South Central Interior Distance Education School (SCIDES) might not be the environment you’d think of when you think of a school, but according to principal Colleen Mullin, that’s the point.

On paper, they look pretty similar, each with teachers and students; but how education is delivered in each is very different.

“We are able to be much more flexible because we don’t have a time schedule,” she explained. “Students can enroll any time they want, any time during the year, and take up to a year to complete a course. In a [fact-to-face] high school you’re very much regimented — we’re self-paced.”

Everyone learns differently, Mullin explained, and the education system should reflect that.

“We’re all unique individuals, and we all need to foster that individuality,” she said. “We want students to go out and think for themselves and invent and learn and be curious and be innovators and be able to figure things out.”

That’s something that Mullin doesn’t see happening in a traditional face-to-face school. After trying to accomplish that herself for 15 years, she switched to a distributed learning environment, which she’s found more fulfilling as a teacher.

“Think of all the issues in a classroom,” she said. Discipline, a sick teacher, assemblies or fire alarm drills all have an impact on learning, she said. But Mullin gets really passionate talking about testing.

“You put [students] in a classroom and everyone has to do the exact samet thing the same way,” she said. “They have to figure out how the teacher wants it assessed, and you all have to do the exact same exam in the exact same way, which is multiple choice — which really doesn’t show that you’re learning — because teacher is too busy to do written work, so you’re in biology doing science, but you’re doing multiple choice tests, it’s awful!”

SCIDES addresses these problems for Mullin, and this is how it works: the courses are arranged both online and on paper, and correspond with how students learn. If a student is an independent learner who takes their own notes, they can take a course that way. If a student needs more attention, they can get on conference calls or Skype.

“Teachers are doing video sessions at some scheduled times during the day and a lot of students will come in and get one-on-one tutoring,” she said. “We are very diverse.”

So is the student body at SCIDES. There are any number of reasons a student might want to register for distance education. Mullen said that they’re popular with athletes, or those in fine arts. Famous people will enrol their kids in SCIDES, or young actresses or actors — those who have a career path already that keeps them busy, but who still need to finish their high school education.

It’s also an option for those who are sick and unable to leave the hospital.

It isn’t necessary to be a full time student to take classes with SCIDES, either — cross enrolling with another face-to-face school is a possibility.

Mullin used a Revelstoke student as an example. “Revelstoke Secondary School is small, and they have courses that are only offered in one semester, and not the other, so you’re very constricted to what you can take. Well, that student can enrol with us to take a course they can’t take at their local school.”

If enrollment is an indication of success, it should be noted that number doubled last year at SCIDES. They had the equivalent of 369 students, just under 200 of them full time. That makes them the second biggest school in School District 58, next to Merritt Secondary.

Mullin said this coming year the school is focusing on maintaining their recent partnerships with learning centres.

“If we can find centres for students to get together at and have someone at the centre who is vetting for them, or even a tutor to help be a voice for us on site, it’s definitely less travel for us,” she said. “Then we have more time available for other students, and students get better service because now they come together, now they have peers.”

She said that in past years SCIDES teachers have been overworked, and many local families left the program, particularly in the K through 12 range. But she’s hoping they’ll give them another try.

“We want to try to recapture those local families again,” she said. “We want to build their trust and faith in us again. We’re really popular, we went through a lot of growing pains last year . . .  Just come in and look.”

 

The original article misspelled Colleen Mullin’s name. The Herald regrets this error.