The following article was originally published in The Gateway newspaper, Sicamous, BC, June 2014. I no longer teach at ERS, but the school continues to engage in innovative programs with some of the most skilled teachers in SD 83. When I left, half the teachers had Masters degrees and a third of them were published authors!
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SMALL BUT MIGHTY LEARNING AT ERS.
© Shawn L. Bird 2014
Eagle River Secondary (ERS) has been the educational heart of Sicamous since students began learning on the property nearly a century ago. In recent years, declining enrolment has required the school to become creative in order to offer programs that keep students in town. These successful innovations are causing a stir throughout the province.
The changes have included offering grade specific Core classes (English, Social Studies, Math, and Science) in the mornings and multigrade electives in the afternoons. The electives have embraced the teachers’ varied passions, allowing students to learn through classes in geo-caching, horticulture, international cuisine, cake decorating, hockey, outdoor education and guitar as well as more traditional classes like volleyball, biology and art. Of special note is the Social Justice class, which has students in the community helping at the thrift store and Meals on Wheels, harvesting vegetables for the food bank, gardening, and collecting for various charities.
A new focus on flexible learning by the Ministry of Education became the key to Eagle River’s innovations. The school has been given freedom to develop unconventional approaches to timetabling and course offerings. As a result of the success of these efforts, ERS has been recognized by the provincial government as a flagship school of the BC Ed Plan. Grade eight and nine students have had the opportunity to learn together in their choice of six mixed Science/ Socials classes throughout the school year; grade ten will be added in 2014-15. These courses have provided hands on, project based learning exploring local plants, controversial issues, water, astronomy, sound, electricity, revolutions, world religions, and cultural fashions among other offerings.
ERS is also very active in Career Education initiatives. Students are able to earn credits for their work experience in their jobs outside of school. There are two ERS students working in the community as Secondary School Apprentices, collecting hours with BC’s Industry Training Authority and gaining high school credit while they work as a marine mechanic or electrician. ERS works with School District 83 to provide two other students with dual credits (both college and high school) for career training as an automotive repair technician or a hair dresser. These students do a semester or year of training at another SD83 school, and will return to ERS tograduate with their friends.
Students also have the opportunity to parlay their own interests into Independent Directed Study (IDS) blocks. Students develop a set of learning goals, based on existing Ministry courses, and then leave the building to explore. Presently a pair of students is doing an IDS in fly fishing, learning about insect and fish life cycles, creating flies, fishing, and recording their findings. This is science and physical education for real life! Other students have created IDS courses in music, mountain biking, fitness, and long boarding. ERS partnered with UBC’s Okanagan campus to offer Maker Day. This was a chance to explore creative thinking and problem solving by students and community members working in small, multi-age groups to create prototypes of inventions. Maker Day is a movement dedicated to inquiry learning. Three ERS teachers are working on Masters degrees at UBCO, and the university is keen to have greater involvement with the school.
Eagle River’s innovations are making waves. Schools from all over the province are calling or coming to see what is happening within the walls. With only 150 students in grades eight to twelve, ERS may be small, but it’s mighty. Great things are happening for Sicamous’s kids, and the province is taking notice.
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You can find the original article in situ here on page 8. GatewayJun2014-SmallMightp8.
Shawn L. Bird BA, MEd.
Shawn L. Bird 
Opinion-Waiting for retirement January 16, 2020
Tags: brain injury, carpe diem, change, concussion, dreams, goals, opinion, plans, retirement
I keep running into people who have big plans for their retirement. They’re going to move somewhere with less snow. They’re going to get serious about that hobby. They’re going to start writing that book.
I ask them what I asked myself in 1998: Why wait?
One Spring Break when I was in my thirties with two pre-teen kids, I’d driven south with the kids to see my parents. I went to Vancouver, and sitting in the Water Street station, I looked around at the blooming tulips and plum trees and pondered the foot of snow in my yard back home.
On our 800 km journey back home, we drove past lots of schools. I looked at those schools and had an epiphany. There are teachers working here. Why wait thirty years to move? Why not have the life we want to have NOW?
I returned home and had a chat with my husband. I sent out applications. He interviewed for a transfer in his government job. He had a few offers around the province that he turned down. I was called to an interview in Salmon Arm and subsequently accepted a position. Two days later he was offered a position in Salmon Arm, too. Serendipity and synchronicity. Two months later we were living in a beautiful community that actually had four seasons that appeared when they were supposed to on the calendar (instead of two seasons: ‘winter’ and ‘bugs’). That was twenty years ago.
I dreamed of being a writer, but thought that in my forties, it was too late to start. Then my school hosted the BC Book Prize tour, and I discovered that every author visiting us had written their first book after fifty.
I started writing just after Thanksgiving and the week before Easter I finished Grace Awakening. The week after the following Thanksgiving at the Surrey Writing Conference I pitched it to a small publisher, which subsequently offered me a contract. A dream come true.
This October was ten years after I pitched that first book. I was offered a table to sell my books at a signing event at the Surrey Writers Conference, alongside some of my author idols. I am working in my dream job, teaching English & Creative Writing in an amazing school in a beautiful place, WHILE writing books! It couldn’t be more perfect!
I still have a few years before retirement.
I have retirement plans. When I retire, I plan to write a lot more books, and visit schools to teach a lot more teens and adults how to bring their dream stories to life. I will travel and write and read. It will be awesome.
But.
A year and a half ago, I received a brain injury. Out of no where, in my own home, BAM: Life changed.
Words swam on a page. I couldn’t decipher hand-writing. The computer screen hurt. Crowds hurt my ears. Lights hurt my eyes. I had head-aches and eye-aches. I was dizzy. I was nauseous. For MONTHS.
I told my doctor that he needed to figure out healing quickly, because I needed to go back to my dream job and keep working on my books! He said, “Shawn, you might be retired now.”
That scared me. The idea that I might enter retirement unable to read, unable to write, and unable to teach or travel was horrifying. What a bleak picture! On the bright side, I thought, at least I have been able to have this wonderful job, teaching teens to write, and to inspire them. At least, I have published nine books.
Thankfully, I had excellent concussion therapy and I have recovered enough from my brain injury to work part-time again. Despite my injury, 6 pieces were published last year. Some had been written years ago, some were short articles or stories that took me weeks instead of a day to write. Slow progress is still progress.
My injury wasn’t the end of my dreams, but it could have been.
Wouldn’t it have been horrible to have all my plans completely unreachable due to poor health? Wouldn’t it have been a hundred times worse if I had saved all my dreams for retirement, and not have the health to attempt them? I had two colleagues who were in good health when they retired, but were dead six months later.
If you have a dream, don’t wait for retirement.
We only have today.
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