News & updates

List of 5 news stories.

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  From the Hatchery to Nature

  6/6/2025
  After raising them from eggs, Shawnigan students headed to the creeks that cross our campus last week to release tiny coho salmon fry into the wild.

   

  While it marks the beginning of a journey for the little fish, it also marks the end of several months of care the Shawnigan students in Science 9 and Environmental Science 11 and 12 have put into raising them in the Mark Hobson Hatchery.

   

  That began last fall, when salmon from Hartl Creek were used as broodstock: eggs were harvested from the females and fertilized with semen from the males. Those eggs hatched into alevin, then grew into fry in March, at which point they were transferred into larger tanks of water and cared for until they were ready for release into Hartl and Shawnigan creeks.

   
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  This I Believe

  6/6/2025
  Every year, the “This I Believe” evening of speeches by graduating students showcases a wide range of topics and emotions as Shawnigan students bare their souls by reading aloud pieces they have written about topics close to their hearts.

   

  For Head of English Mrs. Sarah Bevel, in her first year at the School, it was an opportunity to see how close of a community Shawnigan is that the students are comfortable being so vulnerable in front of their peers.

   

  “It made me feel like the students really do feel like they are part of a family,” Mrs. Bevel said.

   
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  BC Film Fest Inspires

  5/30/2025
  Expect big things from Shawnigan’s film programs in the future after an inspiring trip to the BC Student Film Festival in Vancouver last weekend. Although the students were nominated for four awards, they didn’t bring home any hardware, but they did find a lot of motivation and enthusiasm for next year.

   

  “The cool thing was that, on the ferry back, the juniors were buzzing,” film instructor Mr. Aren Goodman said. “They saw a variety of films over there, and they were revved up and ready to go for next year.”

   

  The BC Student Film Festival is hosted annually by the Vancouver Film School and SFU School for the Contemporary Arts. The 10 students from Shawnigan who attended were a mix of curricular and 360 (arts and activities) students, some of whom have been in film for several years, and some of whom are brand new this year. The group was made up of two boys and eight girls, which Mr. Goodman said was a refreshing change for a program that has been largely male-dominated in the recent past.

   
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  Theoretical Becomes Tangible

  5/30/2025
  Math and Mud? Calculus and Clay?

   

  AP Calculus students took over the Clayworks lab this week to turn mathematical functions into clay models and bridge the gap between the theoretical and the tangible.

   

  Students began in the classroom by choosing a function, then used integration to calculate the volume of revolution – the three-dimensional space that would be taken up if the calculus graph were turned into a plane and rotated on an axis. Moving to the Clayworks lab, the students then tried to create a vessel with a volume that matches the function they chose.

   

  “This way, they understand it; they don’t just learn it,” said Clayworks instructor Ms. Carol Harvey, who collaborated with math teacher Mr. Max Sterelyukhin on the project.

   
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  "Dearest World" – Poetry Competition Success

  5/22/2025
  Kenzie G. is continuing to cement herself as one of Vancouver Island’s best young poets.

   

  The Grade 12 student at Shawnigan Lake School was named a finalist in the MC Youth Visual Poetry & Spoken Word Competition for the second time in the last three years. She previously placed third in the 2023 contest.

  
  Kenzie admitted she wasn’t expecting much when she sent in her submission, titled “Dearest World.” With the deadline looming, she ended up writing the poem while suffering from a concussion. She then had to record herself reading it aloud and turn it into a video in a short time span.

   

  “I went from writing it to producing the film in two and a half hours,” Kenzie explained.

   
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