Island Oak High School is located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in Canada. It offers Grades 9 to 12. Enrolment has increased to over 50 students. There is a faculty of ten teachers, specialists, administrators, and assistants. In Feb. 2007 the school hosted the BC Waldorf Teachers Conference.
The school has been operated since 1995 by the Steiner Educational Society, a group of parents and community members. It is certified by the Ministry of Education of British Columbia and receives government funding for Independent Schools.
The school is a High School Initiative under the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America - see Waldorf schools' organization and administration.
Typically, over half of the Grade 9 students entering the school come from a Waldorf elementary school. Sunrise Waldorf School, a Kindergarten to Grade Eight school also located in the Cowichan Valley, provides many of the students, but is not formally associated with Island Oak High School.
Every year since founding, a number of international students have come to the school in exchange for Island Oak High School students visiting their countries. Approximately 25% of the students are boarding or exchange students. They come from Waldorf Schools in France, Germany, England, Russia, Netherlands, Switzerland, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Australia to name a few. Students stay for periods ranging from three months to a year. The opportunity to travel to other countries, to study and learn other languages and immerse themselves in other cultures is an attraction for BC and Canadian students of Grade Ten and Eleven.
For photo gallery, curriculum, application, and other information contact *Official website
Famous quotes containing the words island, oak, high and/or school:
“We crossed a deep and wide bay which makes eastward north of Kineo, leaving an island on our left, and keeping to the eastern side of the lake. This way or that led to some Tomhegan or Socatarian stream, up which the Indian had hunted, and whither I longed to go. The last name, however, had a bogus sound, too much like sectarian for me, as if a missionary had tampered with it; but I knew that the Indians were very liberal. I think I should have inclined to the Tomhegan first.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Below me trees unnumbered rise,
Beautiful in various dyes:
The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beech, the sable yew,
The slender fir that taper grows,
The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs.”
—John Dyer (1699–1758)
“In rhetoric, this art of omission is a chief secret of power, and, in general, it is proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When we were at school we were taught to sing the songs of the Europeans. How many of us were taught the songs of the Wanyamwezi or of the Wahehe? Many of us have learnt to dance the rumba, or the cha cha, to rock and roll and to twist and even to dance the waltz and foxtrot. But how many of us can dance, or have even heard of the gombe sugu, the mangala, nyang’umumi, kiduo, or lele mama?”
—Julius K. Nyerere (b. 1922)