The new head of school at Island Pacific School, Scott Herrington, says he is enjoying a blissful change of place here on Bowen Island after spending the majority of his career working in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
Herrington says that the schools he worked at previously were much bigger, but his work always focused on the middle school years and experiential education. “You can’t learn to play basketball simply by learning the rules, you’ve actually have to play,” says Herrington. “Why would learning another subject be different?”
Herrington got into the spirit of IPS experiential learning right away, by joining the grades six and seven students on their trip to Alice Lake. He says he enjoyed the hikes and the chance to connect with each student individually, and by all accounts - he’s done a great job of learning each of their names.
Quick to praise what has been built at IPS as well as the way the school is organized, Herrington notes that there is one critical factor, in determining the success of students: collective teacher efficacy. Herrington cites the research of John Hattie who has completed meta studies on “what works best in education”.
“The Island Pacific School is a place of learning that fosters collaboration among teachers as they work together to support students. A great example is how the staff and students meet together every morning to stretch, have a minute of silence and then move on to the business of the day. Each student and teacher very day has an opportunity to share their voice. This is just one of the many long-standing IPS traditions that exists for very good reasons.”
