We acknowledge that our school is located on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Syilx Nation.  Since 1982 École Beairsto Elementary has been home to the Vernon School District’s early French immersion program. It is the largest single-track gr. 1-7 French immersion school in British Columbia and the largest elementary school in Vernon. At Ecole Beairsto we strive to create a sense of belonging for each child while learning in French.

The school has 600+ students, 26 divisions and a vibrant francophone culture.   The school caters to a diverse population comprised of the entire school district.  We are centrally located in Vernon on 27th Street, minutes walking distance from the downtown core. Our location gives many opportunities for walking field trips to the museum, outdoor skating, parks and art galleries. The building itself, a beautiful turn of the century brick edifice, is one of the oldest structures in Vernon, known originally as Vernon Central School (1905).

Depuis 1982, l’Ecole Beairsto est une école d`immersion française à voie unique.  C`est la plus grande école élémentaire dans le district et la plus grande école à voie unique en Colombie-Britannique.  En ce moment il y a plus que 600 élèves de la 1e à la 7e année.

At Ecole Beairsto students show their success in many ways.  Student success looks different for each child.  Each child is progressing at their own rate. Each child is happy and curious when feeling success. However, each path to success can be different.

Some examples of success are:
Students are happily engaged, challenged, students want to come to school, and students are self-regulated.
Students are safe, happy, kind, resilient, and curious.
Students feeling welcome and that they are a part of the class and school community. Knowing that they are citizens of the school, community and world.
Happy to speak French in a collaborative and positive manner.
Having knowledge and pride of their heritage.
Sense that they have a future.
Students feel they belong, know they are important and cared for.
Students are working to the best of their abilities, seeing growth, and the desire to pursue further learning.
Improving their foundational skill – exploring through the competencies and the First Peoples Principles of Learning.

The ultimate goal is for learners to employ the core competencies every day in school and in life, and for the core competencies to be an integral part of the learning in all curriculum areas.  Core competencies are sets of intellectual, personal, social and emotional proficiencies that all students need to develop in order to engage in deep and life-long learning.

A Beairsto chaque élève est unique et a du potentiel.  On aide chaque enfant à avoir du succès.  On encourage chaque personne a vouloir apprendre, et apprécier les cultures de notre pays.  Chaque enfant aime apprendre et sait communiquer et créer avec respect.

Our belief in celebrating the French culture unites staff and families alike, providing our students with a rich cultural immersion.  The First Peoples principles of learning are included throughout the culture of the school with students presenting at assemblies and school wide events and learning.  We also have guest speakers and are lucky to go out on the land to learn about the history of the place we live on and the Sylix people.  Our Indigenous Support workers share ideas and ways to incorporate the principles with all teachers. The school houses are now based on the Four food chiefs.  The children are learning about how names were given and what each food chief represents.

Our library has been transformed into a learning common incorporating literature and technological activities for our students.  The room is vibrant and offers many opportunities for collaboration between teachers and students.  The teacher librarian continues to improve the learning commons and is working on incorporating more maker-space and virtual field trips and honing the design for learning comfortably. We have a special spot for our indigenous book collection.  Our teacher librarian collaborates with teachers in our school and in the district.

Our urban garden provides students an opportunity to connect with nature, to  develop a sense of stewardship and responsibility outside of the classroom.  Students also learn about plants native to the Okanagan and the water cycle in the garden.  There is a special section in the garden for learning about local traditional plants.  We are working on planting more trees, an outdoor learning area and more possibilities for students to use the outdoor spaces surrounding our building.

The variety of behavior support programs at our school include;  Zones of Regulation, Roots of Empathy, Superflex, bucketfilling. The overall theme is to follow the golden rule and to be kind all while speaking French.  🙂 We have a team called `les mots gentils`  that works on delivering notes to students. They deliver these notes and film some of them.  These positive messages and kind notes are shared at assemblies and also on the announcements.

The School includes the stories of the  Four Food chiefs of The Okanagan to help us learn more about being a better citizen and also to learn more about a part of the history of the Sylix and the importance of their stories.  Our school emblem is now a coyote or Senklip and we strive to be smart like him.  We were fortunate to work with David Wilson and he created a painting of a coyote for our school.  This is in our front hallway as one enters along with a felt art piece of the story of creation as told by the Sylix.  

Our daily “Radio Beairsto”, where student volunteers address the school over the PA in French and Sylixen.  News items may include, the weather, saying of the week, song of the week and new Sylixen words – sometimes we also do an activity to practise the Sylixen language.

To build success for our students Beairsto has:

Teacher Collaboration by grade level to focus on the learning of our students and the support of each other
Collaboration at multi levels regularly to plan together
Meetings to delve deeper into the data
Give students more of a voice and platform to express their goals and needs
Extra EA time given to our students who are not yet meeting in reading or oral French out of Federal French Funds
Early targeted intervention and support for emergent learners in self-regulating as well as academic areas
Emotional and mental health support
Collaboration and a united approach from staff
School wide indigenous activities
Grade level indigenous activities
Buddy systems
Support for teachers to help with emotional programmes

Continue to work on our outdoor space to help with learning
Have clear expectations for oral French and a clear assessment
Review of assessment practices to help create more cohesion within grade groups and across levels
Increase opportunities to strengthen the classroom and schoolwide community- School community building through assemblies and other areas to help with celebrating success and common language.