Education in the City: Urban Renewal

Focusing on education under a big city’s bright lights

When I think of independent schools in Canada, what comes to mind are lush, beautiful campuses. Most independent schools I have visited are to be envied: Well away from the hustle and bustle of city life, they sit on enough land to allow for sufficient buildings, playgrounds and parking. They present the ideal picture of a safe and secluded place for children to learn.

This idyllic setting has its drawbacks, however. The very act of protecting students from the outside world makes entry into that world quite challenging. We have all heard stories from graduates about the post-secondary adjustment to a diverse and danger-laden milieu. And with the world becoming an ever-smaller place, that milieu has become global.

The isolation of many schools, even urban ones, presents other difficulties. Many independent schools are not neighbourhood schools and so don’t have to create partnerships with local residents and businesses. The families they serve are often from outside the area, which means children must be driven to school, creating ongoing tension in the surrounding neighbourhood. That and a perception of the school as enclave make community-building difficult.

Stratford Hall in Vancouver is positioning itself as an urban school and linking its commitment to global understanding, through the International Baccalaureate (IB) program, to a tight connection with its community. The school is a rarity: a new school in the middle of a major city. Its founders, two parents from neighbouring Burnaby, chose to set up a school rather than face a long cross-city commute to Vancouver’s existing independent schools. At first the vision was to be like them, to find an eight-acre piece of land and build a nice, secluded campus. But to get started, they leased space in Vancouver’s Italian Cultural Centre. Out of necessity, initially, Stratford Hall was becoming an urban school.

The Italian Centre was to be a short-term solution; in the first year, we were quite anxious to move on to our own campus. But as we became more comfortable in the setting, our thinking changed. We were full-on in our implementation of the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme, and it became apparent that a true IB school should be a part of the wider community, not separated from it.

The centre is a place where the Italian culture is promoted and where Italian-Canadians, mostly seniors, come to meet and interact. It also serves the larger community with events in the large banquet hall. For instance, a Canadian citizenship ceremony is held in the main hall a couple of times per year. We began to think of ourselves as part of a larger community, one that connected with a group of recent immigrants (and not only Italian). We began to think of a school as a place that helped use facilities that were otherwise empty during the day.

We founded Stratford Hall with a commitment to develop all three IB programs for all students. That meant we took seriously the more subtle aspects of the IB and used them to form our own school culture. Central to this was the primary program’s Student Profile, 10 characteristics the IB considers fundamental for an internationally minded student. The profile matched our own mission and philosophy so we embraced it for not only our primary students, but as we added grades we continued applying the profile.

The IB has since announced a revision of the profile, renaming it the Learner Profile, and has applied it to all three IB programs; it is considered a key strand that connects the three. Our connection to the IB mandates us to have a broad perspective. It is hard to have an understanding of others if you are not exposed to them. The IB balances intellectual pursuits with a sense of social responsibility and a knowledge that true learning is connected to the students and their world. It is hard to give this exposure to students if they are sheltered from the same world they are supposed to understand.

As we began to understand the Learner Profile and our own situation at the Italian Centre, we realized that our school could be more effective if we created a learning experience that related to our urban surroundings. A location near a SkyTrain station, for example, became an important consideration. Not only would proximity to rapid transit help reduce the impact of the car, it would make access to what Vancouver has to offer much easier.

In 2005, our fifth year, we acquired a building on busy Commercial Drive, a five-minute walk from a major SkyTrain station. At the same time our board of governors committed to the concept of the urban school, a position that we feel will help us deliver an International Baccalaureate education in its richest sense.

This position has its drawbacks, of course. The first real problem is that downtown land is very expensive. That means Stratford Hall will own no playing fields, that any future building will have to maximize zoning densities, and that we will have to be efficient with space.

There is a tradeoff to the tranquil security of most campuses as well; our students interact with strangers in the public park across the street. Those students old enough to take public transit are exposed to homelessness and poverty near the SkyTrain station and to an active drug trade at the station as well. In addition, we feel obliged to plan in partnership with our neighbours, which creates potential problems not encountered in unilateral planning.

However, we think that all of these challenges can be part of our learning. Our school can model sustainability and efficiency on limited resources. Constraints generate creative and innovative ideas, so we will be thoughtful as we plan new facilities. Playgrounds will have to be built on roofs. Good relationships with the neighbours require strong communication skills, so as a school we will be modelling one of the key elements of the Learner Profile. Our exposure to those less fortunate will help us develop a culture of care as well, another key profile characteristic. We will have to share. Already, we share space in the public parks that are nearby and we expect to share our facilities with community groups.

Already half of the teaching staff either ride bikes to school or take public transit. If we are to model global sensibilities we need to move away from our reliance on the car. Older students take public transit as well, and we do not allow them to drive to school.

We believe an International Baccalaureate student navigates the world with confidence. There is no better place to build that confidence than in the places around their school. As students reach the upper grades, the street becomes theirs. Our major second language is Spanish; our students visit nearby Spanish businesses and practise their verbal skills. Students are learning how to take risks by speaking a second language to strangers whose own language is influenced by their own origins. The Vancouver Public Library is a short SkyTrain ride away. Our IB diploma students can get there, do some research and return during a study block. Science World, the Vancouver interactive science centre, is even closer.

Including the resources of a major city in a school’s programming shows students that learning takes place all around, not just in the classroom. This is surely another important IB goal, clearly made in the program’s mission statement. Our outdoor education program takes students to a variety of local places as well, where the students can ski, sail, sea-kayak or wall-climb. The city is the classroom.

Awareness of the world around us starts at home. By meeting the neighbours, understanding issues around homelessness and drug use, and seeing these as important and real to the students, students will have an even greater understanding of those who live far away. Their desire to help others will come from a deep understanding of who they are, and we drive that process through the IB Learner Profile. We aim for student development through interaction, not a theoretical set of goals. We have not seen our first IB graduates yet, and manifesting our vision will take time, but ultimately I imagine our graduates to be comfortable in the post-secondary world in which they find themselves.

It seems to me now that we have it easy. It is the schools that are more isolated, secluded and secure that have the challenge. How can you connect with the world around you when it seems so distant? It is a challenge worth thinking about.