The West Shore Local Hero Awards are back! You can find this year’s special feature in the March 16 edition of the Goldstream Gazette or online under e-editions. Stay tuned for more on each of this year’s honourees, you will also be able to read their stories online at goldstreamgazette.com/tag/local-hero-awards.
John Lyall has been the vice-principal at Westshore Secondary for two years and in that time he has worked to instill aspects of connection and community in his students.
As an alternative school, Lyall said his school tries to put connections before curriculum, focusing on the social and emotional needs of the children that spend their days learning.
“We want to ensure that students know that we care about them and we would provide a safe place for them here at the school,” he said. “While we want to make sure that kids are leaving here prepared, they need to know that we care about them first.”
Lyall doesn’t speak of his work in an individual way, but opts for “we” whenever he talks of the impact his presence at the school has made on his students.
In his description of the school’s environment, he notes several times the importance of welcoming kids, keeping them safe and ensuring they know they are cared for.
READ MORE: Colwood school, Sooke School District promote healing, reconciliation education
One way of doing that was by changing the school’s name from Westshore Centre for Learning and Training to Westshore Secondary and focusing on their mascot, the STKAYE, or wolf.
“We try to talk about the positive qualities of the wolf and togetherness and taking care of each other,” Lyall said.
As Westshore Secondary has a population with over 40 per cent of students who self-identify as Indigenous, Lyall works to implement Indigenous ways of knowing and learning into the curriculum.
As a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation, Lyall said encouraging students to have a strong sense of place and identity are a few of his priorities.
“We want students to have a strong sense of place,” he said. “In Aboriginal communities, we always introduce who you are and where you come from, that is how we kind of place ourselves in the world. So what we try to do in the school, is we kind of lend those similar traits of a sense of place and a sense of identity.”
Lyall is also working to pass on his passion for Indigenous artistic traditions to his students. This year he and students are working on a drum project on the Sooke campus, making and painting drums.
“That is something I’ve enjoyed, going into classrooms and speaking about ways of knowing that are represented through artistic form,” Lyall said. “It is one of the things i’ve used to connect with our students.”
Lyall’s passion for education extends beyond the school setting as well, and he works with an Indigenous youth team called Thunder Rugby.
The principles he uses with his students at Westshore Secondary make their way onto the pitch as well, where he focuses on family and connection.
“A lot of the things and the traits of rugby - discipline and respect and enjoyment - are traits that are also consistent with Indigenous ways of knowing of being together,” Lyall said. “When we come together, we try to implement the philosophy of we are all one.”
‘We are all one,’ is an Indigenous philosophy that Lyall said he shapes much of his work around, and it is one that has helped him strengthen his connection with his students and his team.
“We are all one and we need to try to implement those ethos’ and simple teachings to move us forward,” he said. “Those are the sort of things we are doing well at Westshore Secondary - implementing that we are a group or, you know - a community or a family and let’s move together.”
READ MORE: 2023 Local Hero Awards
hollie.ferguson@vicnews.com
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