It’s School Musical Season!

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Last night at the HS Athletic Banquet, the theme was “Look How Far We Have Come”. I was able to pass along some anecdotes from the beginning of our sports history and compare and contrast them with the 2015-2016 school year. Other than the greater number of student-athletes participating, the main difference is the facilities our students now enjoy.

Our year-end musicals could also have a “Look How Far We Have Come” theme to them. In fact, the very first school musical held at the Main Campus in 1987 took place before the school was even open! Explanation: the school was entirely housed at the current TEAM School location that year and, as a way of creating some excitement for the move to Port Credit, the founders decided to get the Auditorium (and the hallways leading up to it) all ready for the show. The lighting and sound equipment was rented, there was no air conditioning and the rest of the building was in shambles after being vacant for 3 years. Nowadays, our lights are pre-mounted and programmed, the sound equipment includes wireless microphones and iPad controllers, and we have three shows at three campuses (all in air-conditioned comfort). What hasn’t changed is the sense of accomplishment from the students, the 100% participation behind-the-scenes of our teachers and the smiles on the faces of the audience members.

There is one unfortunate change with modern technology, however. Copyright rules and production agreements no longer make it possible for the school (via the school store, The MT Room) to offer DVD copies of the musical. If you plan on attending “The Lion King”, “Charlotte’s Web”, “Beauty and the Beast”, or all three (!) in the next few weeks, please keep this in mind.

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School

Emulating Our Mentors

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A high school friend of mine who chose an army career posted a video on Facebook yesterday. It was an address by Canadian Army Commander Lieutenant-General Marquis Hainse to those in a senior leadership course.

He started by saying “Welcome to THEY”. He clarified by saying that the leaders were now those referred to in “They made the decision” and “They don’t know what they’re talking about”. He then told the commanders that while it was important that they need to be the person in charge, they also needed to give as much influence as possible to the “chief”. His reasoning was that “when you take your parade every morning and you look at all of those soldiers…most of them don’t want to be like you, you the CO. They want to be like your Chief”.

This analogy works on all kinds of levels. It certainly applies in the business world with CEOs, executive officers and management teams but I think it also works at a school like ours. Mr. Macdonald and Mr. Philbrook have their principals, the principals have their teachers and the teachers have their students. Each level strives to emulate the example given to them by the person or persons just above them and thereby become leadership models for the group below them. And at a school like ours where we have Pre School to Grade 12, the older students are exemplars for the younger ones. I look at our high schoolers and see excellent role models for our junior and intermediate students. They in turn are a wonderful template for what a primary student should strive.

Do you remember your favourite teacher from your school days? For me it was my Grade 8 teacher, Mr. Snell. He was the first teacher who did not allow me to just “coast” through the year; he would not accept anything but my best effort and my “best” kept getting better as the year progressed. I didn’t have another teacher like that throughout high school but I know that my daughters have a number of teachers here at our school who were mentors to them. These teachers both continue to inspire them to do their best and force them to re-evaluate what their “best” is each year.

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School

A Tale of Two Siblings

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I was having a nice chat the other day with a group of five parents and during the conversation, the talk turned to the “preparedness of Mentor’s high school students for university”. One of the parents has been a longtime Mentor Dad with three children who have graduated from Grade 8 in the Intermediate Division. Each child was given the choice to go to any high school with the first two choosing Mentor and the youngest opting for a local public school. The stories of the first and third children were particularly interesting.

Dad reported that the eldest was in a residence apartment of four roommates in first year university with similar (eg: excellent) entrance averages but at the end of the year, two were asked to leave the school because of their poor academic efforts. Two of the roommates were Mentor grads and the other two were not.

The youngest is doing very well at the public high school and has an excellent average. Dad is not surprised (genetics!) because of the solid academic skill set acquired at Mentor but he is really surprised at the student’s request to return to Mentor next year. Why would a teenager getting 90s (“and doing nothing!”) ask to return to a place where we ask more of our students (and get it)?

Based on the experience of the eldest sibling, the youngest has reasoned that having a high average and loads of free time is just a short-term gain. The Mentor grads couldn’t figure our why university roommates wouldn’t work harder but the other two must have felt that their 90% Grade 12 marks would be enough to get them through. We have said for years that “it’s not the marks to get you INTO university that are important, it’s the skills to get you THROUGH university that count.” If you want a 95% grade in math, we have a growing list of schools who will give that mark to you with little to no effort. But if you want a solid academic base and real skills like time-management, homework completion, communication and studying, our list of schools is pretty small…

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School

We Love Hearing Your “What A Small World” Stories … Share Them With Us!

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When I first started working here over 25 years ago, I found that when I told people that I worked at Mentor/TEAM they would very rarely know about the school. My guess is that this was because there were “only” 575 students in all grades back then and we were considered a well-kept secret.

Now when I am first introduced to people and they ask where I work, I find that we have a much greater recognition in the community:

“Oh really? You must know so-and-so…she is a teacher there!”
“The kids next door to me go to school there and they love it”

and the most popular answer this past year…

“I see your field and your dome from the GO Train! That’s a really nice facility.”

Sometimes the conversations are started by someone else, though. Across from the Main Campus, there is a house under renovation. While I was on traffic cop duty one afternoon this week, one of the construction workers came and asked “Is TEAM School still around?”

Long story short, it was the father of a boy named James who attended TEAM in the early 2000s from Grade 6 to 8. He said that having his son join TEAM was the best decision he ever made and that James would have been lost in high school without us. He told me that he still recommends TEAM to anyone who asks (and was a bit upset with us for not having the TSS programme back then!). The next day, I took a yearbook over him and he got a kick out of seeing 12-year-old James in Ms. Salo’s class. When I told Ms. Salo about the encounter, she was tickled to hear that James is now managing a company that installs trade shows all over North America and told me that the stone sculpture James gave her at the end of the year still sits on her desk!

I love hearing “it’s a small world” stories about who people meet who have a connection to the school. Let me know if you have one to pass along!

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School

Bringing The Mentor/TEAM Community Together Through Music

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Last week, I wrote about how I don’t need to be in a music classroom to “hear music all around the school” but next week, I will be able to hear and see the arts all around me!

The annual Festival of Arts will see students from all divisions of the school taking part in the concerts on Wednesday and Thursday evening. I am excited for two new groups to make their on-stage debut (the TEAM Bucket Drumming Ensemble and the Mentor Grade 9 Jazz Band) and to see some of the students who were on stage in 2005 with the Primary Campus Chorus now playing in the Senior Band or singing in the HS choir 11 years later!

For those wishing to stimulate their visual senses, Mentor artists from Grade 5 to 11 will have their works displayed throughout the school. Take a wander through the hallways and you can see how the art department develops the artistic side of our students whether they are sketching, painting, sculpting or creating multi-media installations.

Finally, the graduating visual arts students from Mentor and TSS will open their show “Roots of Steel” at 6:00pm on Wednesday. The show is open from 6:00-9:00 on Wednesday night and then again on Thursday from 9:00am to 9:00pm. The students have been planning this show and working on their exhibits since September and they would love to have you come and discuss their pieces with you.

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School