June+2013

June 21, 2013
Today is the first day of summer, the weather is great, and it's Friday. The school year at Dakota is wrapping up: final exams are all but over, and teachers are busy grading and report writing. Convocation is on Monday, and the last day of the school year is next Friday, June 28. However, a few of the teachers from Dakota are on their way to ISTE in San Antonio. I think it is great that we have teachers willing to go, and leadership that helps to make it happen. The group going to ISTE from Dakota will come home will all kinds of new ideas, and I expect that we will hear from them a fair bit in our Professional Development sessions next year.

Our school is getting a new boiler and what seems to be miles of new pipe for the heating system as well. All of this is a strong reminder to me that there are infrastructure costs that can never be ignored. The school building went up in 1964 and then went through a major expansion in the early 70's. The (almost) 50 year old building needs some upgrades, and a good heating system is an absolute must in Winnipeg. All of the new construction makes me wonder about what kinds of upgrades and overhauls our 1 to 1 program will need over time. Right now the infrastructure seems to work well: the wifi is good, everyone seems to be able to log on, and we have not had any real problems with downtime or students/staff losing files due to equipment failure.

Maybe the upgrades will come in the form of new people and new ideas. Certainly we do not use the old school building the way that it was designed. For example, our lovely library used to be the old gym. Our "sandbox" room for staff collaboration used to be a bit of a hallway and storage room. Conversely, the really beautiful darkroom that mattered so much decades ago is now a good place to store Spirit Week decorations and tired old books. New people with new ideas re-defined these spaces, and so Dakota changed.

I am sure that some architect who I have never read has written much about how buildings are re-purposed over time, and about the social narrative that develops as multiple generations pass through a building. New pipes and new wires that carry warmth and information: something as simple as a school building can be a truly wonderful and complex organism. Then again, it is also a bit like a coral reef because all of the vibrancy, beauty and colour simply disappear if the life within the place also disappears. A dead coral reef is a sad, monochromatic underwater hazard. Not much chooses to live in a dead reef. Schools are that way too, and a quick Google search of abandoned school buildings confirms that the life of the place is in the people, and not in the pipes.

So I am glad we are getting a new boiler, but I am gladder still that the people who inhabit this place are off to ISTE, and to a number of other summer courses and conferences. The life of the place is in the people; the staff and the students. So, here is to the class of 2013, and 2014, and 2015, and to the class of the year 2064, when Dakota celebrates its Centennial. Radical changes in the building will likely happen between now and then, but the life of the place, the vibrancy, energy, curiosity, drive, and spirit of the place, will still be in the people.