It is with great excitement we announce our newest school in West Vancouver –  Soak City Elementary School. We are regularly challenged to build schools that are relevant and future focused, and we are doing just that with Soak City.

At its core, it is a simple notion, we will combine an elementary school and waterpark into a single facility.  One would never have thought a hotel and a waterpark would be one complex but that is just what the Great Wolf Lodge has done with its series of resorts.  We are taking the lessons from this with our first integrated school and waterpark facility.  Soak City Elementary is the first of its kind in the world and the latest in choice schools.

The Research

We have seen a number of movements in education in recent years, from learning with computers, to personalized learning, to most recently strong efforts to get students learning beyond their classrooms and learning outside.  The next logical step from learning outside is learning in water.  Water composes more than half of the Earth, and given what we see with Global Warming, it will be even more dominant for our children.  We think students should have experiences learning in water.  The philosophy is built on the Swedish research of Lipra Loof who believes all students should have the chance to learn in H2O and that the water helps to activate unused “dark” parts of the brain.

The Facility

Soak City Elementary School will be a mix of traditional classrooms and water-based classrooms.  There will be traditional hallways connecting many of the school areas and they will be side-by-side with waterslides allowing students choice in how they travel around the school.  Ensuring that all students are challenged there will be a range of difficulty in the slides at the park, from beginner slides for our primary students to a series of more difficult and challenging slides for the intermediate learners.  Working with our partner groups we have determined the names of a number of our slides, so far we have “Brain Wash”, “Pacific Plunge” and the “West Vancouver Wedgie”.

The Curriculum

Soak City embraces the new curriculum in British Columbia.  Students will have choice in what they learn and how they learn it.  Each year students will complete 4 “dry” units and 4 “wet” units”.  All 8 units will employ an inquiry-based learning approach.    In wet units students might be taking measurements of the speed of riders on slides and then graphing these results.

Specialty Programs

West Vancouver has a long history of academy programs.  And once again we will be launching a new program to fit our new facility.  The West Vancouver High Performance Water Slide Academy will attract some of the top watersliders from around the region and beyond.  The Soak City Nerdy Dolphins will compete in the IWL (International Waterslide League) with the top competitive waterslide teams from Western Canada and the Western United States.  We hope to have our sliders competing with the top watersliders in California within 3 years.  With watersliding a potential Olympic event in 2028, we think our new school can produce future medalists.

The Staff

We are partnering with local universities to help train staff to be comfortable with teaching in water.  Just as local universities train teachers for Montessori, French Immersion or a range of other specialty programs, we will begin to graduate teachers with a specialty in teaching and learning in water.  We anticipate many of our staff will also have a Masters Degree in Waterslide Leadership or a related field.

Additional Costs

There will be a fee attached to program to laminate all the students work (things will get very wet) and to purchase waterproof markers for the students.  It will be expected that students attend in clothes that can dry quickly.

“That Question”

We know parents will be concerned around hygiene and we have taken the science used in the movie Grown Ups and any pee in the pool will automatically turn the water a bright blue (see photo) , singling out the student (or teacher) responsible and shaming them into never doing it again.

Conclusions

We are often told to be bold in education and that is just what we are doing with our latest elementary school.  Soak City Elementary School is not for everyone, but for kids who like to get wet, stay wet and combine academics and tube rides.  And this does carry-on our annual tradition of using this day to make bold decisions!

In 2012 I launched my FLOG.

In 2013 I made the announcement of Quadrennial Round Schooling.

In 2014 we formalized our System of Student Power Rankings.

In 2015 we created our Rock, Paper, Scissors Academy.

In 2016 we introduced the Drone Homework Delivery System.

In 2017 we introduced the Donald J. Trump Elementary School of Winning.

And today we announce our plans to welcome the Soak City Nerdy Dolphins to our community of great schools in West Vancouver.

Hopefully you are enjoying today as much as me!