The Spruceland Community School of the Arts is wrapping up its first year as Prince George’s only choice arts school.
Shannon Daines, the Principal of Spruceland who has overseen its transition from a traditional school, recalled the early conversations around dropping the traditional title in 2022.
Looking at the criteria set for the traditional school when it first opened, Daines said “We compared our actual practice with that list and determined we were not able to function in that way and serve the kids in the building.”
After community consultation and school board trustee approval, Spruceland started taking steps toward the arts at the end of 2022.
In order to build a program that met the requirement of an arts school – not just a school with good arts programs – Daines said staff members toured similar schools that already exist across the province to see what they were doing differently.
“We had to take a look at our population of students and staff because a lot of those people would stay the same, and find how to make a transition from traditional to arts to accommodate them but also meet the brief,” she explained.
Three criteria were developed:
- Teach explicit arts curriculum (dance, drama, visual arts, and music)
- Integrate arts into other subjects
- Bring in community artists to work with students
Each of the explicit arts have their own studio within the school.
Daines said some of those guest artists worked with students on shadow puppetry,
the Dakelh language, metis jigging, drumming and other music.
Some PGSS performing arts students have been coming to Spruceland and helping teach the younger students some basics of dance and theatre.
“Two of our classes went into the Speech Arts and Drama Festival,” Daines continued, adding “Miscellaneous productions – a company from Ontario that works with urban youth – did a week’s worth of work with two of our divisions around urban dance and theatre.”
The school also held a craft fair and an “Arts Extravaganza” in April.
From first graders to seventh graders, Daines said there were only “a handful – less than five – students that left because they didn’t think [arts] was for them… The majority of our families seemed to be totally on board with trying something new for their kids.”
On top of that, 40 new kids enrolled for kindergarten at the start of this school year, “the majority of them because it was an arts school.”
It was the same story for her staff, Daines said all of the primary teachers and CUPE staff stayed and only a couple intermediate teachers left prior to the school year.
“None of us were arts specialists in terms of teaching, a lot of our staff members are artists in their own right,” she said.
Spruceland was also able to find space for every other student around the district who wanted to transfer to the new choice school prior to the school year, as well as most of those that expressed interest partway through the year.
Looking to the future, Daines said she wants to see the school’s studios, especially dance and drama, continue to develop.
“They are empty canvases,” she said. “We have a stage, we have a space, but we don’t have a lot of props or special flooring in the dance space.”
You can find out more about Spruceland here.
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