Rosseau Lake College: Rosseau, Ontario, Canada

Rosseau Lake College is a preparatory school in the classic sense in that all the students are
planning to enter post-secondary programs. Academics are rigorous, following a progressive
liberal arts model. The average class size is between 10 and 15 students. The school,
understandably, attracts teachers who are committed to outdoor education. All are dynamic,
creative, and self-starting. 

RLC doesn’t offer the International Baccalaureate (IB), though it shares many attributes with
schools that do. That includes the tradition of thinking globally—the IB is heavily influenced by
the work of Kurt Hahn, as was Rosseau Lake College itself—particularly in the sense of global
citizenship, which has been a core feature of the school’s DNA since its inception. Likewise,
learning experiences are stretched out over longer arcs of time. The school year is semestered,
so courses are offered over a period of months. That’s mirrored in the daily and weekly schedule, with longer blocks of time in the afternoons for students to get involved in projects in a
deeper, more committed way. Because of the variation of the daily schedule through the week
(Wednesday afternoons, for example, are on a flexible schedule), there isn’t a sense of being
pushed from class to class, discipline to discipline, whenever the bell rings. Instead, there is
time offered to get into a task and stay with it, free from distractions. The dissection of a frog, for
example, might take a whole afternoon. As well it should. This is a school that believes in the
value of taking time, that learning is an experience to be savoured. Graham Vogt, Assistant
Head of School, says that “it is the difference between spotting the barred owl on a trail walk –
perched still and silent, otherwise invisible within the overhead limbs of the maple – or simply
seeing it through the chain link at the local zoo. The bird is impressive in either scenario, but the
experience is vastly different. … We love for our students to see the owl not because we show it
to them, but because they discover it on their own.”

Instruction is project based, and there are many points within the academic calendar for
students to engage in bigger projects than typical coursework would allow. There are Term
Courses every January and May, and month-long projects. The academic year culminates in
Discovery Week, during which students complete and present a project of their own design,
applying and demonstrating the knowledge and skills they’ve developed throughout the year. It’s
a design-process project that begins in January. From then on, Wednesday afternoons are
given over to the project. It begins in entirely blue-sky, out-of-the-box thinking, with students
considering their passions and the things that animate their imaginations, and then working
ahead from there. They are also required to tie their projects back to the courses they’ve been
taking throughout the year. 

The school follows the Ontario curriculum, and students graduate with the OSSD, though the
progress through the grades is highly sequenced and unique to RLC. Grades 7 through 8 are
the Foundation Years, which, as the name suggests, are designed as a time to develop a good
basis in the fundamentals. Instructors work closely together so that when students move up,
their strengths, challenges, and talents are known. The school prizes individual, student-paced
learning.