Keeping You Informed Through The Winter Months

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We managed to make it through another one of those promised “Snowmageddon” events this week. I think the fact that I grew up in a snow belt area (Goderich) has jaded my outlook on these storms and it seems as though more wind is created talking about them than actually blows during the storm! I was in Ottawa with two of our volleyball teams this past week just a couple of days after 50 centimetres of snow had fallen and with the exception of a couple of side streets that were down to a single lane with the snowbanks, it was business as usual (at least until it rained all night and the city streets looked more like Venice!).

To be fair to meterologists, most of them became less sure of their predictions as the storm approached and passed along their uncertainty. “Better safe than sorry” would be a good description of this. Just so you know, the school takes these same precautions. We always have a plan (and a Plan B and a Plan C) in place whenever inclement weather may disrupt our school day with regards to extra-curricular activity cancellations, school bus cancellations or school closures. After we decide, you are the next to know as the plan is always shared via our Twitter and Facebook feeds as well as through this, our email update!

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School

New Strategy For Staff-Student Games

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Last March, I was on the teacher team in the high school staff-student basketball game. The teachers had wisely chosen the smaller East Gym as the location of the game (less running for old legs) and the strategy paid off with a double-digit lead. In the past, this would usually mean that the coach-less students would start to play more individually and the lead would grow even more but on this occasion, the students actually started passing more and playing tougher defence. Before we knew it, we were shaking hands after the first teacher defeat in recent memory.

I was watching an interview with NBA star Stephen Curry on the weekend about his Grade 7 year when his father (Del) was a member of the Toronto Raptors and Stephen was a student at the now-defunct Queensway Christian School. In the interview were photos of Stephen and his teammates with the Mentor College Invitational championship plaque and a story from his coach about their big comeback in the tournament finals. It was a really great game to watch and having an NBA Dad in our gym at the same time made it an even more exciting day for everyone in attendance. The piece also included some crackly video footage of Stephen playing in a staff-student game with his Dad as an honourary staff member for the day.

In this week’s update, I noticed that my experience is not just a high school phenomenon. Despite the obvious height and experience advantage, the TEAM teachers went down to defeat at the hands of the Primary (Grade 1 to 3) students in the recent, annual “Hoops For Heart” staff-student game. So while it could be argued that the students are so well-coached by our teachers that they are unbeatable, I think it is much more obvious what needs to be done. If anyone knows if Kyle Lowry, Jonas Valanciunas or Demar DeRozan have a teaching degree, please have them send me their résumé…and preferably before this year’s high school staff-student game!

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School

Snowball Fights Then & Now

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I was watching the news this past week and saw an item about the Canadian national snowball fighting team’s preparation for the upcoming world championships in Japan. I loved the interview with the co-captains but then I stopped and wondered how these 20-somethings managed to get good at an activity that has been banned from schoolyards for at least two decades.

Winter recess time is vastly different for kids in 2016 than it was for me 40 years ago. At my school, snow meant that the morning recess would be spent building snowforts so that at lunch recess we could have a decent snowball fight. Sometimes it would be grade-vs-grade, sometimes boys-vs-girls and sometimes just one group against another but it was always voluntary and if any student happened to wander into that area, it was understood by everyone (including the teachers) that it was their fault and not the snowball thrower if they got hit. It was like walking in puddles all recess and then complaining that your socks were wet all afternoon. I do not remember a teacher ever saying “stop throwing snowballs, someone is going to get hurt” but I do remember that when someone got hurt, everybody stopped and understood that the fight was over for that recess unless the patient quickly said they were OK. This was often pre-empted by the thrower’s offer of a “free shot” for the victim. Yes, even in snowball wars there was empathy!

In fact, snowball fights were nowhere close to the most dangerous winter recess activity. Every new snowfall meant that the snow pile from the parking lot would get higher and higher and the view for the king of “King of the Castle” got better and better. With each thaw, the snow would get icier and more jagged and it was a miracle that there weren’t more broken bones and facial gashes.

I know that society today will never return back to these activities “good old days” and that if I proposed a “snowball fighting zone” on the Mentor/TEAM playground, I would need permission forms executed by lawyers to make it work (and my colleagues would volunteer me for yard duty every recess, every day!). Society can also send mixed messages, however. When I Googled “snowball fight at recess”, the first result was this – a child’s game in which participants throw a snowball at a group of bullies (one of the bullies is wearing the answer to a math problem and he is the “target”)! Huh? Get the correct answer by partaking in a banned activity that is directed at someone involved in another socially-unacceptable activity? I would love to meet the creator of that game…on the top of a huge pile of parking lot snow!

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

An Initiative To Talk About

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Unless you are so technology-averse that you get this news update printed off and mailed to you on a weekly basis, I don’t think that you can say that you did not know that the “Bell Let’s Talk Day” took place yesterday. It was a big topic of conversation on TV, radio and the Internet and with some celebrity help, over 125 million calls, texts, tweets and shares were logged during the day.

I know that my experience with mental health is similar to many. Throughout my childhood and early adulthood, I either did not know anything about mental illness and/or it was not discussed. Even when I did become more aware of mental health issues, my own opinions and experiences meant that I was approaching the issues with pre-conceived notions about the person and the issue. The End the Stigma initiative is an excellent resource on how you can take five easy steps to being more aware of what you can do (and more importantly, what NOT to do).

While I am sure that many of those 125 million messages fall under the umbrella of “clicktivism”, this past week I have read the stories on my Facebook news feed who made the “Let’s Talk” decision. These brave, heartfelt and extensive stories are from relatives, friends, people from my church, former students and colleagues; they are not just a simple “re-tweet” or “share”. Some of the stories are auto-biographical and some are from the perspective of a parent, sibling or friend but the important thing is that they are talking and creating a dialogue and not a debate. I know I only saw a small percentage of the stories told by staff, students and parents so congratulations to all those who participated in this initiative.

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School