On October 13th, the Steering Committee sent a team to visit Heritage Woods Secondary. The initial impression of this school was its imposing concrete facade. It is located in upscale hillside residential area and the building site is remarkably clean. The interior walls and stairs are concrete and student art work is used extensively for decoration. All the classrooms have internal and external windows and the Principal noted that in the case of a power failure, they continue instruction with very little interruption. The school timetable is a linear/semester mix very similar with ours, but they have seventy minute periods with a curricular thirty minute flex block between 1st and 2nd. The school shares playing fields with city parks and park employs an on-site caretaker which reduces vandalism.
The arts classes are grouped together in a specific area of the school. They have a 250 seat theatre off the main mall and the stage is used for dance class during the day. The photography is all digital and the dark room is used for storage, the decision to go digital was made by administration. The teachers have prep rooms between instructional areas and the art teacher felt more sinks would be useful.
All the science classrooms have interior windows and instructional classrooms have access to shared lab areas. The classrooms are small but the classes are capped at 24. The humanities classrooms all have interior windows and wireless connections are used extensively with bookable laptops and equipment brought from home.
The P.E. department has one full sized gym and one mini gym which is separate from the weight room. The staff prep area looks across a hallway into the windowed area of the gym. A budget driven decision was to not have a moveable gym wall to split the facility into two teaching areas. There is a second floor hallway with windows to look down into the gym and access to Municipal artificial fields.
The library has a small floor plan with very few print items. The library has a 30 machine bookable lab and budget for online subscriptions. The Tech Ed department has very small shop areas with little storage. No auto program but there is an auto program at a neighbouring school. There are a series of classrooms that allow access to common space and all tech programs are located in tech area of school. There is a staff prep area between instructional units.
Heritage Woods uses Geo-thermal energy and natural light reduces reliance on artificial lighting and with an abundance of stationary garbage containers reduces litter.
For all pictures of Heritage Woods, click here
Heritage Rocks
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