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-Nicole McArthur, RLC Parent
Rosseau Lake College delivers an inquiry-driven, experiential, and student-centered education on our extraordinary 56-acre campus. With small class sizes, our faculty ensures every student is known, seen, and heard. Our Foundation Years (Grade 7-8) Program develops an academic foundation through integrated, project-based learning. Dedicated middle school homeroom specialists use our campus as a “living laboratory,” and include the Seven Grandfather Teachings and Rosseau Roots values into the curriculum. This approach empowers our young learners to ask questions, collaborate effectively, and build the confidence to take intellectual risks, preparing them for our Senior School program.
In Grades 9-12, evidence-based teaching approaches encourage students to explore, innovate, and learn with confidence. Students who graduate from our program earn the globally-recognized Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD). STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) fosters interdisciplinary, inquiry-based learning that reflects our global complexity. At Rosseau Lake College, learning also integrates Indigenous perspectives, recognizing knowledge as interconnected, land-based, and rooted in culture and history. Through our Seven Generations Initiative, we aim to incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing across all subjects, creating relevant learning experiences that extend beyond the classroom and honour our history.
We challenge students to consider not only their personal relevance but also their global impact. Our linear-semester hybrid timetable model supports a balanced learning experience. Grades 9-10 students benefit from year-long courses in English, Maths, Outdoor Education, and Language Learning to support mastery, while Grades 11-12 have access to 18-week semestered university and post-secondary prerequisite courses. English language learners can also take advantage of English as a second language courses.
Our academic program blends rigorous academic courses with hands-on, experiential learning, developing real-world skills. Students have access to traditional subjects such as English Literary Studies, Mathematics, the Humanities, and Sciences while exploring unique offerings such as Wilderness First Aid, International Business Studies, Painting and Drawing, Entrepreneurship, Expedition Leadership, Philosophy, Construction Technology, and Green Industries. Our distinctive programs combine experiential learning with academic studies, creating an extraordinary learning opportunity.
Unique to RLC, and developed here, the Foundation Years is a program unto itself. Learning is collaborative, creative, and project-based, making use of the outdoor spaces including the lake, campus trails, and outdoor instructional facilities. For example, Math and Science classes are often combined studies, interacting with the curriculum through large-scale projects.
We believe that learning at this age group in particular is richest when active and, as often as possible, outside. Students intentionally build their 21st Century competencies—problem solving, collaboration, critical and creative thinking, resiliency, independence—while developing the Rosseau Roots in their own distinct ways.
In Grades 9 and 10, learning is active and very often outside. The sequencing of the curriculum is laid against the opportunities that the setting of the school provides. In Grade 9, for example, the geography curriculum is built around interactions with the physical environment. Per the provincial document, students are required to determine “the significance of ‘place’ as it relates to the natural environment, the human environment, and interactions within and between them.” Students at RLC experience those interactions first hand, on a daily basis, from wetlands to built environments. Specific geographic inquiries—from an analysis of rock formations, to biological processes—take place in the environment itself.
Similarly, in Grade 10 science, students are required to build an understanding of concepts in biology, chemistry, earth and space science, and physics, and how they relate to technology, society, and the environment. At RLC, the 56-acre campus includes a range of biomes, becoming what is essentially an expansive, immersive laboratory. Within it, students do everything from identifying species of wildlife, to examining Newton’s laws of motion as demonstrated in the motion of canoes on the water.
Post-secondary counselling begins in Grade 9 with one-on-one meetings with our guidance counsellor. At this point, the goal of academic counselling is chiefly investigative: to help students find outlets for their interests while trying new things and experiencing new areas of the curriculum. This allows them an opportunity to begin to define and refine their academic goals—finding what they gravitate toward as well as what they don’t—and to begin to build a plan toward post-secondary studies. This is a time for students to gain a better sense of who they are as learners, to identify the skills they have as well as those they wish to develop, and explore ways of deploying them in real-world settings.
In Grades 11 and 12, the academic program becomes more self-directed, with advisors and mentors nurturing students’ interests while also relating them back to the core curricular outcomes. Elongated blocks each afternoon offer time to focus, allowing students to explore their learning through experimentation and personal experience.
Academic counselling continues while becoming more intentional than in earlier years, guiding the students’ growing awareness of themselves as learners, and relating that awareness to specific post-secondary programs. The academic counsellor that they have been meeting with since Grade 9 helps them apply, and ultimately accept, their post-secondary offers. Every year, 100% of our graduates enter programs that reflect the goals and aspirations they’ve been developing over the course of years.
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