Glashan partners with school in China

Students from Glashan Public School have the opportunity to embark on a one-of-a-kind trip to China this March as part of a pilot project with a sister school in the city of Suzhou.

Jim Tayler, principal of the Centretown elementary school, will be leading the group of teachers and 12 Grade 8 students for the 10-day trip as they visit three major sites: Beijing, Suzhou and Shanghai. He says the excursion is the first of its kind for an Ottawa intermediate school. 

“This is actually a pilot project with the school board and it’s just Glashan,” he says. “We’re very excited about it because we’re breaking some new and very exciting ground within the district. Although there are overseas trip to Europe and there are high school trips to China, this would be the first trip of this kind.”

Geoff Best, Ottawa-Carleton Education Network executive director, says the main motivation behind the trip is to encourage more overseas experience for students prior to graduation.

“The number of Canadian students that go out who have a school experience abroad overseas is something like 1 per cent,” he says. “There’s far more engagement with [students] coming to us, but we need to create opportunities and go and understand another perspective.”

A partnership agreement was signed with the sister elementary school in March, when Tayler, Best, and other delegates from the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board travelled to China to lay the ground work for the trip itinerary. 

Tayler says the cultural and professional connections between the teachers and students should enlighten both Canadian and Chinese teaching styles with new cultural approaches. 

“Ultimately what we hope is our sister school in Suzhou will eventually have students come and stay with us in Ottawa,” he says.

Located in the southeastern province of Jiangsu, Suzhou is just 100 km west of Shanghai, and can be described as an industrial park, according to Best. 

“It’s not a very glamorous description,” he says, “but an industrial park there is like a 300 square km city with a lot of large corporations.”

A number of these corporations are Canadian, Best explains, and the education bureau there has had connections with OCENET for 15 years. 

“In terms of knowing where they’re going and the people there, they’ll be cared for and welcomed really as friends,” he says. “We have that assurance.”

The announcement was made Nov. 19 and garnered immediate interest from the students trying to convince Tayler as to why they should go, he says. But it was delayed due to the recent labour dispute between the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario and the province, which reached a tentative agreement Nov. 4.

“We couldn’t make any movement on the trip, so I was working behind the scenes with school board staff,” he says.

The inability to move ahead with the trip earlier has affected fundraising goals, Tayler says. As a result, organizers are hoping to fully fund one spot for the trip, and at least part of another, with each spot costing about $3,000.

“We’re going to try and make it as equitable as possible,” Tayler says. 

The process of choosing the 12 lucky participants took place over a two week period. Following a parent meeting on Nov. 26, students were required to submit an application. Essays, stories, epic poems, any form of written expression as to why the students should be the ones to go were accepted. Those selected are to be announced on Dec. 11.

For Luana Mirella, one of the parents who attended the Nov. 26 meeting, simply knowing about the opportunity is powerful.

“No one has been selected yet, but your universe is altered just because you’re thinking about it,” she says. “And for that I’m very grateful, because it’s a beautiful thing.”

Tayler said “altering their universe” were the words he was looking for to describe the experience of travel for the students.

“I feel very grateful that we’re in a position to be able to do this, and I have every reason to expect it to be very successful,” he says. “It will certainly alter the way kids think about who they are, and what’s out there in the world.”