This is Canada After All

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I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that next week it finally looks like we are going to see a daily temperature without a minus sign in front of it. 2015 was the coldest February on record and I don’t remember an entire year of indoor recesses in the past 25 years that could match the number this February.

The bad news is that the Weather Network has predicted that it will be mid-April before the thermometer gets us back closer to “average”. Their #1 meteorologist Chris Scott says that heavier-than-usual snowfall and the fact that over 80% of the Great Lakes are frozen mean that the spring melt will take longer and give us colder temperatures past our next long weekend (Easter).

There is a silver lining in this; our Grade 5 students will hopefully get a really long and bountiful sap season up at the Outdoor Education Centre as temperatures stay low in the evenings and creep up into the positives during the daytime! And just like our OEC teachers have reminded me to look positively at the weather we have been given, I know that many of you are using the next two weeks as a way of either embracing, ignoring or fleeing the cold. Some are heading south to thaw out their fingers and toes and our HS Take Action Group will no doubt get some warmer weather in India on their trip! Some are staying closer to home and taking in some of the local attractions and still others are embracing the weather and doing some outdoor activities that they have been putting off (because who wants to go skiing when the windchill is minus 30?!).

No matter where you end up, I hope that you are able to spend some family time and to ensure that your children recharge their batteries for the final term of academic and extra-curricular activity. After all, there are only 56 school days left once we come back from the Break!

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College/TEAM School

Speech Night, Study Skills Pay Off

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This is Speech Night season for the elementary students at our schools and for pure pent-up energy and excitement, you cannot match a homeroom of our students in those anxious moments just before the start of the presentations.

For those of you who joined the school later in your child’s schooling, you might not know that Speech Night begins in kindergarten when the students work as a group to sing songs and recite poems for their parents in the gym. When the students start their “all-by-themselves” speeches in Grade 1, the process of researching, writing, memorizing and presenting a speech is consistent for the rest of their days with us. Variables include the length of the speech (increases as the student progresses), the topic (might be theme-related such as The Medieval Era or a topic of the student’s choice) and the quantity and type of research materials used. They get so good at it by the time they are in Grade 12, they actually start to pretend to not even like Speech Night anymore!

Like all of the skills our students gain, however, it is at the post-secondary level when the Mentor experience really pays off. I know that I say this all the time but it is true AND we get messages like this from Mentor and TSS students all the time. So if you do not believe me, please consider this message that was sent this week to Executive Director Mr. Philbrook from one of his HS cricket team players who is now at Queen’s University in Kingston:

I hope everything is going well at Mentor! It feels so weird to be an alumni now! But on a side note, I wanted to tell you that being at Mentor these past 5 years has really made a positive impact on my university career thus far. I don’t think any of us really realize it until we get here, but Mentor played a huge role in helping us do well. I handle the workload much better than a lot of my peers, largely because the enormous amount of work we have here isn’t as drastic a difference from what we had at Mentor, compared to other schools. And it felt so good to walk into my midterms in December, and see all those desks lined up in rows in the gym, and NOT freak out (it’s old hat at this point!), while so many other kids weren’t used to it. So I just wanted to let you know. Mentor played a huge role in my ability to handle university, and even though I never tucked my shirt in or cleaned my paint-smeared tie and kilt, I absolutely appreciate the education I received there. So thanks a bunch sir!

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College/TEAM School

SK: Where Do They Go From Here?

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I walked past the senior kindergarten classes and their “100 Day” celebrations this week. It doesn’t take a whole lot to get 5-year-olds excited in the first place but celebrating the 100th day of school is a really big event. And while it seems like just a fun day for the students, skills like counting to 100, learning to read and learning to play co-operatively are the building blocks of the rest of a student’s career in education and beyond.

A few minutes after walking past the celebrations, I checked in on Facebook and the school’s alumni page. As I scrolled through the names, I was able to remember many of those same kids (some in their 30s now) when they were in kindergarten and I thought it would be interesting to see what the members in the group are doing now. The following is not a scientific study…I simply went to the first 10 names on the list that had an employment status and came up with the following:

Registered Nurse at Credit Valley Hospital
Relationship Manager at TD Bank
Student at University of Zagreb School of Medicine
Student at University of Alberta School of Dentistry
First Responder at Newfoundland Ambulance Service
Staff Accountant at Walsh and Company
Partner at Fresca Films
Account Manager at Royal Bank of Canada
Software Developer at Soho VFX
Music Teacher at Mentor College (yes, this is Mr. Hoare…he is not an alumnus of the school, but he is in the group!)

The list is actually pretty indicative of what our graduates end up doing in post-secondary studies. The percentages change from year to year but the three most popular academic streams are science (with a tendency towards health sciences), business and the arts.

If you have a senior kindergarten student (or any other age), can you see your child in one or more of those 10 positions listed above?

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College/TEAM School

Dedicated Teachers

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An article was forwarded to me by one of our teachers on Monday and it was entitled “The Top Five Reasons Parents Choose Private Schools”. The article didn’t tell me anything new but the article did mention an item that reminded me of a recent conversation I had with Mr. Philbrook (Executive Director and Co-Founder) and Mr. Macdonald (Director).

While we were waiting to watch the HS Arts Jam competition on Saturday, the three of us were listing all of the activities that were happening on the weekend. Just on Saturday alone, we estimated that over 30% of our high school population was taking part in one of:

– the Model UN competition at the University of Toronto
– the Arts Jam competition in the O’Brien Hall
– the provincial club wrestling championships in Brampton
– a science symposium at the University of Toronto
– the fashion show rehearsal in the gyms
– the provincial business competition (DECA) in Toronto

So when I saw in the article that “dedicated teachers” was one of the reasons for parents choosing private school, I did some math and realized that we had 17 staff members who were out with the various groups on Saturday. Despite what you may have heard (from their spouses), teachers actually do have lives outside of our school so it was just fantastic that they exhibit such a high level of dedication to their students and their “calling” as educators and that mornings, evenings and weekends are part of that commitment.

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College/TEAM School

A Great Weekend With A Great Bunch Of Students

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Over the weekend, I had the privilege to take the Grade 9 girls’ volleyball team (and HS attendance secretary Ms. Showler) back to my hometown of Goderich for a tournament. This group of girls is a really fun bunch and by fun, I mean that they did anything but blend in as we stopped to take photos in front of the high schools of their two heroes (Justin Bieber, Stratford Northwestern Secondary School and Ms. Fuhr, Mitchell District High School). They couldn’t believe that students were driving home from school on a snowmobile and they even pretended to enjoy my guided tour of the town of Goderich! Their mathematics teachers will be proud to hear that they did not believe it was geometrically possible to drive in circles around an octagon that is called “The Square”. The weekend was about having some fun together and not about winning games (but they did anyway!). Everywhere we went, the girls were energetic (and perhaps a wee bit loud at times but that is par for the course with 14-year-old girls) and I was proud of the way they represented the school from the moment we left until we returned.

I was disappointed in myself for one incident, though. We were at a McDonalds and the girls were tired after playing 8 games and probably as quiet and lifeless as they were all weekend. They had all ordered and were waiting in line at the side while I got ready to place my order. Before I got to the till, two folks got into line behind me and said “Oh, great…there’s a bunch of stupid kids here”.

My first impulse was to turn around and go on a Rick Mercer-esque rant and say “Actually, they are not a bunch of stupid kids. They are bunch of wonderful, intelligent young women. Some of them have known each other for years and others for only months but they truly enjoy each other’s company. They can laugh with each other and at themselves. They cheer for each other when times are good and console each other when things get rough. They have been taught by their school and by their parents to be respectful of adults, even when adults like you unfairly do not give them any respect. For example, they would never walk into a restaurant and say ‘Oh great, there’s a bunch of old people here’. Please forgive me if you think I am being defensive; I am just extremely proud of my students and my school wherever we go!”

In the end, I ended up doing nothing (and probably best-represented the school by doing so!) but it was a good reminder for me that we have a very special school. The people at the McDonald’s will never understand why anyone would want to spend the weekend in a small town with a bunch of “stupid kids” but I know that Ms. Showler and I would trade neither the weekend nor that “bunch” for another.

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College/TEAM School