About 100 people turned out Wednesday evening to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Deer Meadow School.
The event featured reminiscences from current and former staff and recognized employees for long-standing service, including eight teachers and support staff who have been at the school from its inception.
Chuck Brinton, the former vice-principal of the school from 1992 to 1998, said the school has always had a strong sense of community, from parents to students and staff. He said the support staff at the school have always been a key part of the team.
“All those different people were vital to the school,” he said.
When the school first opened, there was no formal gymnasium – only the stage was available for physical education classes - and no playground - students had to be escorted to a neighbouring area for recess and other breaks.
In an interview following the formal program, Brinton said the need for the school was quite apparent at the time, as existing schools were beginning to get crowded. Dot Negropontes, the first principal of the school, did a lot of research on what was then quite a new idea for a school in this area – encompassing Grades 5 to 7.
“(The community was) the impetus behind getting a middle school going, the whole idea of cooperative learning and the middle school philosophy, and they had tremendous input into the structure of the school, the extra things that were put in and they were involved in virtually every step of everything,” Brinton said.
Brinton said when the school first opened up there was a lot of enthusiasm from everyone involved – parents, administrators, teachers and students – because it was a new and revolutionary way of educating students in Central Alberta.
“The years that I spent here were unbelievable years. They were the best years of my whole career because it was a new philosophy, it was a brand new school, it was a brand new staff, it was everybody working together to sort of institute this new philosophy and it was just a lot of fun. It was just a great place to be,” he said.
