NEWS RELEASE
TWIN LAKES SECONDARY SCHOOL
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This year, Twin Lakes Secondary School is proud to celebrate the graduation of the first cohort of PEAC students.
PEAC (Partners in Education, Adventure and Community), devised and developed by the staff of Twin Lakes, welcomed its first class of Grade 9 students in September of 2017.
This unique focus program offers Grade 9 and 10 students at TLSS the opportunity to take required courses which are designed with a specific curriculum to offer a dynamic set of learning opportunities based on 21st-century skills and experiential activities.
This program is unique in the area and was developed in concert with the initiatives which resulted in Twin Lakes being designated the first Ashoka Changemaker secondary school in Simcoe County.
Kerrie Pellarin, the chair of guidance and student services at TLSS, was one of the initial creators of this program. She credits PEAC with providing an amazing learning opportunity for students.
“We recognized that Twin students could benefit from a program which allows them to extend their learning and challenge themselves,” says Pellarin.
Led by innovative and community-minded staff members, PEAC has consistently reached beyond TLSS and connected with a variety of similar programs, including the Georgian College Centre for Changemaking and Social Innovation and the Office of Social Innovation at Ryerson University.
The PEAC program is built on the educational foundation of social innovation and human-centred design. It moves students beyond simple assignments with pre-established criteria and encourages them to take control of their own education.
The cohorting of the program allows students to take four PEAC courses with the same group of students, giving them the time, support and opportunity to recognize the challenges faced in their own communities and beyond and how they can design programs or support existing initiatives to create broader systemic change. Students can begin projects and continue them through the courses and beyond, rather than being forced to wrap up when a semester finishes.
Sadie Harding, a Grade 10 student, was recently featured in local media for her innovative PEAC project which supports youth mental health. Sadie recognizes that the PEAC program expanded her ideas of what was possible in a school project.
“Social innovation was a new way of thinking for me,” she says. “Through PEAC you control your own destiny and how you plan to change the community and, later, the world."
The impact of this innovative style of learning is being felt throughout the Orillia-area community.
Ligaya Byrch, interim executive director of Green Haven Shelter for Women, was connected to Grade 10 PEAC student Emily Gordon after hearing about her PEAC project, which involved examining a local non-profit organization in order to propose ways to expand and strengthen their community impact.
“The PEAC program allows students to hone their skills and research abilities to best inform and support social innovation and human-centred design,” says Byrch.
Byrch praises the structure of the program, reflecting that, "as a person who believes and tries to support the community in which I live, PEAC is crucial to our community continuing to flourish.”
This connection led to an exciting partnership as Byrch is now working with Emily to pursue a grant which will allow the funding of some of her proposed ideas and initiatives.
Kevin Gangloff, director of the Orillia Youth Centre, has nurtured the community connections so crucial to the success of PEAC students. He acknowledges that the OYC has benefited from this partnership, and that PEAC students have created opportunities and programming that directly impact the youth who access the organization.
“Seeing youth creating a direct impact through testing, adapting and refining their projects and ideas has benefited so many other youth through partnership programs,” says Gangloff.
He credits the program with offering the opportunity for motivated students to “bring their own experiences to the forefront in forward-thinking projects and solutions to directly address matters in real time; by youth, for youth.”
While students are part of PEAC for only their first two years of high school, this year’s graduates see the skills they developed in the program as crucial for building confidence and a skill set to serve them in their secondary school education and beyond.
PEAC student Alanna Brooks is heading to Wilfrid Laurier University to study health sciences in September.
“With the several projects we did in PEAC,” says Alanna, “I learned many important teamwork skills that I will take with me and use later in life.”
Her community involvement did not end with the two years of PEAC. After the completion of the program, says Alanna, “I joined the Sustainable Orillia Youth Council, where I took the leadership and collaboration skills I learned and applied them to creating and extending community programming.”
Zac Waite, another member of the graduating class, credits the program and the project he completed with PEAC classmate Luke Parna-Gile as instrumental in inspiring the work which led to his nomination as Orillia Citizen of the Year in 2019.
His mother, Missi Waite, explains that through PEAC, “Zac learned valuable social networking and leadership skills, running projects for not-for-profit organizations and taking on significant community initiatives.”
She continues, saying that the "PEAC experience has prepared him for his next steps at the University of Waterloo and truly rounded out an incredible secondary school education.”
Karen and Andrew MacDonald also see the PEAC program as a highlight for their son, Kellan, who graduates as well this year. MacDonald sees the program and the educational opportunities it offers as instrumental to the development of confident, intrinsically motivated students.
“Being given the space to explore and create solutions to real-world issues as part of a team of like-minded individuals is an invaluable opportunity,” she says. “As parents, we observed a huge increase in self-confidence and leadership skills. The program exceeded our expectations.”
Developing skills for the future is exactly what PEAC is designed to do, and the success is evident.
Samantha Launchbury, a science teacher and PEAC mentor at TLSS, is often called upon to write letters of reference for post-secondary programs and scholarships.
“Basically, for PEAC students, these letters write themselves,” she explains. “The skills developed in PEAC — leadership, collaboration, initiative, critical analysis — are exactly what educational programs, and ultimately workplaces, are looking for.”
This is evident in a recent achievement by a team of four PEAC graduates. Zac Waite, Luke Parna-Gile, Greyson Martyn and Kellan MacDonald competed in the engineering competition, Def Hacks Worldwide 3.0, against teams of mostly university students from all over the world. They employed collaborative, inquiry-minded strategies to design, create and code an innovative project in 36 hours and came away with a first-place finish, ahead of 30 other projects in their category.
In concert with the PEAC program and the Ashoka school goals, Twin Lakes has been hard at work on creating the School of Social Innovation, a unique umbrella department which includes the PEAC program and cross-curricular courses at the senior level that focus on social innovation.
Chris Lowery, a PEAC teacher and mentor, knows the value of pushing students beyond the traditional format of fundraising and charity initiatives by encouraging the broad vision to see how their project might connect, combine, support and extend to new initiatives or structures that might already exist.
“The School of Social Innovation, along with the PEAC program, is dedicated to supporting students to become socially responsible members of their community who are able to find challenging ‘wicked problems’ and work to develop the structures to address them,” says Lowery.
Through these classes, Lowery hopes to offer the students the time and support to pursue their interests. He explains that “for students to make meaningful change in the world, schools need to offer them new ways to learn which support not just planning and research, but the skills and confidence to bring about the processes which support new and innovative projects.”
When asked if these goals sound a bit lofty for secondary school, Lowery replies, “Maybe, but isn't that what school should be all about?”
In September, Twin Lakes will welcome its fifth PEAC cohort class. Owen Bolger, Rama Central Public School graduate and valedictorian, is one of 23 incoming Grade 9 PEAC students. Excited about the opportunities to make an impact in his community, Owen says he is looking forward to “learning about both business and leadership in innovative ways.”
Just as TLSS bids farewell to one amazing group of students, PEAC will be enriched by the students just beginning their journey. Clearly, this innovative program is in good hands for the future.
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