Many businesses have had to pivot fast to deal with the lockdowns forced upon us by COVID-19. But PEN Education Centre’s case must surely be considered a tough one that has emerged with a silver lining. After two years of preparation and investment, the private enrichment school opened its doors in January 2020, directly opposite the Oakville GO station on Cross Ave. PEN Education Centre opened to provide before and after-school care that supported the K-12 curriculum with small structured academic core subject classes on a daily basis supported with art, music and computer science in a technology-rich learning environment.
Six weeks later, COVID-19 blew up the entire business model. In-person learning became impossible, and schools were closed. Founder Becky Zhang who had bootstrapped the start-up business, found her vision of a technology-rich learning environment and investment in cutting edge classroom equipment positioned them well to convert to an exclusively online learning model. In one way, COVID restrictions accelerated plans to provide a robust classroom learning environment from anywhere: what Ms. Zhang calls “Decampusization”.
Success came by putting in long days to ensure students received the best possible instruction and content under the conditions of a lockdown. The result is 24 faculty members serving over 150 students, the majority of whom have two or more enrolments. This is done with a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous learning, and we are now poised to move to in-person education again: just in time to help Oakville children prepare for September after a very challenging school year.
While tutoring is part of the solution, structured academic classes are offered in Math, French, English, Music, Visual arts, animation, digital art, and computer programming, as well as in the areas where the public system has reduced emphasis under financial pressure in recent years, such as music and art.. When it comes to computer programming, there is instruction from Scratch right through to Python and even gaming platforms. To support the math programme, there is a chess club in the school.
The approach to PEN programming is interdisciplinary: emphasizing the way different subjects interact, for example, maths and music, traditional visual art and digital art, right through to Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality: in the AR/VR area, they have an outstanding resource in PEN faculty member and Carleton Professor Sam Qorbani, whose research area is Augmented and Virtual Reality in education.
The school’s philosophy is to help children be healthy and happy learners. Many of the students are part of recent immigrant families, whose experience of education has been high pressure and intense. The school supports the aspirational goals of these parents while creating a bridge to the balance required for a happy, productive life in their new country. PEN has been particularly attractive to Asian students and wants a more diverse student body to help with the transition to the Canadian multicultural environment. Becky Zhang helps her school’s immigrant parents trust Canadian public education, which she believes is among the best in the world. She wants them to understand the virtues of the Canadian system, which she sees as producing excellent academic outcomes in a healthy way. The vision is to get the best of the client families’ own cultures and the Canadian culture, and along the way, to make a better Oakville. PEN Education Centre programmes are designed to support all children to get the maximum benefit from the public education system and to supplement it with enriched programming.
The goal is to create self-motivated students and create in them an appetite for learning.
Born in Beijing, Founder Becky Zhang came to Canada 22 years ago and is a product of the Canadian University system. Upon graduating from Cape Breton University (CBU), Ms. Zhang was employed in International Partnership Programs, where she was responsible for opening the Beijing recruitment office for CBU. She later joined a large education group in China focused on delivering K-12 education in English, including International Baccalaureate (IB) and Advanced Placement (AP) programmes. Ms. Zhang has now lived in Oakville for 12 years, a community she is proud to serve with her school.
All faculty at PEN have at least a Bachelor’s degree in the subject they are instructing in, and many have much more education. Faculty includes a number of University and College professors from Carleton, Brock, McMaster, York, Seneca, Mohawk and Centennial. With the beginning of a new Early Childhood Programme, PEN can now accept students from infants to adults. Students interested in advanced preparation for university receive instruction from university professors—some have even studied at PEN Education Centre with the same professor they will work with when they go on to post-secondary education.
The PEN Education Centre is open for in-person learning for the summer. Summer programmes are designed to prepare children to be ready for September, which will be an especially valuable opportunity this year, with the uneven impacts of COVID-19 on learning and socialization.