The Cortes Island Academy looks ahead to 2024/25

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - The Cortes Island Academy’s school year is over. Graduation was on January 25. Executive Director, Manda Aufochs Gillespie, just gave Cortes Currents an overview of the 2023/24 semester and a peek into the year that just about to begin.

“This year, the Cortes Island Academy was a lot of fun.  We learned a lot from our first year. So this year we really got to just revel in the model, the awesome kids and local knowledge holders that came out to make this year happen. It felt to me like a lot more fun, and a lot less trailblazing,” she began. 

“Some of the highlights included the students got to  a week at the incredible science laboratories of the HACI Institute with some of the HACI Institute's incredible research and science staff.  It's a  once in a lifetime experience that these students had, every single one of them.  They also got to work with people from the mother tree network and work alongside  Dr. Briony Penn, who's well known for her work with all sorts of things that relate to understanding the stories, flora, the fauna of our particular area. They got to be part of this mycoblitz that the Children's Forest put on, that had different mycologists from all around the region - including our local Paul Stamets. It was  a really beautiful year too with Klahoose participants.  We had a number of different Ayajuthem (Éy7á7juuthem) language opportunities.  Students got to participate in our first language trail that the Children's Forest helped curate. They identified different plant species all along this Sea to School Trail, drew the plants and wrote the names.”

“Really, really fun, neat projects and this doesn't even get into  the culminating projects that the students did.  If anybody has not yet seen them, I recommend enough going to the Cortesislandacademy.ca website and looking there at their videos. They did five videos this year with different Cortes elders.” 

(Jessie Louie, Duane Hansen, Nori Fletcher, Elizabeth Anderson and Christine Robinson.)

“These are incredible short  documentaries about the people in our community and some of the little known stories of what brought them here, who they are, et cetera. They are really, really beautiful. You will not regret watching them.”

“They also participated in creating podcasts this year again. They're playing right now on Cortes Radio, CKTZ 89. 5 FM, but you can also  listen to them all on the Cortes Island Academy website. Incredible pieces, everything from the wolf issue on Cortes and what we can do to live alongside wolves to what it means to live with dyslexia, or to question gender identity, et cetera. I really hope people will check it out.” 

“Other projects that they participated in this year,  with many of the scientists previously mentioned and,  some of the local knowledge holders and local naturalists like our field guides Kai Harvey and Tosh Harvey who grew up on the island. The students each made their own Cortes field guides.”

Manda Aufochs Gillespie: You can see all the edible berries an Cortes: what they look like, what they're called, what you can do with them. Many of the mushrooms that could be found here and what you can do with them et cetera.  These are  pieces that you would spend a great deal of money to buy and they're just there, for free,  on our website.”  


“I would also actually throw out that this year  the Cortes Island Academy  did a really cool thing that I was very excited about, which was to host the fall ‘Folk U’ radio series. Many of them were hosted at the Cortes Island School building.  I heard a lot from members of the community how much they deeply appreciated being able to spend a little bit of time with teenagers, hearing what's on their minds and being part of learning together.”