Clarkson Secondary School is a high school in Clarkson community of Mississauga,

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

, Canada; designate
Ward 18
by the

Peel District School Board The Peel District School Board (PDSB; known as English-Language Public District School Board No. 19 prior to 1999) is a school district that serves approximately 153,000 kindergarten to grade 12 students at more than 259 schools in the Region o ...

. Clarkson is an average school in both population (11th, at 866 students) and age (13th, built in 1969) of the entire Peel range of 28 public secondary schools. It is also known as the "Peel Academy for International Students".

School Design

Original Plan

Clarkson was designed like many 1970s-era schools in Ontario as part of an experimental "

open-concept Open plan is the generic term used in architectural and interior design for any floor plan that makes use of large, open spaces and minimizes the use of small, enclosed rooms such as private offices. The term can also refer to landscaping of h ...

" design. On the ground floor, the cafeteria and

auditorium An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances. For movie theatres, the number of auditoria (or auditoriums) is expressed as the number of screens. Auditoria can be found in entertainment venues, community ...

are central to the design; a tech/drama wing, staff room, and

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 i ...

nasiums are placed on the west side, while a classroom wing adorns the east side. These were open to the

hallway A hallway or corridor is an interior space in a building that is used to connect other rooms. Hallways are generally long and narrow. Hallways must be sufficiently wide to ensure buildings can be evacuated during a fire, and to allow people i ...

s, to other classrooms, separated only by

pillar A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...

s. Other schools using the same concepts include The Woodlands Secondary School,

Bayridge Secondary School Bayridge Secondary School is a secondary school located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, offering grades 9 to 12. The school is located in the former Kingston Township, in a neighbourhood known as Bayridge, and is part of the Limestone District Scho ...

, and St. Thomas More Catholic School.

Demise of the Open-Concept Design

During the late 1970s, the design was abandoned for a more traditional approach, as the

design proved deficient in many aspects: notable, the leakage of noise from other classes. The school to this day has very few proper walls in its main section, with thin, temporary walls shielding the view of other classes. The

sound spill In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the ...

still remains a problem in many of the school's classes.

Extracurriculars

Clarkson's sports teams include

field hockey Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting ...

, football,

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Sum ...

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice h ...

, soccer,

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

, wrestling teams; as well as many after-school groups, including cross country,

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...

and others like the

anime is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of ...

club, the PALS, and several

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 b ...

presentations per year. A full list is here on thei
website
The local Studenwrites student-written drama festival is held in the school's 160-seat theatre, as is a division of the Sears Ontario Drama Festival. The school's paper is the Clarkson Clarion.

Cancer Drive

For part of the school year, the Clarkson Cancer Drive is hosted annually in late April as a

fundraiser Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gathe ...

fo
Camp Oochigeas
a camp for

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

-stricken children. The 2006 year raised $26,500 over a period of one week from a myriad of fundraising events run by individual classrooms, as well as the "

dunk tank A dunk tank, also known as a dunking booth or dunking machine, is a common feature at Canadian and American fairs, fundraisers, and celebrations. It consists of a huge water tank with a volunteer sitting on a collapsible bench above. When the ...

", "milk chug", "rent-a-friend". In 2012 they beat their all-time record, raising $27,142 for Camp Oochigeas. In 2014 they beat that record again raising $30,001. In 2015, they blew the record out of the water, raising $43,023.08 in support of Camp Oochigeas. In 2016, they raised a very notable $40,020. They once again broke the record in 2017 with a total amount of $43,320.17.

Lorne Park

Clarkson has been known to have a rivalry with the neighbouring school:

Lorne Park Secondary School Lorne Park Secondary School (often abbreviated as LP or LPSS) is a public high school located in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. It serves the Lorne Park neighbourhood, as well as a larger catchment area for the Extended French program for all of ...

. This rivalry started in 1969, the year that Clarkson opened. The building was not finished in time for the beginning of the school year and so Clarkson students were "hosted" by Lorne Park from September to December. The school day operated on two shifts with Lorne Park students taking the morning shift and Clarkson students (bused to Lorne Park) taking the afternoon shift.

Programs

* French immersion *

English as a Second Language English as a second or foreign language is the use of English by speakers with different native languages. Language education for people learning English may be known as English as a second language (ESL), English as a foreign language (EFL ...

* International Program * Spanish Program * Specialist High Skills Major - Manufacturing (Grade 11-12)

Notable alumni

Brad Boyes Bradley Keith Boyes (born April 17, 1982) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player, who spent thirteen seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of seven different teams. Early life Boyes went to Hazel McCallion Senior P ...

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

hockey player *

Francis D'Souza Francis D'Souza is a Canadian television executive and a former broadcaster. He is the Managing Editor of News Programming at CBC, nationally, and a former television news anchor for Citytv in Toronto, Ontario. Biography D'Souza became interest ...

- CityTV Personality * Sean Jones - R&B singer * Don Kerr - Multi-instrumentalist and record producer * Matt Kudu -

CFL The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ci ...

football player *

Shaun Majumder Shaun Vincent Majumder (born January 29, 1972) is a Canadian actor and comedian. He is best known for his role on '' This Hour Has 22 Minutes,'' where he worked from 2003 until 2018. He won a Gemini Award for his work on the series in 2006. Earl ...

- Comedian, writer, and actorNewfoundlandersAbroad - Shaun Majumder
* M. H. Murray - Filmmaker * John River - Rapper * Camilla Scott - Actress and host of the television show The Camilla Scott Show * Barbara Turnbull - Journalist and Activist for people with Disabilities * Debbie Van Kiekebelt - Track & Field star and former Citytv personality *

Phil X Theofilos Xenidis (born March 10, 1966), better known as Phil X, is a Canadian musician, singer and songwriter. Since 2013, he has played lead guitar with Bon Jovi and officially replaced former lead guitarist Richie Sambora in 2016. Career Early ...

- Session Guitarist

References

External links

Clarkson Secondary School website
{{PeelDistrictSchools Peel District School Board High schools in Mississauga Educational institutions established in 1970 1970 establishments in Ontario