Chinook Winds Adventist Academy is an

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in Pennsylvania, United States * Independentes (English: Independents), a Portuguese artist ...

K–12 K–12, from kindergarten to 12th grade, is an English language expression that indicates the range of years of publicly supported primary and secondary education found in the United States and Canada, which is similar to publicly supported sch ...

Christian school A Christian school is a Parochial school, religious school run on Christianity, Christian principles or by a Christian organization. These schools often include religious education and worship in their curriculum. They may also have a distinct Ch ...

located in

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

, Canada, that is affiliated with the

Seventh-day Adventist Church The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sa ...

History

Chinook Winds Adventist Academy was originally established in 1945 as Calgary Seventh-day Adventist School in the basement of a Calgary Seventh-day Adventist Church as an

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...

. In the early days, the school frequently moved to different locations around the city of Calgary. In 1974, the school moved to the site on which it currently stands, a twenty-acre

woodlot A woodlot is a parcel of a woodland or forest capable of small-scale production of forest products (such as wood fuel, sap for maple syrup, sawlogs, and pulpwood) as well as recreational uses like bird watching, bushwalking, and wildflower appre ...

near the

Trans-Canada Highway The Trans-Canada Highway (Canadian French, French: ; abbreviated as the TCH or T-Can) is a transcontinental federal–provincial highway system that travels through all ten provinces of Canada, from the Pacific Ocean on the west coast to the A ...

and the

Canada Olympic Park Canada Olympic Park (COP), formerly known as Paskapoo Ski Hill, is a ski hill and multi-purpose training and competition facility located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, owned and operated by WinSport. It is currently used both for high performance ...

; by this point it had grown to offer K-10 education. The first school building that was built on that site was destroyed by a

fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a fuel in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products. Flames, the most visible portion of the fire, are produced in the combustion re ...

on March 21, 1985. School was in session when the fire started, but all students and staff were evacuated safely. The school rented an empty public school in downtown Calgary for a year, while a fundraising campaign sought funds to rebuild the school. The school was rebuilt in September 1986, and upon being rebuilt the school was renamed Chinook Winds Adventist Academy. The school was named after the

Chinook wind Chinook winds, or simply Chinooks, are two types of prevailing warm, generally westerly winds in western North America: Coastal Chinooks and interior Chinooks. The coastal Chinooks are persistent seasonal, wet, southwesterly winds blowing in from ...

s that are common to the area. By this point in time the school had 115 students. Shortly after moving into the rebuilt school, Chinook Winds expanded to offer a full K-12 education. That second school building is the one still used by CWAA today.

Academics

CWAA is a full K-12 academy, recognized as a Category 1 Private School by the Alberta Ministry of Education. The school is also accredited by the Accrediting Association of Seventh-day Adventist Schools, Colleges, and Universities. The school follows

curriculum In education, a curriculum (; : curriculums or curricula ) is the totality of student experiences that occur in an educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experi ...

guidelines set out by the Alberta Ministry of Education and the

North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sabbath ...

. Upon completion of Grade 12, students receive the Alberta

High School Diploma A high school diploma (sometimes referred to as a high school degree) is a diploma awarded upon graduation of high school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary s ...

. CWAA employs 18 teachers, and 29 faculty and staff in total, for a teacher to student ratio of 11.3:1. Courses offered include social studies, language arts, math, biology, chemistry, physics, physical education, religious studies, and music, as well as numerous electives.

Extracurriculars

The CWAA Cyclones compete in the Calgary Independent School Athletic Association and in the Canadian Adventist School Athletics association. The Cyclones compete in boys and girls volleyball, softball, soccer, basketball, floor hockey, badminton, track and field, and co-ed flag football. Their athletic director is Rick Fowler. CWAA has a music program which includes music classes offered from K-12. At the high school level, CWAA has a

choir A choir ( ), also known as a chorale or chorus (from Latin ''chorus'', meaning 'a dance in a circle') is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform or in other words ...

and a

band Band or BAND may refer to: Places *Bánd, a village in Hungary * Band, Iran, a village in Urmia County, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Band, Mureș, a commune in Romania * Band-e Majid Khan, a village in Bukan County, West Azerbaijan Province, ...

, both of which go on yearly tours, and regularly compete in the

Kiwanis Music Festival The Kiwanis Music Festival movement consists of regional music competitions. These festivals are named after the Kiwanis Kiwanis International ( ) is an international service club founded in 1915 in Detroit, Michigan. It is headquartered in I ...

. Their music program is directed by Karenda Swain. CWAA offers a

mission trip A short-term mission (STM) is the mobilization of a Christian missionary for a short period of time ranging from days to a year; many short-term missions are called mission trips. The short-term missionary is a fairly recent innovation in the glo ...

to high school students every other year. The most recent mission trip went to

Belize Belize is a country on the north-eastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a maritime boundary with Honduras to the southeast. P ...

, in Spring 2024.

Notable alumni

Jennifer Sidey Jennifer "Jenni" Anne MacKinnon Sidey-Gibbons (born 3 August 1988) is a Canadian astronaut, engineer, and academic. She was selected by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) as one of the two members of the 2017 CSA Group alongside Joshua Kutryk. In ...

, astronaut

References

{{High Schools in Calgary, state=collapsed Private schools in Alberta Adventist secondary schools in Canada Educational institutions established in 1945 Elementary schools in Calgary Middle schools in Calgary High schools in Calgary 1945 establishments in Alberta

History

Academics

Extracurriculars

Notable alumni

See also

References