As I walked through the doors of my former high school, Pender Harbour Secondary School, at 8am Friday morning a young boy I’ve never met before friendly welcomed me with a smile and a long “Hiiiiiiii”. I started chatting with some of the students and many engaged in conversation with me asking if I were a substitute for a day. I was not, I was there to observe classes and small rural school dynamics, but had I been a TOC there for the day I certainly would have felt welcomed!

Soon the administrative assistant arrived at school (the same who was there during my schooling) and took me to meet a few new teachers. Since I have graduated from PHSS student enrolment has basically halved, and as would be expected, the number of staff has decreased also. However, many of the teachers I had are still teaching there, and the new staff that have come in are a wonderful group, passionate about their subjects and involved with the students. Despite the principal being new to the school I already knew him from a student volunteer trip to Costa Rica in 2006 where he was a group leader. When he arrived he spoke to me about the school’s Health and Safety Policy, something that should be addressed every time you are working or volunteering in a new school.

I was really interested to visit PHSS, not only to see it from an outside perspective, rather than through my previous lens as a student of the school, but also to see how it is being run with a student population sitting right on the edge of 100 students from grades 7-12. To deal with the low student enrolment there are some classes that are combined grades. I think there are some subjects that this works better for than others. It can certainly be tricky to balance the different PLOs as any teacher with a split class would know. It can be fantastic in certain other courses where students can teach and mentor one another. From what I saw, PHSS is really moving towards a more individualized way of learning, so with small classes this can work even better as the teacher has more time to dedicate to each student.

Despite declining enrolment the school is still doing a good job of offering a variety of senior level courses. It is similar to when I was there, you needed to plan out your grade eleven and grade twelve year early as many courses were offered only every second year. I had the chance to talk to a few grade twelve students about their courses. Many of them are taking online courses. Given that they are taking some courses at school via a traditional school delivery, I think it can be an additional advantage to take a course online. Online courses mean they can study a subject of interest, such as Social Justice in the case of one student I spoke to, but it also means they learn many useful skills. When I was in grade twelve I started Physics 12 online but ended up dropping it because I wasn’t then capable of organizing, motivating and teaching myself. Had I known that in my first year of university I would have to pay over $500 and do a lot more work for the same course I think I would have been more motivated! Anyways, what I am getting at is that I think these students will learn a lot of useful real life skills through doing an online course such as self motivation, collaboration (if any students are in the same course), time organization and management, pursuement of interests, etc.

After school the girls had a volleyball game. I believe this was the first and last of their season, which is often an issue for the school’s sports teams. There aren’t many teams of equal size nearby, and of those that are “close” they are still separated by expensive ferry rides. I have as many memories of car washes, bake sales, and splitting and stacking firewood as I do of high school soccer games! But hey, it built character right? Anyways, back to the present, the girl’s team this year is composed of grades 8-12 and coached by the science teacher. They were playing a very tough and talented team from the much larger school of Elphinstone (Congratulations Elphi ladies on your North Shore title!), but held up well in the games. The most funny/amusing part for me was when PHSS had earned a point, and one of our girls cheered out “YAH PENDER!! And Elphi!!”, despite Elphi still being in the lead! I guess you could say the school is a very encouraging place.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my one-day visit to PHSS. From this snapshot in time, student enrolment aside, I would say not a lot has changed in the past five years when it comes to student spirit and pride. It has reinforced my known interest in small rural schools, part from my personal schooling, and part of which comes from my experiences in schools in Northern BC. This is definitely something I want to pursue further. In the meantime however I’ll continue to learn about and experience large city schools which are very interesting as well, with their own unique benefits and challenges.

Thank you all at PHSS for the fantastic and insightful day!

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