At Rosseau Lake College, Community Endures (and Strengthens!)

Over the past two years I have thought and written a lot about community; I have placed the concept at the core of my personal practice and Cohort21 Action Plan. In this time of intense challenge and deep reflection, the very idea of community is, perhaps, more important than ever, and so I find myself trying to capture its shifting and growing meaning.

At Rosseau Lake College we gather in a circle each morning, just above our rugged Muskoka shoreline, to sing, offer gratitude to our land, its history, each other and all of us together. We prepare our mindset for the challenge and adventure of the day ahead. Our circle is both an affirmation and symbol of what makes us special: a community – a family even – of support that strengthens every endeavour and each other. Indeed, as we depart the circle for the many trails that lead us to our learning in the woods, on the lake and in classrooms, our inhibitions, if only slightly and temporarily, have been transformed to determination. One of the many terrifying questions we faced at the beginning of our self isolation was how do we continue to strengthen and support learning and each other while scattered across the globe? Without our circle, what will we become?

In the early stages of our collective response to the COVID-19 crisis, it was easy to feel scrambled, as if our new reality demanded a new approach, a new way of being. Like so many however, in all corners of a society, it took some time to understand that this massive disruption to routine, expectations and familiarity was really offering a much clearer view of who we already were. While the platforms are different, and our “pathways” to learning less familiar and tree-lined, we have gained strength in changing very little – or, at least, as little as possible. 

On March 25th, after our March break, we returned to school on our new ‘Global Campus,’ welcoming our students back, of course, with our morning gathering. Indeed, among the staff and teaching faculty, there was a shared anxiety about how and if this might work. For instance, as a boarding school we had lost our ability to literally pull students from their beds. Without our direct insistence, would the students still attend? What we perhaps were unwilling to admit was that our Global Campus was/is in many ways a test. We have always described ourselves as a tight-knit community. We were about to discover the truth. 

At Rosseau Lake College, we place lived experience and innovation at the forefront of learning. Teachers evolve their pedagogy through the allure and challenge of our setting, integrating learning with our incredible natural landscape while putting our students face to face with complex challenges. Each semester, our students take on the enormous task of developing large-scale ‘Discovery Projects’ that acknowledge personal interests or passions and connect learning across curriculum. Our students spend several nights of the year sleeping in a tent or under the stars and then preparing breakfast over a fire. Once a year, every member of our community comes together to complete a 17km run (called the Hekkla). At both our winter and spring Arts Festivals, every student participates in some form of performance. Several of us are proud members of our ‘Polar Bear Club’  – at least one dip in Lake Rosseau a month, EVERY month of the school year. We hike, read, paddle, think, portage, write, swim, solve, perform and study. Indeed, we like to think we are preparing students for all situations. We like to think we are preparing them for real life.

These days, our physical campus is eerily quiet. Yes, the spring peepers have begun their singing, but with whom do we share that magic? To walk across the sports field is to feel the void of endless student activity that normally characterizes this place. It is a perplexing time of incongruous realities. If this Rosseau campus feels so empty, how is it that our hearts can feel so full? How is it that our culture and the learning within it can feel so rich? As unreal as these times are, life has never been so real, so challenging. And we, as a school community, are utterly amazed by the response of our students. Our students did indeed arrive for our gathering on the morning of March 25th. They arrived from all parts of our planet with a level of excitement and enthusiasm that somehow permeated through and out of the digital platforms. Even more importantly, they keep arriving, day after day, for assembly, classes, sports practice, arts clubs, supportive studies, Coffee Houses and even polar bear dips. They arrived for our virtual run up the CN Tower, they will arrive this Friday for the Hekkla, and they will arrive again on May 14th for the Spring Arts Festival. 

It is the will of any great school to never stop imagining ways to better ensure student engagement in all parts of student life. While we remain deeply engaged in that pursuit, we also find ourselves looking inward, wondering what it is that has ensured such such a resounding coming together from around the globe. It would be easy to simply feel good about our collective response to this situation, but the reality is that whatever positive outcomes we’ve realized in maintaining our community have much more to do with what we did, and who we were, before COVID-19. This new reality has helped us to better know who we are and given us the opportunity to become an even better version of that. Never have we had to think so deeply and creatively about how we present learning, about why we distance students from their screens and connect them to the natural world. Never have we had to be so intentional and thoughtful about how and why we celebrate community. Never has so much been asked of each of us, students and staff. 

Just like the teaching, learning, overall activity and community, our symbol of the circle has endured while our concept of it has grown. Right now, we feel as though our circle has never been tighter, which is yet another unexpected outcome as it has certainly never been bigger.

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