Independent schools

Special Feature

We asked local independent schools to highlight something unique We asked to aboutlocal theirindependent curriculum schools or a unique highlight something unique their approach they have to about teaching, curriculum or awhat unique approach and here’s they told us. they have to teaching, and here’s what they told us.

Independent Schools Independent Schools Special Feature

Wednesday, October 28, 2015 - North Shore News - A23

Independent Schools We asked local independent schools to highlight something unique about their curriculum or a unique approach they have to teaching, and here’s what they told us.

Special Feature

Service at St. Edmunds

As stated in our mission statement, St. Edmund’s Elementary is committed to excellence in all areas that promote the development of the whole child to his or her full potential.

We believe it is the opportunities beyond the classroom that allow students to fully develop into the people and leaders we know they can be.

These additional programs include opportunities in the areas of sports, arts, and leadership.

Our school’s athletic program includes five separate sports, and any student who attends regular practices will be able to participate regardless of skill level. Our fine arts program includes choir, art club, and speech arts.

Being able to achieve and co-operate in an area other than academics brings

a wonderful energy to a school and its students.

Our leadership program is designed to gradually give more responsibilities to our intermediate students while supporting our primary students. Our school Buddy Grade program pairs kindergarten with Grade 4, Grade 1 with Grade 5, etc.

Older buddies are expected to model good behaviour in assemblies and masses, as well as look out for their younger buddies on the playground. Duties are added each intermediate year in the form of jobs around the school (office monitors, recycling, etc.).

By grade 6 and 7, students are organizing schoolwide events targeted at the younger students.

While we take our academic responsibilities as a school very seriously, we believe what distinguishes us from other schools

Students Sophia Jeliazkov, Mackenzie Newman, Martin Anicic, and Aiden Kwong working on story structure at St. Edmund’s elementary. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD are the opportunities our students have to develop a

perspective of responsibility and ownership. If

our students leave St. Edmund’s with a spirit of

service, we have done our job well.

Combining academics with equestrian pursuits at Queen Margaret’s

PHOTO SUPPLIED BY QUEEN MARGARET’S SCHOOL

MAPLEWOOD ALTERNATIVE HIGH SCHOOL

Every young horse girl dreams of combining her riding with school and other recreational activities.

Students at Queen Margaret’s School (QMS), in Duncan on Vancouver Island, no longer have to choose between their passion for horses and excellence in academics.

QMS is the only school in Canada with an integrated on-campus equestrian riding program.

In addition to academic classes, such as Chemistry,

English and AP Studio Art, students are also given the opportunity to earn high school credit for riding in their academic timetable.

QMS is lauded as one of the top university preparatory high schools in Canada. Arts, sports, clubs and activities are blended with opportunities for leadership, responsibility and independence.

The boarding residence at QMS is a welcoming home away from home for girls in grades 6-12. The school offers an optional

five-day boarding program, which allows boarders from the Lower Mainland to travel home on the weekends and embrace school life during the study week. They also offer a full-time seven residence program.

“Riders feel understood and supported by their teachers at Queen Margaret’s School,” explains Rebecca McKay, admissions director at QMS. “From recreational riders to high performance competitors, our unique

programs are designed to accommodate each student’s academic and riding goals.”

Students at QMS also have the opportunity to study Equine Sciences, which examines stable management and basic veterinary care, equine physiology and anatomy, equine history, and the equine industry.

To learn more about Queen Margaret’s School and apply for entrance in January or September 2016, visit qms.bc.ca.

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A24 - North Shore News - Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Independent Schools

Learning from a Christian perspective at LGCA

Lions Gate Christian Academy has a history of providing Christian education in North Vancouver for more than two decades.

From a modest beginning of less than 20 students in an elementary program, we have grown to more than 300 students in our B.C. Ministry of Education accredited kindergarten-Grade 12 program.

As we excitedly look forward to graduating our fifth class of seniors in 2016, we look to our past to see the vision for our future: Community.

Specifically, a faithful community of believers brought LGCA into existence and we have been growing ever since.

At LGCA our student body represents approximately 20 different Christian churches in the area. Our B.C.accredited teachers enjoy engaging our students in lessons that are infused with their Christian perspective. Our students

really enjoy participating in our weekly chapels by engaging in their faith in the audience or by joining one of our praise and worship teams at the front. We keep Christ at the centre of what we do in and out of the classroom.

LGCA is composed of an elementary and secondary school housed on one campus just off Mount Seymour Parkway.

It’s always refreshing to see how excited and interested our younger students are to interact with their upperclassmen. Likewise, this inspires and motivates our secondary students to be the positive role models and leaders we encourage them to be.

As we enter our third decade of educating students in North Vancouver, we strive to look for opportunities where our students can contribute to the positive learning community that exists at LGCA.

Principal Adam Reid speaks with students Tatum Bergen, Kylene Tiu, Brian Lee, and Deliah Friesen at Lions Gate Christian Academy. The school focuses on community as a key tenet of their curriculum. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD

Graduation presentations at IPS

PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ISLAND PACIFIC SCHOOL

Black holes, electric cars and Buddhism.

Or, becoming an entrepreneur, the possibility of perpetual motion, and bridging the gap between humans and computers.

These are topics that 14-year-olds comfortably discuss with the community during Masterworks season at Island Pacific School .

Masterworks is a Grade 9 graduation requirement at IPS wherein students must select an idea of personal interest, work with an advisory committee of two-three adults (a faculty member and one-two external advisors), write a 12 to 25-page paper, and then publicly present and defend their work in front

of an audience of 90-120 people.

Head of the school and founder Ted Spear says, “When we started the school 20 years ago, we knew we wanted a culminating intellectual and creative challenge for our Grade 9 students.

There is an authenticity here in which students and adults alike investigate a problem of shared interest for the joy or intensity of the thing in itself.”

Spear is always impressed by the students’ abilities. “The presentations themselves are fairly intense. They are not unlike a TED talk that may include demos, music, video, and slides, and in the past have included novella readings,

cooking techniques, science experiments and live plays. The kids then take questions from their committee and the audience as a whole.

Although it takes a lot of time and work to help prepare the students, every time I watch a Masterworks, I am blown out of the water by just how remarkable these 14-year-old kids can be.”

The big idea here is that if schools can create the right context and support for students to investigate their own ideas, then incredible things can happen. In the context of this distinctly different middle school on Bowen Island, this is just one element of setting kids up for the rest of their lives.

Vancouver Waldorf School • 2725 St Christophers Rd North Vancouver • 604.985.7435 • vws.ca

Wednesday, October 28, 2015 - North Shore News - A25

Independent Schools

‘Authentic’ experiences key to Alcuin College curriculum

“People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.”

-Paulo Coelho Since the school year began, Alcuin College students have been inquiring, exploring, experiencing, discussing and reflecting.

This summarizes the approach to learning at Alcuin; students from kindergarten to Grade 12 actively engage with the subject matter to gain a deeper understanding and enjoyment of the curriculum.

For example, every Monday, kindergarten to Grade 2 students take their learning out into the forests and parks of the Lower Mainland. They are exploring their curriculum through the lens of our natural environment, while also learning to be good environmental stewards.

Students in grades 3 and 4 have been learning about Barkerville. They have each taken on different societal roles, visited Burnaby Village Museum and

explored Britannia Mines, all in the quest to understand what it was like to live in that time period. After building a scale model, students undergo a simulation of burning down the town, experiencing for themselves, first-hand, the building of a community and the aftermath of disaster. During this election period, students in grades 3 to 12 have taken part in a student vote to understand better the electoral process, the different party platforms and the significance of the recent vote.

In all learning experiences, students are encouraged to pose questions, construct meaning and to personally synthesize their learning. Going beyond the four walls of our school and working with experts in the community who are passionate about their careers are integral to the educational program at Alcuin College. Student interest helps guide our teachers in seeking authentic learning experiences both locally and abroad. No week is the same as the next.

Becoming multilingual at Bodwell school Becoming multilingual gives young people the power to communicate across cultures.

At Bodwell, we welcome students from different countries to immerse into English learning and living.

Our Academic and English Preparation Program (AEP) is a focused English Language Learning (ELL) curriculum for newcomers.

High school content is interwoven into AEP programming. Instruction

covers basic interpersonal communication to advanced academic language proficiency, in addition to crucial skills such as teamwork, research and problem solving.

We focus on literature,

Alcuin College students Finn Lucas, Graeme Robertson, Alisha Lilley, and Charlotte Clayton discuss voting and the federal election. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD social sciences, and academic writing for all AEP levels.

We plan for students to spend three-quarters of their time during each term in this intensive English program before moving into the academic grade program.

In the various levels of AEP language learning,

teachers tap into students’ prior knowledge, model best language practices, apply plenty of verbal cues and body gestures, build key vocabulary terms, and scaffold learning step by step.

Elective courses are offered to AEP students in each term, including

art, drama, concert band, physical education, food and nutrition, digital media and mathematics.

Students with lower English skills will start with less language-intensive subjects and progress towards subjects requiring more English skills.

Where Students Choose To Be

At Brentwood, student choice is a unique part of our culture and a deciding factor in who attends. It is why this place is so special.

Because when a student truly chooses to be here, and they’re surrounded by a family of like-minded friends and supporters, we believe they can choose to be… anything.

Providing an education as unique as your child.

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A26 - North Shore News - Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Independent Schools

Engaging interest at North Star Dr. Maria Montessori observed that children have a natural love for work and if we can keep their interest sparked, then knowledge grows in a meaningful way.

At North Star Montessori Elementary School, we foster the children’s enthusiasm for learning by delivering a curriculum that is geared towards how they learn.

This curriculum is based on the characteristics of children between six and 12 years old.

Children of this age have a very strong imagination and love to know the “why” questions of the world. They are extroverted, enjoy forming social groups, and are very independent.

The Montessori Elementary Program at NSMES is termed the Cosmic Curriculum, a totally integrated curriculum where all subject matters (math, language, art, music, geography, geometry, biology, and history) are shown to be completely interrelated. Lessons in

math not only include addition and subtraction, but also touch on the creation of numbers and operations. This connects math with language, history, and geography.

A typical day at North Star looks very different than other schools. The children are grouped in three-year age spans: sixto nine-year-olds in the

Lower Elementary class and nine- to 12-year-olds in the Upper Elementary class. These mixed ages allow the children to work with others at different levels than them, which encourages peer mentoring and collaboration on projects with children of varying abilities. During a three-hour uninterrupted work cycle, the room is

abuzz with activity at group tables and floor rugs instead of single desks.

During this time the teacher gives whole-class or small-group lessons from all subject matters, encouraging follow-up work.

The children keep track of their work and lessons in a daily journal, which is then reviewed by teacher and child at the end of every day.

North Star Montessori students Savannah Keiswetter, Adam Weibe, and Darien Day work on placing animals onto a “time of life” chart. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD

Communicating with confidence at Waldorf At a Waldorf School there are unique opportunities embedded in the curriculum that allow every student to surpass ordinary standards for public speaking and presentation skills.

In our early childhood programs this begins with traditional storytelling, singing, and reciting rhymes and verses. In the younger grades, it moves to lively rhythmic activities, reciting arithmetic tables, poems, and even practising tongue twisters as students share both their academic learning and their voices out loud in the classroom.

Beyond the classroom, each year every grade prepares and presents a theatrical production to the community, and over time, every student has the opportunity to have a speaking role.

In addition, each spring students participate in our annual Festival of the Arts, a creative curriculum presentation at Centennial Theatre in North Vancouver. Performing before an audience of 650 each year is indeed a unique aspect of student life at the VWS, and overall student confidence is well developed as they progress.

By Grade 12, this capacity is fully realized during the Grade Twelve Project Presentations, a mini TED Talk-style presentation each student gives to the larger community.

They are the culmination of a full year of research, thesiswriting, and practical and artistic work on a distinct topic chosen by the student. As Maria Timm, from the VWS Class of 2001 (who has a Master of Arts degree) writes: “Waldorf prepared me very well for graduate school. My thesis did not seem daunting to me since I had an idea of what it’s like to stick to one specific topic for a year or more. The small classes and emphasis on group participation and public speaking at Waldorf are also very similar to graduate school.”

Parents and students alike appreciate these profound gifts as students move on, and that confidence is readily apparent in a Waldorf School graduate.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2015 - North Shore News - A27

Independent Schools Retraining and rewiring at Eaton Arrowsmith Integrating a creative

Eaton Arrowsmith Vancouver and Magnussen are two different schools with a common goal: to help students reach their potential by nurturing their gifts and eliminating obstacles that prevent them from achieving greatness.

EA has options for children and teens (K-12) with learning difficulties and Magnussen offers programs for K-7 students who think outside the box and benefit from teaching methods that meet their needs and unlock their talents.

If you want to run a marathon, you train your body. At EA, we follow a similar principle. Children improve their brains so they can better learn throughout their lives.

You won’t find Band-Aid solutions or work-arounds for learning difficulties at this school. EA uses the world-renowned Arrowsmith Program, a form of rewiring for the brain. Students complete targeted cognitive exercises to strengthen

weak connections in their brains just as athletes go to the gym to build muscle.

By using the Arrowsmith method, this school has helped children overcome their learning difficulties. In fact, students who complete the program return to mainstream schools where they excel academically, graduate and go on to have successful careers.

Not all children learn in the same way. Some students are independent learners, while others need more emotional support and encouragement.

Mainstream schools do not always have the resources to cater to these differences. Magnussen celebrates children as individuals by giving them the opportunity to develop their interests and

skills in small, supportive classroom settings.

Attachment theory, which states that humans thrive when they develop lasting, psychological connections with others, is at the core of what Magnussen does.

Our teachers are supportive, understanding and trained to help out-ofthe-box thinkers become their best selves.

PHOTO SUPPLIED BY EATON ARROWSMITH SCHOOL

thinking approach at Brentwood College

While contemporary education models focus largely on dividing curriculum into a dichotomy of segregated classes, research continually says that creative thinking and critical learning occurs when higher order connections are made with increased regularity.

To that end, the importance of providing an organized and thoughtful course of study for high school students at Brentwood College School, one that combines topics from both the science and social studies curriculum, is an important focal point.

The integration of our Biology 11 and the Civics 11 courses allows for a more holistic and practical application of theory across different disciplines.

Students are taught both biology (with a marine focus) and civics. While 70 per cent of each course operates separately (to provide a foundation of knowledge and understanding of key topics), 30 per cent is focused on co-operative learning and bigger ideas that serve to integrate the two courses.

The students benefit from learning through real world issues and problems.

This translates to the pushing of the boundaries of critical thinking beyond prescribed curriculum, adding value to student studies and reinforcing the necessity of broadmindedness.

This collaboration is indicative of the school’s integrated approach, designed to involve student participation in academic learning, athletic endeavours, artistic demonstrations and volunteerism.

Brentwood, located in a prime oceanfront location, is ideally situated to provide students with a thoughtful, comprehensive and useful education.

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A28 - North Shore News - Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Independent Schools

IB excellence at Mulgrave

Mulgrave inspires excellence in education and life.

It is an IB Continuum World School. All students are IB students and graduate with a distinguished double qualification: the IB Diploma and the B.C. Dogwood Diploma.

Mulgrave features strong core values and an emphasis on inclusiveness, empathy and respect, lifelong learning and intercultural understanding. Mulgrave’s values sit at the heart of its outstanding educational programme. The quality, professionalism and dedication of its teachers are unique. In addition to being caring people and outstanding teachers, the faculty include significant numbers of teachers with advanced degrees, the highest levels of IB training, and certifications as international IB workshop leaders, school evaluators and examiners. In the early primary years, each classroom has two full-time certified teachers, while the upper years feature numerous support teachers to enhance languages,

Mulgrave students Chelsea Henry, Jordan Somani, Tom Zhang, Jude Arafah, and Krista Cook enjoy a chat at one of the school’s many meeting spots. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD mathematics, science, visual arts and athletics. The superior levels of staffing ensure personalization of learning and support for every student to achieve their personal best.

The academic strand of the school is complemented by rich programmes in arts, athletics, and experiential and outdoor education with students often reaching provincial and national recognition.

These strands combine to

create a holistic educational experience for students where the personalization of curriculum, learning and support are enriched to a high degree.

Underpinning a Mulgrave education is the development of modern key skills for success as an active and informed citizen of the mid 21st century.

At every programme level, these key skills are central to ensuring a child has the skills understanding

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and knowledge-set to be successful. Mulgrave School provides an unsurpassed experience for its students, an education that serves as their passport for success at university and life beyond.

At Kenneth Gordon Maplewood School and Maplewood Alternative High School, each of our classes is the most eclectic mix that you can imagine and our school functions quite wonderfully with more than 160 different educational plans operating at the same time.

Our teachers are masters of the art of running a truly student-centred and differentiated classroom, being aware of the range of learning styles and needs that they face and helping children and young adults navigate their way through the curriculum. Do they have supports? Of course they do. We have relatively small core co-taught classes (14 -16 students with two core teachers), which are subdivided into working groups of five or six with an additional dedicated teacher for language arts and mathematics; we have specialist support teachers in science, social studies, phys-ed and the arts; we have a strong counselling department, which delivers our Social-Emotional Learning program; we have psychologists, an SLP and an OT at our disposal; and a legion of expert tutors that provide close to an hour of one-on-one tutoring for each elementary student every day, and individualized academic support for all of our high school students.

In our school, students with complex learning needs are not a challenge to be faced, they are a puzzle to be solved. We work as a team to unlock the barriers to their learning and open up new pathways to success. It is often a difficult task, but it is always rewarding. Come visit us and see what we are all about.

Genius Hour at Shawnigan Lake It may be the boldest academic initiative Shawnigan Lake School has ever undertaken.

Jumping on an educational trend that devotes as much as 20 per cent of classroom time to creative inquiry, Shawnigan now gives students an hour a week to work on independent projects. The projects are proposed, researched and presented by the students. That means it’s one aspect of their education that should, by design, be relevant and interesting to the young people themselves.

Some work in groups, others individually.

Some tackle scientific and environmental problems with significance to the entire world, others make or learn something just for themselves. Some will find spectacular success and launch careers of intrigue and substance, others will ultimately fail. In a school environment as structured as Shawnigan’s, that’s exactly the point.

“It’s part of making education work for a new job market we don’t yet entirely understand,” says Wendy Milne, the school’s dean of academics. “We want to teach them

how to think, how to learn, how to ask, and even how to fail.”

Milne smiles, as she points to the safety net built into the Genius Hour philosophy.

Genius Hour isn’t about marks, nor is it about anything that will appear on an upcoming exam. But it’s important just the same.

Perhaps even more important than what we still do in the classroom.

For Andrey Petropavlovskiy, Genius Hour has meant the opportunity to work on something that has piqued his curiosity for some time. Andrey is delving into Alzheimer’s disease, hoping to one day help develop a method for earlier diagnosis.

“It’s just something I’ve always been curious about,” Petropavlovskiy says, adding “curiosity is the moving force behind science.”

Petropavlovskiy is excited for the chance that Genius Hour has afforded him, but equally excited by the conversations he’s hearing around Shawnigan’s re-invented campus. “All around the school, I can hear different people talking about their projects,” he says. “Some of them are amazing. I would have never thought about that.”

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