Students will get hands dirty

Skeetchestn Community School has introduced new facilities dedicated to reconnecting students with the land through lessons in agriculture, animal husbandry and sustainability.

Located on a reserve near Savona, the school celebrated the grand opening of the $160,000 Skeetchestn Stables last week, culminating over two and a half years of development. Bryce Ross, the principal of Skeetchestn Community School, mentioned the programs offered at the stables complement the standard provincial curriculum.

“We just find the natural parts of the B.C. curriculum where this fits in,” he says. “Our intention is to get our students out here on the land in 45-minute intervals, where our agricultural co-ordinator will rotate through our classes, get them out here doing the hard work.”

Ross says the initiative aims to educate students about animal husbandry, which is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk or other products, as well as the “symbiotic relationship” between gardening and farming.

Terry Deneault, a language and culture educator at the school, says the stables will promote sustainable practices and foster a respect for agriculture and trades, which he believes is currently under appreciated.

“This world needs young agriculturists. That’s where our food comes from, everybody being fed by all the people that run all these operations,” Deneault says. “A lot of the knowledge we impart isn’t found in books. It requires being here and engaging directly to truly grasp our traditional ways of life.”

Deneault says the school’s agriculture program “offers hope for the future of our young people.” The project started over five years ago with the creation of a food forest adjacent to the school. Now, with the stables completed, the scope of the school’s programs is set to grow further.

Destre Porter-Nicholas, a Grade 10 student at Skeetchestn Community School, expressed his excitement about the new opportunities.

“We used to only have the school, and then we were still getting our garden together,” he says. "Now that we have all of these, it’s amazing because we get to have farm animals, we have our own smokehouse, we get to do cultural things.”

He is particularly thrilled about working with the animals soon to reside in the stables, reflecting on the experience he has with pigs, goats and cows at home. Porter-Nicholas says a week before the stables opened, four students had already started preparing by moving more than 100 bales of hay into the hay loft.

The total investment in the initiative is approximately $200,000, funded by donations from the Skeetchestn community and external supporters.

“Hopefully we see more and more of this in the public sector and in other schools,” Ross says. “If anybody wants to come visit Skeetchestn Community School, they’re more than welcome.”