Craigflower Elementary School is a public

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...

located in

Victoria, British Columbia Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867, and the Greater Victoria area has a population of 397,237. Th ...

, Canada. It is the current version of the oldest schoolhouse in

Western Canada Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces, Canadian West or the Western provinces of Canada, and commonly known within Canada as the West, is a Canadian region that includes the four western provinces just north of the Canada� ...

, and National Historic Site, Craigflower Schoolhouse, and the third school to be called "Craigflower". The third, and current Craigflower School was constructed in the same location in 1963, and has been in constant use for more than half a century.

History

Originally constructed as Maple Point School in 1854, on the order of Alexander MacKenzie, it was founded as part of Craigflower Farm, one of Western Canada's first farming communities. It provided education and boarding services to students until 1911 when it was replaced by a larger wooden schoolhouse built across the road. In 1915, the first Parent-Teacher Association in Western Canada was established at Craigflower — just prior to the first school strike in Western Canada, which took place in 1919. The school is located within the ancestral territory of the

Lekwungen The Lekwungen or Lekungen nation (lək̓ʷəŋən often called the Songhees or Songish by non-Lekwungens) are an Indigenous North American Coast Salish people who reside on southeastern Vancouver Island, British Columbia in the Greater Victoria ...

, a

Coast Salish The Coast Salish is a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak one of the Coas ...

tribe and ancestors of the modern

Esquimalt The Township of Esquimalt is a municipality at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada. It is bordered to the east by the provincial capital, Victoria, British Columbia, Victoria, to the south by the Strait of Juan de ...

and

Songhees The Lekwungen or Lekungen nation (lək̓ʷəŋən often called the Songhees or Songish by non-Lekwungens) are an Indigenous North American Coast Salish people who reside on southeastern Vancouver Island, British Columbia in the Greater Victoria a ...

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

— both of whom have Reserves located nearby. Known as "Kosapsom" to the indigenous people, it was previously the location of a village site, and the current structure is built upon a large

shell midden A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...

created by several millennia of intermittent human habitation.

Modern Craigflower Elementary

Originally a K-7 school, Craigflower underwent a "significant change" in 2002, as School District 61 reconfigured its educational system to include

middle schools A middle school (also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school) is an educational stage which exists in some countries, providing education between primary school and secondary school. ...

— originally with a population of around 245, the school lost some 80 students and 6 teachers to nearby Shoreline Middle School, and became a candidate for future closure during cost-cutting measures. In addition, the school has a large First Nations population which is served by having classes teaching First Nations skills, and a split

kindergarten Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cent ...

class year. In 2000, the school was honored by the

Provincial Government A state government is the government that controls a subdivision of a country in a federal form of government, which shares political power with the federal or national government. A state government may have some level of political autonomy, or ...

for an innovative program called "Successmaker", which used

computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

to help educators bring struggling students up to their normal skill levels in a number of fundamental areas such as

reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of Letter (alphabet), letters, symbols, etc., especially by Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process invo ...

and

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

— with an average improvement worth 8 months of classwork. The program, run by Gen Gleason, First Nations skills teacher, was featured in the "Bright Lights: stories of success and excellence from B.C. elementary schools" booklet which was distributed to all elementary schools in the province. However, many students still struggle to achieve academic success — district

graduation Graduation is the awarding of a diploma to a student by an educational institution. It may also refer to the ceremony that is associated with it. The date of the graduation ceremony is often called graduation day. The graduation ceremony is a ...

rates for First Nations students remain low, relative to others. Craigflower takes part in many activities designed to help their First Nations students, such as backpack and school supply give-aways funded by non-profit and government sources. Nonetheless, Craigflower's close proximity to its historic predecessor provides many opportunities for teaching students about local and provincial history. In 2003, the

Royal B.C. Museum Founded in 1886, the Royal British Columbia Museum (sometimes referred to as Royal BC Museum) consists of The Province of British Columbia's natural and human history museum as well as the British Columbia Provincial Archives. The museum is loca ...

hosted a collection of work created by students, including those from Craigflower, which explained the history of the local sport of

lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively ...

. In 1999, students took part in

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...

tic recreations at the old schoolhouse, aimed to entertain and educate children about

colonial times The ''Colonial Times'' was a newspaper in what is now the Australian state of Tasmania. It was established as the ''Colonial Times, and Tasmanian Advertiser'' in 1825 in Hobart, Van Diemen's Land Van Diemen's Land was the colon ...

. The school is also active in athletics, with a

gym A gymnasium, also known as a gym, is an indoor location for athletics. The word is derived from the ancient Greek term " gymnasium". They are commonly found in athletic and fitness centres, and as activity and learning spaces in educational ins ...

nasium and active

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

team. In 1999, the school took part in "an innovative and interactive cross-country

bicycle A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. Bic ...

tour", as one of the 80 host schools chosen from across Canada to greet a national team of riders as they visited every province and territory by bike as part of the Canadian Heritage Interactive Journey.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://craigflower.sd61.bc.ca/ Educational institutions established in 1854 Elementary schools in Victoria, British Columbia 1854 establishments in the British Empire