Glashan Middle School is an Ottawa, Ontariojunior high school teaching grade seven and grade eight. It is located in the Centretown neighbourhood between Kent Street and Bank Street. It was founded as an elementary school for the small community of Orangeville, to the south of Ottawa. It was known as Hugh Street School, as Kent Street was then named Hugh Street. In 1889 the town was amalgamated with Ottawa, and its one room school house became part of the Ottawa school board, as this part of the city was rapidly growing in 1889, the one-room one-teacher school was overcrowded with a total of 99 students. Thus, in 1897, four new rooms were added, and in 1905 another four. The school was soon renamed Glashan PS, after the Chief Inspector of Ottawa Public Schools from 1876 to 1910, J.C. Glashan. The school was expanded again in 1922 and once more 1931, when it became one amongst a group of Ottawa schools to switch to the pioneering intermediate school format, the school officially became Glashan MS, and has remained a junior high school ever since. In 1979-1980 the old school was demolished and the current one erected. This was one of only a few Ottawa Board of Education projects in that era of shrinking demographics. The school today offers a number of programs. It is home to gifted, core French, late French immersion, and English language learning and teaching programs. It is also well known for its excellent volleyball teams. One disadvantage of the school's downtown location is that there is no room for a playing field attached to the school, and students are forced to walk two blocks to a field south of the Queensway. The school has an unofficial student run subreddit at /r/glashan.
Sports at Glashan
Mr. Rick Desclouds was the coach of the Glashan Boys Spikers, Glashan's AA team, but retired at the end of the 2009-2010 school year. Desclouds has worked in Glashan for 37 years. In 2005, Glashan lost two of its best volleyball players due to a deadly fire, Danny and Gary Thach. The boys volleyball team has won the provincial championships 19 times, including in 2006 and 2007. In 2011, both the girls' and the boys' teams won the provincial championships in Toronto. In 2013, The boys' Glashan Spikers won the Provincial Championship title again, with the assistant coaching of Rick Desclouds. Glashan hosts two volleyball tournaments, one in November and another in January: the November tournament is a friendship tournament; the one in January is a very competitive one, sometimes with as many as 30 teams from all around the Eastern Ontario region participating. Glashan participates, and is successful, in many other sports, including Touch football, Track and field, and Badminton. Glashan also has an ice hockey team.
Glashan has a very successful competitive math team. Two teams coached by Miss Sarah Roberts finished 1st and 2nd in the regional Math Olympics competition in April 2008, defeating many other strong teams from local schools, such as Bridlewood and Greenbank. Both teams qualified for the provincial event in May. The team that finished first in the regional competition finished 6th in the provincials, and the Glashan team who took regional second won provincial first, Glashan's first ever first place at this competition level. On April 25, 2009, Glashan's Math Olympics team took first place again, for the second year in a row. The team won all four team events, the first time this has happened in the history of the competition. The other team for this year, however, did not do as well and did not qualify for the provincial event. In 2010 and 2011 the team from Glashan won the regional competition again, and, in 2011, the two teams sent from Glashan won first and second place once more. The first place team went on to the provincial competition, and did well. Glashan also has a variety of different clubs, including the Free the Children club and a chess club, and also has a student council. For student council, there is one male and one female representative from each class, who attend meetings and help make decisions on behalf of the student body. The student council is also in charge of the dances, such as an annual Halloween dance, and many fundraisers.
