Dear Cortes Island Community,

We have embarked on another year of learning and growing together at the Cortes Island School and, heading into my second year as principal, I could not be more excited by our talented staff, our enthusiastic parent group and volunteers (our first parent advisory committee was attended by 14 people), and our vibrant and diverse student body. This year we have Claudia Barnes back in the Kindergarten and Grade 1 position (with 8 new Kindergarten students!), Christine Duketow in the Grade 2-4 class, and Taylor Wren teaching the Grade 5-9 senior class. We have also been joined by Sue Bannister who will be teaching physical education and assisting students as a literacy support teacher; and Donna Bracewell, who brings a wealth of experience from her time as the principal of Linnaea School and, more recently, a learning support specialist in Kenya and Vietnam. We are lucky to have Lydia Lewis and Desta Beattie back in the educational assistant roles, Ranae Close as our admin assistant extraordinaire, and, of course, Derek Armitage on bus and maintenance duty. It is an outstanding team.

The school (excluding the Cortes Island Academy, more on that with a later post) is up to ~64 students this year, which is fantastic, and which, more or less, maxes out our intermediate and senior classes. We are thus in a tricky position where 5-8 more students, depending on age, would likely allow us to create a new division and hire a new teacher. If there are families on the island with school-aged children that are still on the fence, or if you know families that are considering a move to Cortes Island, I encourage you to contact me asap about possibilities. We remain open to flexible and individualized learning opportunities on the island. Otherwise, I am hopeful that we will continue to grow, both culturally and numerically, and perhaps we can add a new class in the near future, which would, I think, greatly improve the educational experience for our island youth.

As a staff, we are focusing our professional development this year on literacy in response to an (inter)national crisis in literacy rates, but, moreover, we are attempting to nurture a “culture of literacy” on Cortes Island. We are encouraging students to sign at least one new book out of the library every week, we will be organizing “drop everything and read” and school-wide creative writing events, and we are presently planning a book fair that will, I hope, be open to the whole community. Please continue to model a “culture of literacy” by reading with every child every day, frequenting our wonderful school and regional libraries, and letting me know if there are books you want ordered. This year we want to: read, read, read.

Looking ahead, I am excited at the prospect of continuing to co-cultivate the Cortes Island School as a model “place-based” school. I am thrilled about our land-based programming and beautiful gardens, our emerging Ayajuthem language program, and the number and variety of community members that come in to help our little island school flourish. We are dreaming big this year, come by and contribute to the vision.

With book marks & rain drops,

Michael D. Datura