Convocation Speaker John Smallwood Honorary Degree Recipient Monday, June 10, 2024, 3:00 p.m.
In the 1990s, the Huron County Board of Education asked Stephen Baker to consider how online courses might be developed for use in local schools. Baker, who had worked with Smallwood occasionally in team-teaching classes, asked Smallwood to join him in creating an online course in Canadian literature. Baker himself was developing an online course in biology. A blended course was offered in which Smallwood would spend time in different classrooms in Huron County indicating to students how they might navigate the online course they were studying. In 1997, the Canadian literature course was entered into a competition for online teaching and received a second-place award, second only to a course offered by Intel. In 2000, Baker and Smallwood transitioned their two online courses to a private school – and Virtual High School, based in Bayfield, Ontario, was born. Smallwood retired from teaching in Goderich after his wife became ill and started as an adjunct professor in the Writing Department at Western. During each of his 12 years at Western, he earned the University Students’ Council Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has also been nominated twice for the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence. Smallwood has worked continuously with his mentor, friend, and colleague, Stephen Baker, for nearly 30 years. They continue to write and develop courses and have seen Virtual High School grow to become the leader in online teaching in Ontario. There are now 132 courses with teachers working across the globe. More than 94 000 students have registered with Virtual High School and a Virtual Elementary School has been added, along with an elementary and Christian affiliate. Now in his 54th year in education Smallwood says, “When work is enjoyable, it is no longer work.”
John Smallwood was born in London and after an indifferent few years in high school, attended Western University where he studied English with extraordinary professors who became role models for him when he became a teacher. After graduating from Western and the Faculty of Education, Smallwood began teaching in Goderich. Several years later he was asked to teach a course in Canadian literature. At that time (the 1970s) the nation’s literature was not taken seriously by many, but by introducing students to works by Laurence, Atwood, Munro, Ondaatje, and many others, Smallwood found an area of specialization that has stood him and his hundreds of students well for fifty years. After a decade of teaching, Smallwood began graduate studies and again had the opportunity to work with distinguished professors such as Donald Hair, Stan Dragland, James Reaney, and Joe Zezulka to name only a few. He later earned a Master of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, where he completed a thesis on the fiction of Rudy Wiebe.
Western University 18
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