The typical high school student would be in a school classroom on a Thursday morning.

For 16 kids from across the Central Okanagan, their classroom was somewhere else.

Up in the trees.

The Rutland Senior Secondary School (RSS) forestry program gives the opportunity for students to learn real-life practical skills.

"The program has been running since 1990, so it has been around a long, long time," said Marshall Corbett, the forestry teacher. 

"It's district-wide, so any student in the Central Okanagan School District in grades 11 and 12 can take this class." 

Beginning in January, the year-long course tackles a wide-range of forestry disciplines, ending with students gaining an official Utility Arbourist certification, which can lead to immediate jobs out of high school.

"We are pretty unique in that we do such a broad range of different forestry-related tasks. We go on logging tours, we do some firefighting, tree planting, forest science, plant ID and genealogy."

For student Kaius Haraldson, the opportunity to be outside all day seemed like a no-brainer. 

"I had a buddy who did it and he told me that I was going to be climbing trees and using chainsaws," said Haraldson. "I said to myself that you can't beat that! I have been an outdoor kid my whole life, so, this is a pretty sweet course."

For others, like Patrick Caron, his reasoning was simple.

"It is fun, you get to climb trees all day," he said. "Plus you don't have to do much paperwork, you use hand saws and chainsaws and you get to really learn everything (about the forest) in this course."

Corbett praised the importance of having a program like this, as a way to keep several kids in school and have them learn in ways that are unlike typical high school classes.

"Maybe regular schooling wasn't the best for (these kids), so for them to come out here and learn a lot of life skills in a practical applied scenario can be life-changing for them. It's great to see kids that maybe didn't love school out here happy and loving what they are doing and loving learning."

In addition, the connections the students made with each other really stood out.  

"Now, we are a group of friends who will probably never be apart," said Haraldson. "We will probably always stay in contact with one another."

"It is like a brotherhood" echoed Caron. "Some of us have mental disabilities, but we are like a family in this class because we work so close to each other."

Corbett also mentioned how they are also recruiting for new students.

"The best thing you can do if you are interested in taking this class is to talk to your guidance councillor in your school and set up a job shadow," said Corbett. "We take them out for the day, and have them be an active participant. That is the lifeblood of our program, so the more job shadows we have, the better off it is."

"It is the coolest thing in education, in my opinion!"

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