News
The Sorting Hat Speaks
All Grade 8 students start their Shawnigan Journeys with a year in Samuel House, but after that nurturing introduction to the School, they move on to join one of the “big” Houses for the next four years.
This year’s Grade 8s – the first cohort to spend their entire Grade 8 year in Samuel House, which opened midway through the 2023-24 school year – found out last Saturday which House will be their home on campus for the rest of their time at Shawnigan during the highly anticipated annual Sorting Hat Ceremony.
Boarding houses are a fundamental aspect of the Shawnigan experience, and special homes away from home for our students. The peers they live with and the House staff become family for them during their time at the School. For each student, their House automatically becomes “the best House on campus.”
Shawnigan has often been compared to a well-known school of witchcraft and wizardry from a tremendously popular series of novels and films about a young boy wizard who doesn’t need to be named. In that series, students are assigned to their own houses in the school by a talking hat. Shawnigan has embraced many of those comparisons, and our own ceremony mirrors the one in the books, with students taking turns sitting under the hat, where they are told their House assignments. Executive Director of Admissions Mrs. Gaynor Samuel and Head of School Mr. Larry Lamont preside over the ceremony.
Once they learn their new House assignments, Grade 8s receive a T-shirt in the colour of their new House, and are welcomed to the House by current Grade 11s. In their own twist this year, Copeman’s House conducted a signing ceremony, not unlike when athletes ink their commitments to university teams. Current Copeman’s students cheered emphatically as the Grade 8s “signed on” to join the House for the next four years. From there, the Grade 8s joined their new Houses for inter-House rugby – the final inter-House competition of the year – sporting their new colours and cheering on their new housemates. Some even got in the action on the field.
House assignments are anything but accidental, as Mrs. Samuel and the Admissions team go through a painstaking process to determine the best situation for each student. Many factors are considered – including if a parent or sibling already has connections to a specific House – in an operation Mrs. Samuel has compared to completing a jigsaw puzzle.
We acknowledge with respect the Coast Salish Peoples on whose traditional lands and waterways we live, learn and play. We are grateful for the opportunity to share in this beautiful region, and we aspire to healthy and respectful relationships with those who have lived on and cared for these lands for millennia.
Shawnigan Lake School is an independent co-educational boarding school for ages 13 –18 on Canada’s beautiful Pacific Coast. Our diverse, interdisciplinary and innovative programming helps shape the next generation of global leaders.
