CLARKSON SECONDARY SCHOOL

'Clarkson Secondary School' is a high school located in the Clarkson community of Mississauga, Ontario; designated Ward 8 by the Peel District School Board. Though its students may gripe about its age, Clarkson is nonetheless an average school in both population (11th, at 1572 students) and age (13th, built in 1969)^[1] of the entire Peel range of 28 public secondary schools. Because of it's close proximity, Clarkson has somewhat of a rivalry with Lorne Park Secondary School.

Contents

School Design

Original Plan

Demise of the Open-Concept Design

Extracurriculars

Cancer Drive

Programs

References

External links

School Design

Original Plan

Clarkson was designed like many 1970s-era schools in Ontario as part of an experimental “open-concept” design. On the ground floor, the cafeteria and auditorium are central to the design; a tech/drama wing, staff room, and gymnasiums are placed on the east side, while a classroom wing adorns the west side. These were open to the hallways, to other classrooms, separated only by pillars. Other schools using the same concepts include The Woodlands Secondary School, Bayridge Secondary School, and St. Thomas More Catholic School.

Demise of the Open-Concept Design

Sometime in between then and the late 1990s, the design was abandoned for a more traditional approach, as the open-concept design proved deficient in many aspects: notable, the leakage of noise from other classes.^[2] The school to this day has very few proper walls in its main section, with thin, temporary walls shielding the view of other classes. The sound spill still remains a problem in many of the school’s classes.

Extracurriculars

Clarkson's sports teams include football, cricket, baseball, and cheerleading teams; as well as many after-school groups, including the anime club, the PALS, and several drama presentations per year. A full list is available on the Clarkson website. The local Studenwrites student-written drama festival is held in the school's 160-seat theatre, as is a division of the Sears Ontario Drama Festival. The school's paper is the Clarkson Clarion.

Cancer Drive

For part of the school year, the Clarkson Cancer Drive is hosted annually in late April as a fundraiser for Camp Oochigeas, a camp for cancer-stricken children. The 2006 year raised $26,500 over a period of one week from a myriad of fundraising events run by individual classrooms, as well as the "dunk tank", "milk chug", "rent-a-friend".

Programs

★ French Immersion

★ ESL

References

1. http://www.peel.edu.on.ca/schools/rapidfacts/clksonss.htm
2. http://www.cllrnet.ca/Docs/RESOURCES/Lay_paper_02_international-modified.pdf

External links

★ http://clarksonss.peelschools.org/

★ http://www.peelschools.org