Category Archives: Mentor/TEAM Events

There Is Music All Around Our School

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One of the best parts of having responsibilities that extend to all of our campuses is that I get to see every age of student from Grade 12s to Pre School. When I do see the students “in action” it is almost always outside of the classroom and there were three vignettes in the past 24 hours that made me smile.

At the “Memories to Music” concert last night, I saw 21 of our senior HS students perform a song that they had composed for their senior partner from the Alzheimer’s Society. Of those students who sang, there were at least five who have never been singing on stage before…but 99% of the audience wouldn’t have known it from how they performed! This morning, I saw three girls from the Intermediate Division at a hydration station. One of them was filling up her “Astra” bottle (from last week’s Fashion Show) and as she opened it she told her friends in a musical voice, “I am awesome at unscrewing water bottles!” Later in the morning, I was lucky enough to be the bus driver for the junior kindergarten trip to the library. After visiting the library and the ducks on the Credit River, they had me smiling as they searched for robins on the trip back to school and sang out “I found a robin!” when they did.

Whether it is coming from a wonder-filled 4-year-old, an excitable 10-year-old or a nervous 18-year-old, there is music all around us. When Alzheimer’s patient Irene lost her husband a year ago, she stopped playing the piano. The interview sessions that she did with her junior partners at Mentor rekindled her memories of music and her daughter wrote a nice note to the students saying that her Mom has started playing again!

Listen. Can you hear it? The music. I can hear it everywhere. In the wind… in the air… in the light. It’s all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do… is listen. – opening voice-over in August Rush (2007)

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School

A Well-Anchored Education

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It has been a fun week for me with our alumni Facebook page as a number of students who graduated in the early 1990s have been posting and commenting on old photos. In addition to a few confessions about things that happened that they thought the administration didn’t know about, there were comments like Alba’s saying,”those were the best years of my life”.

The whole thread started with a “share” called “25 Normal Things You Do in Private School”. Some of their favourites included:

3. You own inordinate amounts of summer clothes, because that is the only time you can wear your own clothing.

5. “Free” dress days (which you definitely had to pay a dollar for), caused you endless anxiety, because this is probably the only time you’ll get to show everyone at school how great your sense of fashion has become.

There was only one “negative” comment. One girl who spent 15 years with us says she will never wear a kilt ever again but it was quickly pointed out to her by her classmates that nobody else has either! What made the trip down memory lane all the most memorable was that current Mentor HS English department head Mrs. McGivern was in a homeroom photo with her first class. The alumni noted that it was her first class when she was fresh out of teachers’ college so I pointed out that her son Chris (a Mentor grad) is now on track for teachers’ college as well. They thought that it made THEM feel old!

Our SK to Grade 8 students will be presenting their speeches in a few weeks. If you take a look at the end of the “What’s New?” items this week and you will see that one of our Grade 8 grads still fondly remembers her time with us (over 20 years ago), saying “Speech Night was my favourite night of the year”. Listen closely to those speeches…maybe we have another TV news anchor among us?!?!?

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School

Advertising Through The Years

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We are preparing to welcome prospective families to our school this Saturday. At Mentor and TEAM, we have been having Saturday Open Houses for over 30 years and it is interesting to me both how things have changed and how they have stayed the same when it comes to new families.

When I moved from teaching to administration, one of the first duties I was given was to take care of the advertising for Open House. At that time, this meant advertisements in the weekly newspapers (Mississauga News, Brampton and Etobicoke Guardian, etc.) that had a list of all the things we offered. They were effective in the same way that our little square ad in the Yellow Pages worked for us and we would always have 20 to 30 families join us from these media.

Fast forward to today and I would imagine that most of our younger families have never owned a Yellow Pages book! The local newspapers were always ad-heavy but now they come with an extra kilogram of flyers and we know from speaking with you that these papers are immediately recycled more often than they are read. Today, we advertise just as effectively as we did earlier using online sources (Google, Facebook, etc.) but that it just where our actual dollars are spent. Our most effective promotional materials (and promoters) have been unchanged since 1981.

Word-of-mouth has always been how 90% of our new families come to us. Parents and students (and even teachers) talk about the school with their friends, family members, work colleagues and clients and have always been generous in sharing their stories (and our contact information). Word-of-mouth is probably an inaccurate term nowadays and “word-of-keystroke” might be a better description. I know that many of you send this email update on to your contacts when your child is highlighted. I see that you “like” and “share” our online posts on Twitter and Facebook and even as early as 5:45 this morning, a parent shared the Primary Campus Open House ad from Facebook to her wall. When the students, parents and staff are so enthused about the school, we are appreciative and it makes us want to work that much harder to back up your endorsements.

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School

School Spirit On Display Tomorrow

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Tomorrow will be one of the most impressive displays of school spirit at Mentor and TEAM this year…the Inside Ride. This our 6th Ride and it has all the great characteristics for which our school events have become famous.

1) Parental support – We have parents supporting the event through pledging their kids and entering the event (your Parents’ Association gets a bike each year)

2) An Alumni connection – The founder of the Inside Ride is a former parent and the benefitting charity is in memory of a former student, Jenna Santelli

3) Staff support – Teachers help out as staff sponsors, make a team of riders themselves, help cover the classes of those who are riding…whatever is needed!

4) Inter-divisional participation – Students and staff from Grades 7 to 12 from four divisions are taking part and with Mrs. Philbrook and Mrs. Talarico taking a turn on a bike, every division is represented!

5) Student leadership opportunities – Whether it is acting as a bike captain, an event volunteer or the student executive our students earn valuable life skills in teamwork.

6) School spirit – While we have video of past Inside Rides, you really can’t appreciate the energy in the room unless you are actually there. If you have some time at 10:00 or 1:00 on Friday, come to the Main Campus gym and see (and hear) for yourself.

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School

A Lot Of Traffic On Memory Lane This Time Of Year

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I have been a bit nostalgic this week.

It started when a school from Scotland was visiting the Mentor high school and we played both “O Canada” and “God Save the Queen” at 8:45. I remember that “Opening Exercises for me as far back as kindergarten at Hickson Central (just north of Woodstock) included both these anthems, the Lord’s Prayer and even a workout to something called “Rhythmics” (exercising to the latest pop hits like “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”.

When I look at this week’s calendar of events, I remember my own schooling fondly and regret that I have lost touch with some of the things that I found interesting earlier in my life. Two groups were off campus learning about how to take better photographs; I remembered inheriting a Brownie camera from a relative and the best photo it ever took would be instantly deleted from even the worst camera phone. Mentor and TEAM are in the midst of their Grade 7/8 touch football practices; I remember the only time I got into a fight was over a bully continually throwing my NFL football into a puddle at recess (and how my Mom had to come retrieve me from the office and pretend that she wasn’t the one who told me to do it!).

I see Photo Retake Day tomorrow and I remember that I had to think very carefully about what to wear that day (a stressor that our students are spared). The Grade 7 and 8s have their first immunization clinic of the year coming up and I remember the boys unsuccessfully trying to look brave for the girls and the girls being just as unconvincing in their over-reactions of being scared.

I also remember that Hallowe’en was a REALLY big deal at school (and it still is!) with decorations and assemblies and I seem to recall that everyone dressed up at high school right up to Grade 13. At night on October 31st, we would get driven to the closest neighbours (I lived in the country) and then we would go to town to find the street with the closest concentration of doorways so we could maximize our candy haul. Ahh, to be young again!

Have a wonderful weekend. As for me, I think I will put together my costume and start scouting out the most candy-lucrative townhouse complexes. Hopefully the chocolate bars are still the same size as they were in the 70s!

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School