focus in the school is language acquisition for the students. School becomes english immersion.  It's an amazing set-up with students from grade one, and sometimes kindergarten, all the way to grade 9, all in the class together.  Students continue on in the one-class school until their 16th birthday.  Then it is off to work on the colony.  At times older students are absent as colony duties take precedent. Seeding, sheep sheering, and harvesting the grain crops all need help from the young colony members.

The work of the solo teachers in these two schools is daunting.  Preparing educational programming for a range of students who span nine years and who arrive with no understanding of english is a huge task for anybody.  However despite the challenge, our teachers, Renee and Nancy, are doing amazing work.  My conversation with Renee centred entirely around what is best for her students.  Nancy explained to me how she is able to structure her class to meet the academic level of each particular student.  She is extremely proud of her student successes in math, and she described how happy her students are.  I think that Nancy's excitement and joy is having a significant impact on the learning for this particular group.  The level of enthusiasm that both teachers bring to their work on a daily basis is astonishing, given the complexity of the job.

I want to acknowledge the challenge that both principals, Renee and Nancy, face on a regular basis: from the long drive on dusty, muddy or icy gravel roads to the range of language abilities in each school. Renee and Nancy face all of this with a smile and a can-do attitude.  They truly have the best interests of their students and of the colony community at the centre of what they do.