A Legacy of Support, Relationships, and Innovative Education

Bakerview Centre for Learning, our School District’s Alternate Secondary School, is a tight-knit community of staff and outside agencies. We provide students with an alternative academic educational experience where social, emotional, and physical well-being are seen as critical for success—more on that later.         

Bakerview used to be known to many as Abbotsford Continuing Education, and if you were to Google “ACE,” you wouldn’t find anything related. But if you were to pop into the school and ask a few of the staff about the “ACE” days, they would invite you to take a seat and stay a while. In that conversation, you would learn that before ACE, there was a tiny program called “Reach” run by Zeke Doerksen and George Boer in the late 80s. It was a remote learning style near the Huntingdon border and serviced kids throughout the city and eventually combined with “PEP,” a Part-time Education Program, to form ACE in the early 90s. You would also learn that ACE was transitioned to Bakerview in 2008. Moreover, you would learn that one of our current Youth Care Workers, Heather, worked for that program and has been a part of the staff ever since because she loves it so much.

The school environment frequently changes with continuous intakes of high school students throughout the year, who, in my opinion, are some of the most interesting and vibrant kids in our community. Amid all the frenzy, however, are the seasoned few staff members who have been a part of this school's evolution, and this story is as much about them as it is about the students.

The combined years of the educational experience of staff who were at REACH, ACE, and Bakerview in this photo (we are missing one) would approximately be 210 years! Some of the heroes you see here are in our community and committed their work lives to this amazing place. These teachers, youth care workers, and office staff have supported hundreds of students who often need extra support. There are endless inspirational stories of students that pour out of these doors, and in our line of work, it comes down to one critical thing: relationships.

Culture is contagious, and it doesn’t take long before students become accustomed to the positive nuances of Bakerview, which stem from the staff's day-to-day approach.

Our staff and students continue to push the status quo and explore new ways of learning and understanding, whether through AI, place-based, or project-based learning, just to name a few. The one common denominator is that Bakerview thrives on its positive relationships with each other. If a visitor were to spend a few minutes here, they would realize how special this place is, which is evident by the people who work here.

DAN VILLAGE, VICE-PRINCIPAL
Bakerview Centre for Learning