| Jenni Lee Campbell | |
| The Ottawa Citizen |
Two Ottawa schools and one in Prescott have been honoured for their innovation in Today's Parent magazine's second annual Top 40 Schools in Canada issue.
Glashan Intermediate and Mutchmore Public in Ottawa made the list, as did St. Mark Catholic in Prescott.
Today's Parent asked readers for nominations to find schools with extraordinary programs, devoted principals and committed community support. The magazine received more than 600 nominations, often from a parent or a devoted teacher who thought their school was special.
After consulting parents, teachers and education experts, the national magazine chose the best 40 schools from those hundreds of nominations, said Sarah Moore, managing editor.
"You hear so much about what's going wrong with the public education system, and certainly there are many challenges there. But we wanted to highlight what's going right.
"It's not just about schools that have lots of money and can buy expensive sports equipment and computer labs," said Ms. Moore, citing St. Mark's butterfly project, which cost only $200 and got the whole school involved.
"You don't have to live in a certain area or have a certain demographic to have a terrific school."
Glashan Intermediate, a school for Grades 7 and 8 pupils in the Glebe, was praised for its respectful environment. Glashan, which started out as a a one-room school with 99 students and one teacher in 1888, is today a diverse school with 368 students from more than 50 countries and cultures. Teachers, parents and the community embrace and celebrate its multiculturalism.
"Most of the kids have another language at home," said principal Susan Nouvet, "So we have a multicultural liaison officer come in once every week or so."
The school also has a family reception centre that helps out with communication and translation services for parents who can't speak English.
One of the events the magazine highlighted is Glashan's "real world" simulation, when students fill the gymnasium with a living map of the world, using chairs for population, cookies for food and flashlights for power.
Last year, Glashan students organized a Youth Peace Conference that brought 16 presenters from agencies such as the Red Cross and Oxfam Canada into the school for speeches and workshops.
Children at Glashan are encouraged to get involved in all aspects of school life. One project run by a special education class, dubbed The Glashan Pizzeria, saw students create a real, sustainable pizza business and sell their healthy lunch creations to students and staff. "They did such a great job that the parents' association in charge of pizza days started ordering from our pizzeria," Ms. Nouvet said.
The money from pizza project and other fundraisers recently has gone to the Thach family, which lost five members in a fire in April. Two of the Thach boys attended Glashan.
Also in the Glebe, Mutchmore Public School, population 380, was lauded for rising to a challenge. Despite being under capacity in terms of it student population, a group of parents fought in the 1990s to keep the school from being closed. By organizing a city-wide forum on the value of community schools, attending meetings and rallies, and getting the 1890s Romanesque revival-style building designated a heritage building, the school has remained open and thriving. Mutchmore offers day care, extracurricular creative arts, a gifted program and a special education centre.
Every year the school organizes "Mutchmore Reads More" to encourage literacy, and the school is home to many interesting clubs, including a stamp club, invited this year to prepare an exhibit at Ottawa's annual National Stamp Show.
One of the smaller schools on the magazine's list, St. Mark Catholic School in Prescott, isn't limited by its size. The 206 Junior Kindergarten-Grade 3 students have joined staff for the second straight year to create an outdoor butterfly garden, complete with hand-raised painted lady butterflies.
A terrarium in the hallway is home to 25 larvae at the beginning of the process, and children watch them go through their life stages as they turn into cocoons and finally butterflies.
The project brought the school together, said principal Kathy Laushway, and the wait for the butterflies to emerge from the cocoons had everyone excited -- sometimes a little too excited. "Our washrooms are very near the terrarium," she said. "So we definitely saw an increased amount of trips to the washroom."
Even teachers were a little crazy over the butterflies, she said. "Sometimes you'd catch them doing their marking in front of the terrarium."
The project culminated in the spring, when the adult butterflies -- about the same size as Monarchs and with red and grey markings -- were released into the lush garden. "It was so neat to see the butterfly fluttering around and landing on the kids noses and shoulders," said Ms. Laushway.
St. Mark also has a peace garden where students read or have quiet time, and each classroom has adopted a tree in the yard to take care of and plant lilies around.