Jo-Anne Kingstone

Jo-Anne has enriched the School with her infectious, friendly, and enthusiastic leadership. Her appeal to both staff and students is largely due to her ability to greet every person and every situation in a highly positive manner. Jo-Anne has been teaching English for twenty-two years. Her boarding school experience has taken her from Ontario to Nova Scotia and, most recently, to The Webb Schools in California. Especially interested in the boarding school experience, Jo-Anne believes that boarding schools should seek to address and honour the whole person—mind, body and spirit. She learned a great deal about what makes a good school in California where she developed the residential curriculum, worked with student leaders and advisors and did extensive study in brain- and gender-based education.

Jo-Anne has brought a different perspective to Shawnigan. “It is about coming in at an administrative level. I saw that in a 90-year-old institution like Shawnigan, people knew what they were doing. I thought, this is an amazing place! It was important for me to find out what was organic at the School and to work with that and build on it.” In her myriad responsibilities, Jo-Anne has found time to focus on student energy and communication—to create from that spirit, student leaders who will take the historical Prefect leadership beyond its current purview. She is also molding strengths in students from grades 8-11 with her round-table leadership programme. In a teenage society, she wants to make it “okay” to be a leader, something students often shy away from because of peer perception and lack of confidence.

Jo-Anne’s belief in physical as well as intellectual and spiritual health is evident in her personal life as well as in her professional one. She runs 4 or 5 times a week and has recently completed the Island “Gut Buster” series. With both of her children, Sarah (Kaye’s ’07) and Ben (Ripley’s ’08), at the School and husband, Jim, a teacher at Shawnigan, Jo-Anne also makes time for her spiritual fitness revelling in family life where ever possible. “My happiest moments are spent with my family—just sharing a meal or being together.”

That said, Jo-Anne also feels a part of the larger family of the School. “It is a wonderful feeling to be ‘proud’ of someone else’s child—to see a student’s success whether it be a big accomplishment, or just a really good one.”