Rural Schools

Rural schools have traditionally been at or near the beating heart of small town Canada.  Along with churches, community spirit, and rural jobs, these schools have helped sustain agricultural and resource towns through boom and bust cycles. While some rural communities seem too small to support a school, the PG district includes towns and non-urban areas that are still vital and help remind us that we can't exist simply on service industries and urban jobs... we need food from farms, and sustainably managed resources. If we abandon rural schools, we are losing our ability to provide for ourselves and we become dependent on foreign producers to feed and equip us. In other words, rural schools are not just a part of our past, they need to be part of our future. The average age of rural Canadians has grown, as has urban migration, resulting in fewer rural residents with higher living and transportation costs. Statscan's Rural Analysis and the Office of Consumer Affairs (see sec. 3.4) have good data on this. If we ever want to take ideas like the 100-mile diet or resources sustainability seriously, we can't simply be an urban society that sees the hinterland as a place to extract raw resources.  School districts have an incredible responsibility to be one of the pillars of community stability, and this must include rural communities. Our decisions about rural schools affect transportation and living costs, and the carrying capacity in our region (the ability of cities to be sustained by their local area). People live in "the country" for a reason: air quality, jobs, lifestyle, etc.... and their schools makes it possible over many generations. Our District 57 has a mixed track record in its support for rural education. Efforts to engage the Regional District came slow and only after pressure. The creative and passionate effort of the Dunster community to save their school was met by resistance and unnecessary conflict. Giscome/Willow parents have had a long struggle to be heard and understood. We've heard years of talk about how 21st century learning and technology could help in rural settings but the board office is very slow to act or experiment. Hixon was spared, but Salmon Valley, Shady Valley, Mackenzie and others did not fare so well. Still, some creative solutions came from the process... like the land/school deal in Dunster and the modular units proposed by the Giscome PAC and finally taken seriously by the trustees. Send me an email or leave a comment about what we should do for our rural schools. How do we provide meaningful learning for small multi-age groups? Can we use project-based learning, itinerant teachers, blended learning (mix of technology, face-to-face, and distance education), or shared-use buildings? What do we experiment with first? Check out the CORES group (Coalition of Rural Educational Sustainability), they are also working on this... I've found their facebook page and I'm looking forward to seeing more of the discussion and their work.