As the students, teachers and parents of Highglen Montessori elementary school have discovered this week, a school is more than four walls, a roof and a collection of classrooms and desks.
It's part of their identity, it's a community. It's home.
Highglen students have been off since a fire seriously damaged the school Monday afternoon. They're expected to return to class on Monday at the former Gladstone elementary school in College Heights, not far from the high school.
They, along with their teachers and parents, should expect an emotional day Monday, the joy and relief to be back together as a community coupled with the uncertainty of when or if they'll return to Highglen.
I lived through a similar experience when I was in Grade 4 or 5 (I don't remember the exact year and even Google couldn't help me, except to inform me that Mrs. Miron, my Grade 1 teacher, died two years ago at the age of 89).
During the 1970s in Hay River, NWT, students like me ended up going to three different elementary schools before they moved on to the "purple school," the Douglas Cardinal-designed Diamond Jenness secondary (the locals just call it DJ), which still stands today. That's right - four schools in a town with about 3,500 people in it.
Kids in kindergarten to Grade 3 went to Princess Alexandra (that's now the middle school), then took the bus into the Old Town on Vale Island to attend St. Paul's school for Grades 4 and 5 before going over to Camsell school, about a 10-minute walk away, for Grades 6 and 7.
I never got a chance to go to Camsell school (it's since been rebuilt in the New Town and is now the K-3 school) because it burned down in a spectacular fire one winter morning. I remember standing with all my friends in the St. Paul's parking lot and watching the black smoke rising in the air.
The 80 or so students from Camsell were crammed into makeshift classes in the St. Paul's gym for the rest of the year, before portable trailers were hastily attached to the school that summer, making it Camsell St. Paul's.
As a kid, I was totally bummed that I would never get to go to the "big kids" school (and I was doubly bummed when we moved to the Okanagan in the summer before I was supposed to start at DJ - yeah, go figure, I was ticked about having to leave the NWT to move to the Okanagan). I also remember how stressed the Grade 6 and 7 teachers and students looked. It wasn't easy for them to lose their school and it showed on their faces.
Like the Camsell fire 35 years ago, no students or staff were physically hurt in Monday's fire but there's pain on the inside and those feelings won't go away once classes resume at Gladstone. It's fortunate School District 57 was find a different location so quickly and keep the school population together but Gladstone isn't Highglen.
Just like the emotional attachment we have to our own houses, the halls and classrooms of that building on Voyageur Drive have deep and personal significance to the Highglen school community.
It's going to take a lot longer than a week before Gladstone feels like home.
