At first glance, you might forget that the familiar-looking building on Main Street is no longer West Kildonan Collegiate. But the moment you step through the doors, you’d know you’re in a much different school.
Edmund Partridge Community School is Seven Oaks School Division’s newest middle years school, home to over 400 Grade Six, Seven and Eight students. As an entirely new school, the students, staff, families and surrounding community have a unique opportunity: to create an entirely new school culture.
A school’s culture is like its personality, a reflection of the combined attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of everyone connected to the school. It’s created through the interactions between people in the hallways, classrooms and school grounds. It’s woven into the everyday activities, teams and student groups. It’s what brings everyone together, giving them a shared sense of identity that goes beyond the name on the building.
A school culture, however, takes time to build, which is what makes it such an exciting time for everyone at Edmund Partridge Community School.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to start a new school and to create a culture and a community from scratch,” says Peter Obendoerfer, Principal at Edmund Partridge. “We were given a building that was nearly completely redone inside but essentially new, all new people, fresh classrooms and we’re just building around that.”
Considerations and Collaborations So where does one begin building a school culture? For the staff of Edmund Partridge, who were in place in the spring of this year, it began with a two day retreat in the Whiteshell area. There, they began to set the priorities for the upcoming school year, including a focus on student voice, social justice, integration of arts and technology and an emphasis on a child-centred, inquiry-based learning approach.
“The priorities really came from that two day session,” explains Obendoerfer. “We had facilitators from the Manitoba Teachers Society that helped us with that and actually ran us through some sessions where we came up with those concepts.”
The staff also began setting things up well before the school year began, starting weeks earlier to make sure that things would run as smoothly as possible once the students came through the doors the first time. Now, with the students now in the building and attending classes, student voice is becoming a bigger part of the picture.
“At this point, we have to get student voice involved before we can really have a school plan,” notes Obendoerfer.
One example of how student voice gets involved is through the school’s use of technology. Edmund Partridge sent students along with teachers to a Divisional technology session. The students learned alongside the teachers, then offered their thoughts on how to incorporate technology into the classrooms.
Another example is the plan to put together a Student Voice Committee to offer input not just on things like school teams or groups, but on directions for school policy, assessments, fundraising and choosing which charitable organizations to support.
There are a thousand little things that make a plan come to life. For example, the school has no mascot so the students will help in the design and naming of one. Some students are at work creating the school’s first newsletter. Others are already practicing for the first-ever school play, Fiddler on the Roof. Picturetaking day, yearbook plans, whether or not lunch times are spent entirely on school grounds – every facet of the school’s policies have to be thought out, and the school is encouraging the students to play an important role in doing so.
Vice-Principal Bernie Gowryluk is retiring at Christmas, but stayed on for the first few months of the school year to help get the school off to a great start. “There are a thousand decisions to make and a lot of the decisions will be coming from the teachers and the kids. The interesting part is how much there is to do - the amount of work ahead is huge!”
A Work in Progress Beyond policy, there are, of course, other types of challenges that come along with starting a brand new school.
For example, though the Division’s maintenance people did an amazing job renovating the school so classes could start this year, there are still some things left to complete. The library is temporarily housed in an old classroom (though so well-organized you might not realize it’s temporary). Until the music area is completed, the band room is in what used to be a storage area for gym equipment, which didn’t originally have any electrical outlets. Then there are things such as the school’s proximity to a convenience store and a fast food restaurant, making the school’s nutrition programming that much more of a consideration.
But every step of the way, the focus remains on making sure that every decision and every action taken is in the best interests of the students, who are at a unique stage in their educational and social development.
“We are working to make it a true Middle Years culture,” points out Vice-Principal Barbara Cerilli. “I taught at an elementary school for many years and at a high school for many years. This is in between and the kids are very, very different.”
“We’re giving them a little room right now. Even though we’re out there, we’re not in their faces. We want to watch for a while and we want to decide how we can best handle situations without over-reacting. We’re trying to get the kids to be respectful, contributing members of the community. We want them to be ambassadors for the school.”
“We’re creating something,” says Obendoerfer “To do that, we have to build from the ground up. That’s the only way to do it and make it authentic. We can’t just bring in an external school culture.” “We’ve just walked into an empty building. Whatever happens is going to be our creation, made with help from everyone here.” A special note of appreciation goes to the SOSD Maintenance & Custodial Department who worked so hard behind the scenes to make Edmund Partridge Community School a safe, comfortable place for students and staff from the moment the doors opened this year.
