Community Life

LEARNING THROUGH RESIDENTIAL LIFE

Life at Pearson College is energetic and busy, and full of choices. Each fall 200 students arrive at the College to begin nine months of intense learning and sharing while pursuing the College’s rigorous academic and extracurricular programs.

It is an experiment, after all. Put 40 students from all over the world into the same residence, put four to a room from four strikingly different cultures, and see what happens.  – Jack Matthews

There are 5 two-storey student residences, with female students living on one floor and male students on the other. The rooms deliberately combine students from very different parts of the world, and place the four in a room of no huge dimensions. The possibilities for friction are right there in the plan—as are the possibilities to develop understanding through everyday interaction and the sharing of joys and sorrows. By learning to regulate their own lives, students come to a fuller understanding of others. Perhaps Lester Pearson got it right when he wrote:

How can there be peace without people understanding each other, and how can this be if they don’t know each other? – Lester B. Pearson, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, 1957

And how can people know each other if they don’t live together? Students bring with them their prejudices and intolerances. They reveal them in all their rawness and at times they appear right on the surface. At other times they are barely visible. It would be utterly naïve to pretend that the College rids students of all prejudice. Rather, it makes them acutely aware of its existence which, in turn, makes them re-evaluate their attitudes towards one another.

At the core of the Pearson program is a need for students to be conscious about personal well-being and the well-being of the community. Students work hard to ensure that they receive adequate sleep, regular physical exercise, and time for reflection.

Students also participate in our community, which includes thinking about how to interact with others and taking responsibility to build a respectful, joyful community.

STUDENT HANDBOOK

Student Support

A member of the faculty or staff and his or her family (the housefellows) live in an attached apartment and play an integral part in the life of each residence. The residences each have a common room or living room for use by the students.

Other adults are available to help students in different ways. Each student has an advisor to assist him or her with balancing the overall program. This person is usually a teacher, and is available for personal and academic support. The school employs a full time nurse who has access to a full range of medical professionals.

With the goal of creating a healthy community for living, learning and working together towards the mission of the college, the Dean of Students is responsible for the overall student well-being. This involves collaboration with housefellows and other campus adult residents, advisors, the host family coordinator and other members of the community as a whole.

Helping Out Around Campus

Students participate in cleaning our campus and in running the College kitchen. Students also participate in Village Service and assist around the campus in many ways. All students  take a basic First Aid course in their first year, and other students enhance these skills through programs such as First Aid Service and Outdoor First Aid.

Religious and Spiritual Practice

Our students are from a wide range of cultural and religious backgrounds. Students are encouraged to deepen their sense of spiritual values through inter-faith events, special programs on the religions of the world and opportunities to worship in the surrounding communities. A largely student-built Spiritual Centre was opened in April 2005 and offers a peaceful location for reflection and religious practice.

The College Calendar

There are two terms at Pearson College. The first term of the College year commences at the end of August or beginning of September and ends in mid-December. All students leave the campus for a three-week winter holiday in December and classes resume in early January. The school year ends in late May following the International Baccalaureate examinations. Specific dates are provided to students upon selection.

Respect for Surroundings

It is no accident that Pearson College is placed in a beautiful yet fragile environment.The proximity of the ocean and the forest is a focal point of life on campus and not something we take for granted.

We must, on our campus, live in harmony with our environment and encourage students to develop an appreciation for the natural beauty around us.

In that lies much of the importance of the College which is neither wildly experimental nor wildly unorthodox in its methods and aims. In its insistence on balance and proportion in all matters, in its adherence to the precept of suaviter in modo, fortiter in re (gently in manner, strongly in deed), it is, in fact, closer to the old classical ideal. At the same time, the College is introducing into education young people capable of making independent, intellectual judgments who may, in time, come to constitute the most precious resource of the free world—educated, compassionate youth.

LEARNING TO LIVE RESPONSIBLY

Since the College’s founding, all aspects of life at the College have been guided by a simple principle: consideration for others. To view the College's policies on these matters, please see our page on learning to live responsibly.