Island Pacific School set to welcome new principal this fall

Island Pacific School will begin the school year in September with a new principal for the first time in seven years.

Brad Carter will be at the helm when students return to IPS in the fall, succeeding Scott Herrington who has served as the school’s principal since 2017. Carter arrived on the island this month after leaving her home in Tokyo, Japan, but this isn’t her first time at Bowen or even the school itself. He lived and worked here before, including several years at IPS as an English teacher and eventually deputy head of school.

Carter, originally from Calgary but raised in Vancouver, earned a teaching degree at UBC but entered the hospitality industry shortly after university. After landing in Bowen, he came to manage Beggar’s Purse, a restaurant in the building that now houses Tuscany in the Cove. When Brad looked to return to teaching to allow him to spend more time with his family, the school’s principal at the time, Ted Spear, told him that IPS was hiring, and he made the decision to join the team.

After several years at IPS, where his children frequented the halls of the institution, Brad Carter decided to see how education was provided in other parts of the world. His long overseas journey began with THINK Global School, an experimental traveling high school with no fixed base, and over the years he traveled through countries like Canada, Australia, Singapore and most recently Japan. Brad has also worked with Apple to lead educational initiatives around the world and currently does consulting work with NoTosh.

Last year, it was IPS that caught Carter’s attention, when he learned Herrington would be resigning at the end of the school year. Brad said the timing was right, and of course the story was there, to seriously consider a return to Bowen.

“The school has given a lot to me and my family, it has done a wonderful job with my children and given me an incredible experience which launched my career in education, which has been very rewarding” , Carter said. “I have had the chance to travel all over the world and it has been so exciting and so satisfying. “It was an opportunity to give back,” he said, adding that he was eager to see what learning strategies he learned around the world could be successfully implemented at home. IPS.

Carter is encouraged by the current state of the school, which he calls “one of the best schools in the world.” Much of that is due to the staff and programming, which the school’s new principal says are often far ahead of their peers.

“A lot of what IPS does is way ahead of most of the others… I’ve worked in schools and they throw out ideas and I think, this is interesting, IPS has been doing this for 20 years,” he says.

But Carter adds that the school has something else that he considers most important to forming a successful school.

“It’s the connection to the community,” Carter says. “Do they have the support of the community? Do they support their communities? … If the leadership understands the community and the school has a really strong, rich connection to the community, that school is going to be great… IPS is like that.”

Brad sees this in the community events IPS is involved in, like participating in this month’s first public Pride event on Bowen or the long-standing work with Covenant House in Vancouver, as well as shared resources including use of the Colin Ruloff Community Field House and a partnership with neighbors. Cates Hill Chapel. Carter hopes to continue to develop these relationships in the future.

Carter says this community involvement also creates more well-rounded students. He explains that this is especially important for children’s development in middle school. “You’re going through more changes at that time than at any other time in your life except from birth to about age two. It’s an extraordinary period of development, and we know a lot about that…you’re starting to individuate and become your own person.”

It’s also the first time kids are going out into the world on their own, and Brad says it’s no small responsibility to make sure they’re prepared. “I think the job of middle school is to create a space where they can enter this world for the very first time in their lives in a safe way, but also allow them to start to feel what the world is like,” he says.

Although not yet in office, Carter spent much of June at the school reconnecting and discussing the transition with Herrington, as well as planning the end-of-year kayaking excursion from the school on Gambier Island. He has also been busy adapting to the enormous differences between life in Tokyo – with a metropolitan population the size of Canada – and that of rural Bowen Island, and his pace of life on the other end of the spectrum. This includes no 24-hour catering and delivery times that extend beyond the afternoon itself.

While he’s doing this over the summer, Brad says he’s looking forward to catching up with old friends, exploring the local trails, seeing how the pub is doing and having a coffee or chat with anyone who wants to. find out more about the school. And finally, in September, Carter’s tenure at Carter Road School will officially begin.