Thomas Haney Secondary, different by design

By Robert Mangelsdorf, Maple Ridge News

You could be forgiven for mistaking the wide hallways and large open spaces of Thomas Haney Secondary School for a university campus. Even as the Maple Ridge school celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, it’s still evident upon entering that is was designed from the ground up to be different.

And it remains that way.

“This is not your typical high school,” says principal Sean Nosek.

Twenty years ago, the school helped pioneer a new teaching model, one that offers fewer structured classes and more free time, where students learn at their own pace, and have more of a say in what they are learning.

“Schools haven’t changed much in 50 years,” says Nosek, who started out as a teacher at Thomas Haney 17 years ago. “But the world we’re preparing students for is very different.”

The self-paced model at Thomas Haney was designed to better foster creative problem-solving, time-management, and life-long learning.

Twenty years on, the model is as successful as ever.

The most obvious difference about Thomas Haney’s self-paced model is that students don’t attend classes like traditional schools.

While students start out at the school in Grade 8 under a fairly traditional school model, with five classes a day, in Grade 9 they are given more freedom, with fewer required classes to attend, and more discretionary time to complete their own work.

By Grade 12, much of a student’s schedule is wide open.

“I love it,” Grade 12 student Lisa Szostek, 16, said of the school’s self-paced model.

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