This Comox Valley school has seen its tourism training course evolve into a multi-faceted program that involves both the local community and international partners.
Highland Secondary School has a total population of about 700 students in Grades 10 through 12, and a long tradition of tourism programming. It was BC's original pilot school for secondary-level tourism curriculum, launched in January 1981—which means that January 2006 marks the program's 25th anniversary.
Highland was also a pilot school for the national Canadian Academy of Travel & Tourism in 1995 and has been a runner-up for the Conference Board of Canada's Business Education Partnership Award. The tourism program now boasts more than 150 industry partners throughout the Comox Valley, who function as advisers and work-placement opportunities.
There are usually some 300 requests for places in the program's four courses (Tourism 10 through 12 and Hospitality 12) each academic year. "We try to be inclusive and accommodate everyone who wants in,"says Bob Thompson, the school's career program coordinator. As a result, one third of Highland's graduation class in 2004-2005 had gone through the tourism program.
The curriculum extends far beyond routine classroom learning. Highland now has an established partnership with Wolsingham Comprehensive in the north of England, and has played host to a group of its tourism students each year. Since 1996, Highland students have participated in immersion conferences that require running complex events from scratch. The first year, says Thompson, "they literally took over a local hotel and ran their own conference for about 30 hours. Every kid was given a job. They did everything, from making up their own rooms, to presenting their own speakers, to preparing their own food." In 1998, 156 students—from Highland, from schools across Canada and a contingent of 50 from England—participated in a similar two-day conference atop Mount Washington. In 2003, a connection was made with the Broadmoor resort near Colorado Springs, CO, which evolved into a live-video conference with its directors of communications and staff training. An ongoing relationship encouraged Broadmoor to share its training materials with Highland's students.
These occasional events are good learning experiences, says Thompson, but perhaps more important are the large number of community projects that the students participate in on a regular basis. Again, the purpose is to immerse them in real-life tourism and hospitality scenarios. "Last year, we did the Comox Valley Foundation banquet, a $200-a-plate black-tie event," he says. "The kids got to work with some of the best chefs. We also did a senior citizens volunteer recognition banquet. We turn the kids over to the pros, and the kids work for them. The idea is that they get the industry immersion in a short, sharp hit. Putting on a banquet like that can be fairly stress-laden. It also gives something back to the community and shows the kids that that's a good thing to do. It's an underpinning for their ongoing work experience."
In 2005, Thompson was recognized by the Town of Comox with an honorary citizen's award for dedication and innovation in education and business. It was an acknowledgement, he says, of "the work I do to put kids into the community, getting work experience in large numbers."
