It’s hard to believe we’re already more than halfway through ��ѻ��ý’s 3rd year. This week also marks 6 years since Shaun and I first sat down to envision the school in March 2019. Some themes of last year’s letter were growth, our facility, fundraising, and school culture especially with respect to devices. In this letter I’ll provide updates in these areas. Without further ado, the state of ��ѻ��ý:

Growth. With 63 students currently enrolled, it was affirming to read last year’s prediction that we would grow to around 60 students this year. Regarding staff growth, we welcomed 5 new staff members this year: history/drama specialist Alex Donovan, chemistry specialist Leo Hui, French specialist Sarah Pearson, computer science specialist Brian Taylor, and school counsellor Wendy Tang. (And, we’re hiring once again!) One of last year’s challenges was staff workload. This year with more staff we’re all teaching a bit less, and with more specialists in different areas we’re now able to focus more in our respective subject areas. It feels like we’ve gone from treading water to swimming forward. 

Facility & Fundraising. This school year we opened the doors of our new upstairs, doubling the school’s floor area. We love the new space. We also just completed our new science classroom, fully equipped with benches, sinks, a new floor, and more:

Sincere thanks to Walter and Nancy Segsworth for their generous contribution to support this new lab space. Speaking of which, our fundraising efforts continue to be fruitful, with Vancouver business leaders really stepping up to support STEM education for a diverse group of students. We are very grateful.

Devices and school culture. One of the biggest changes we implemented this school year is a full phone ban. When they arrive in the morning, students leave their phones in our “phone hotel”:

Probably just like any school leader implementing this measure, I cannot overstate how positive this has been for the school, in both the social and academic realms. We also implemented other cultural initiatives to facilitate social interactions across grades, such as weekly “pods” (multi-grade groups, led by a teacher, and responsible for taking care of a certain part of the school) and split Grade 8/9 Art and PE classes (so students can get to know each other across grades).

Challenges. At ��ѻ��ý we often remark that if students aren’t challenged then we aren’t doing our job. Likewise, if I’m not challenged then I’m probably not doing my job either! Some challenges I’m facing this year are grading, personal responsibility, and teaching standards. I’ve previously written about grade inflation and university admissions. With our first batch of students graduating next year, we are now directly confronting the balance between upholding high standards while ensuring we don’t penalize our students in university admissions. The ideal solution is an outstanding learning environment, so that we can simultaneously hold our students to high standards and reasonably reward their learning with competitive grades. That said, the implementation details are important. I think we’re on the right track, but this will be an ongoing tension.

With high standards comes a need for independence, work ethic, and personal responsibility. Another challenge is to align the expectations of students, parents and teachers in these areas. These expectations also change over the course of 5 years. For example, students may not be ready to independently manage a 2-month project timeline in Grade 8, but they should be by Grade 12. Although this progression has always been present implicitly, we are now trying to be more explicit by documenting the personal growth we are trying to effect, so that students, parents and teachers can all see the same big picture. 

Finally, with respect to teaching standards, a challenge is determining which aspects of the ��ѻ��ý experience should be standardized vs. left to the individual teachers. I’ve started a short guide for what makes a course a ��ѻ��ý course with the aim of unifying some of these features across the school.

Thank you. We deeply appreciate your support of this ambitious and important project. Looking a year ahead to 2026, a big event will be graduating our first class! Thank you again – we couldn’t do it without you.