Blog

Outside the Box

I’m writing this blog on the morning of May 15, looking forward to a day that should be filled with amazing experiential learning opportunities. To begin with from 2:30 to 3:00pm The YMCA Academy welcomes Justin from Share the Road: Ride and Drive with Care. The Ride and Drive with Care program is administered through Share the Road Cycling Coalition, with support from the CAA and funding from the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care. It is a program that targets both drivers and cyclists, and encourages them to use the road responsibly together.

Then, Markus Pukonen, of the Ocean Adventure Rowing and Education team who recently attempted a crossing of the Atlantic ocean using only human power, will speak with to our school community about his expedition and the important oceanographic data and documentary footage he was collecting before the boat capsized on day 73 of the adventure

Later, Dan Lambert, from Bikes on Wheels, will be demonstrating bike maintenance and showing Academy students how to tune-up their bikes in preparation for the summer.

Finally, this evening, we will be hosting Think2Learn, who are developing both a learning assessment tool, and computer based interventions that address the specific learning needs identified in the assessment.

That’s a busy school day — but it’s rather typical here at The Academy. An important element of our program is our experiential learning opportunities. It’s our response to a challenge from a great educational and entrepreneurial thinker — Aron Solomon — who asked, “If you want to teach your students to think outside of the box, why do you keep them cooped up in one?” Our students are outside of the classroom “box” on a regular basis!

I should probably mention that on Friday the entire school population will be planting trees at Downsview with Evergreen!

Don Adams, Head of School

Invaders from MaRS

Toronto is fortunate to be home to MaRS Discovery District — MaRS is essentially a social innovation accelerator, providing expertise and access to funding to entrepreneurs. One of their main areas of interest is education. I have always felt it to be important to keep The Academy up-to-date on the latest developments in the education sphere, so a relationship with MaRS was inevitable!

As a result of our working with them, MaRS has put us in touch with many innovators. Our teachers and students have been able to provide some of them with valuable feedback about their ideas and products. We benefit by having the chance to be early adopters of some really amazing ideas!

In that connection, I invite you to come to The Academy at 7:00 on Wednesday, May 15 to meet Think2Learn, an innovative company developing both a learning assessment tool, and computer based interventions that address the specific learning needs identified in the assessment. Their value proposition: Think2Learn is brain training for kids that struggle in school based on the successful Lumosity business model. It differentiates itself by being a product for the child’s parents and uses a proprietary 360 degree neuroscience-based screening process that results in targeted interventions and brain training games that have been tagged to correlate with cognitive functions.

Please join us on the 15th. Admission is free, and there will be coffee and goodies too.

Don Adams, Head of School

Care or Control?

When I speak about The Academy, I often speak about the six core values of The YMCA of Greater Toronto, generally focussing on the value of respect — which I think is the fundamental value underlying the other five: responsibility, inclusiveness, caring, health and honesty. It is certainly at the core of both what we teach and also what we do at The Academy.

However, I’ve been thinking a great deal of another of the core values recently — caring. At a recent social gathering, I was asked the usual question, “What do you do?” My response to this question is always brief — something along the lines of “I’m the principal of a high school for students with learning disabilities” or “I run a high school for students who learn differently.” Sometimes my answer stops a conversation, but at other times it starts one.

On this occasion, it started one. “That must be very difficult. How do you manage the students? How do you control their behaviour?” At first I found it difficult to answer the questions; after a few seconds I realized that my difficulty was based on the assumptions implied in the questions themselves. One underlying assumption — students are difficult to control — is based on an understanding of the educational dynamic that we all experienced during our schooling, where the relationship was often adversarial. The teacher possessed the power, and enforced rules that often seemed arbitrary or irrelevant to the students. This idea of control was fundamental to the classroom — and teachers were given classroom management advice, and judged on their ability to control the behaviours in their classes.

The dynamic is entirely different at The Academy. Underlying all “classroom management” here is the value of caring. There is nothing arbitrary in our expectations of behaviour; indeed, they are collaboratively created by teachers and students. Our students know that we care, that expectations of behaviour spring from caring, and that our motivation is to benefit them. Maybe that’s the most profound difference I can offer to students entering The Academy — the core value of caring.

Don Adams, Head of School

Doing or Being

Just having passed the mid-term reporting period, I want to give you something to think about. We talk about how our children are “doing” in school. It’s a phrase I remember using my entire life – I’m sure that my own parents thought about how I was doing in school.

Today I’d like to suggest that we think about how students are “being” in school. What’s the experience of daily life in school like for this young person? Are they honored in school? Are they made to feel important, like they truly matter? What is their own sense of who they are in school and how does it differ from how they perceive themselves out of school.

When a student and a school are a poor fit, it creates an essential disconnection in their lives. Their being becomes a fragmented thing, the place they spend every school day is a place of frustrations and failures. So when we consider how they’re doing and the result of that question is an unfavorable one, we need to dig deeper and examine how they’re being. If we can begin to shift this question, it will lead to a much better analysis of our schools, our children, and how to most effectively serve who they are and want to become.

Don Adams, Head of School

How To Build a Great School

Every day, someone somewhere prepares to open a school. In the United States, since the advent of charter schools, each year many schools open and close, for a variety of reasons. The process of opening a school is, in some fundamental ways, easier today than it has ever been.

But I wonder how one could open a great school and serve a population the most in need. Here at The Academy, we worked hard for a decade before becoming what many have described as a great school. I think about what we did throughout the process and offer this as a primer for those looking to do the same.

My advice would begin and end with the notion of community. Building a community is infinitely more challenging than building a school. Community takes infinite ingredients and nonstop attention. Community cares for people. It makes us feel as if we belong. Community, not a sugar-and-taurine-laden energy drink, gives us wings.

How to build community in a school is more art than science. It begins and ends with respect. By creating a safe place where people, their opinions, thoughts, and actions are valued, you’re on the right track. There needs to be balance, focus, constant and consistent improvement.

The construction of a great school is never, ever complete.

Don Adams, Head of School

Wrap Around Support

I’d like to offer my thanks to the community for making our TEDxYMCAAcademy and our Open House such a rousing success this weekend. The theme of the TEDx event — wrap around services for youth — neatly dovetails with what we provide here at The Academy.

Unlike many schools, especially independent schools, the Academy does not focus solely on the academic achievement of its students. While we are unique within the YMCAs in Canada in providing a full range of academic supports for students who learn differently, we have very much in common with all YMCA programming for youth in our emphasis on social and personal support. In fact, we don’t even give out academic awards here. Rather, we focus on values we think are much more important. Those values are essentially the six core values of the YMCA of Greater Toronto: Respect, Responsibility, Inclusiveness, Caring, Honesty and Health.

I’m privileged to see these values in action everyday at the Central Y, where The YMCA Academy is located. I see it in our Child Care, in our Youth Leadership Corps, in the Newcomers programs, and throughout the Health and Fitness Centre.

Come for a tour of The Academy — see how we are truly an alternative school.

Don Adams, Head of School

Intentionality

As more families and education professionals come to know about The YMCA Academy, I am increasingly asked the question: “How did The Academy come to be?” This is a question that I have answered in several ways – most recently in an interview with the amazing Sara Winter from Squag — a curated, online experience for kids on the autism spectrum! (read it here).

Every bit of what we do at The Academy is absolutely intentional. From the constructivist-based pedagogy, to the experiential opportunities we provide, to the use of a variety of assistive technologies, to the sizes of the classrooms and the physical layout of the school, everything is done with an unswerving eye toward better serving a wide variety of learning styles and challenges.

At the same time, there is something serendipitous about the coming together of such an amazing staff – who share an unending passion and energy for serving our students! And it’s the mixture of intentionality and serendipity that underlies an aspect of the learning culture we wish to create here. We are intentional in how we serve students who learn differently – teach a person how to learn, and they’re immediately hungry to learn more. That allows students to be open to surprises, to the serendipitous, as founding teacher of The Academy, Peter Skillin, puts it in his blog, “so that beneficial communications and connections are more likely to occur.”

In short, we intentionally enable our students to experience the delightful coincidences in life!

Don Adams, Head of School

To Google or Not To Google

One of the worst things and educator can do is to do a Google News search for “education.” The results are a misplaced stew of questions that can never be solved (I like to think of those as “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin” type of education questions) along with a series of platitudinal posts, such as “Education System Could Use an Overhaul.”

One would imagine that the beauty of search is that it responds to what we put in. But searching for “education solutions” provides an even less satisfying result, finding gems such as standardized testing prep courses and, of course, “Education Solutions are Needed in Schools.”

What did we used to do when we wanted to examine questions and answers in education – in the days before our first response to everything was to “Google it”? I think we began with conversations. What’s described today as our personal learning network (PLN) always existed. It was our colleagues, friends and family, people we studied with. Most were local but not all – we reached out to others by reading journals, having book discussions, doing professional development. Questions and answers were longer to come by, but maybe they were more meaningful. Maybe the ubiquity of search has sacrificed depth, meaning, and relevance for speed?

Google and the like are amazing tools. The volume of information available to us in a fraction of a second is beyond comprehension. Sometimes, so are the results.

Don Adams, Head of School

Spring Ahead

Amazingly, two weeks ago we turned the clocks forward an hour. What used to be an eternal Canadian winter, now seems to be little more than a seasonal blip.

But it remains winter in education for far too many. This isn’t a new theme on this blog, in Ontario education, or in the news. The sad reality is that one of the first things that gets cut in education budgets is special education.

Sometimes these cuts are insidious and under the radar. They take the form of failing to hire or retain staffing levels to meet increased demand. Then sometimes they’re just plain cuts, thick and jagged, right through the flesh of the system. When the damage is done, the system provides for no repair.

The demand for alternatives have never been greater. The demand for our school has never been more intense and I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that time quickly runs out.

If you have a child in high school who has a learning style difference or learning disability, and you feel that their needs aren’t being fully met in their current school, we’re here for you. Please email me at Don.Adams@YMCAGTA.org and come for a visit. Browse through the posts here on our website, watch the school video, talk to friends and neighbours. You’ll see why our school has few peers and how we’ve achieved a sense of community rarely found in a school.

Don’t go into another summer lacking options.

Don Adams, Head of School

Ideas and Ideals

Sometimes when people talk about education, they do so in terms of ideals. They measure the status quo against a notion of perfection – what the ideal school, teacher, student, and experience would look like.

Measuring anything against a fictitious perfection always seems futile to me. Sure, we should always measure, with the notion of getting consistently better, but we need to move away from notions of what could probably never be and towards the end product of great ideas.

Ideas have always fueled education. Ideas allow us to separate ourselves from what has stalled or simply never worked and to connect to things that can grow. Ideas grow beautifully in schools while ideals are static things. If we replaced one unattainable ideal in education with three workable ideas, what would this look like in a year, in three, in ten?

I, for one, would like to see much more of this happening day in and day out in our schools, for our kids.

Don Adams, Head of School

What’s News?

When it comes to the world of education, the news industry is reactive. Few daily realities of the world of schools, teaching, and the reality of what it is to be a student are covered in the media. Sometimes a story emerges, becomes quickly popular, then disappears.

When we read about the realities of being a student with a learning disability it grabs our attention because of the added obstacle. The reader appreciates that being a student is difficult enough as it is. When we add hurdles such as being a student with an undiagnosed learning disability in a large public school classroom, it captures our attention — but only for a moment.

We move off stories in education too quickly. The news media are not bad at problem identification (the publishing of a piece that raises an issue worth reading about) but are terrible at follow-up. Look back at the collection of posts on our blog that reference issues covered in the newspaper or on television. None were solved, few remain the topic of any ongoing conversation.

Yet it’s precisely that ongoing conversation in education that gives an issue currency. Parents, teachers, administrators and students have this dialogue. The conversations are long, challenging in nature, and absolutely imperative for forward movement.

You have a standing invitation to visit our school. We want to hear your story, your family’s challenges. We want to help where we can and give you news ideas and perspectives where we can’t. We want you to be a part of our community.

Don Adams, Head of School

How To Build A Great School

The construction of a great school is never, ever complete.

Don Adams, Head of School

Under Pressure

Over the years, an education system was created for children that took pressure as one of its foundational points. We all remember it from our own education, a snakes and ladders game or preparation, rote memorization, seemingly pointless testing. We remember how we felt when we were on that treadmill and we empathize with stories about students today who have to endure the same and worse.

On Friday, the New York Times published a superb piece on this, which you can read here.

It’s a very humane piece, one that examines why some students seem to deal reasonably well with the pressure of school while others come close to completely falling apart. I highly commend this article to you and ask that you share this blog post among your family and friends – it’s truly a piece that everyone should read.

I get stuck on phrases such as “Never before has the pressure to perform on high-stakes tests been so intense or meant so much for a child’s academic future.” That makes no sense to me, and it actually and fortunately runs counter to the direction we’re heading here in Ontario, Canada. Our Ministry of Education now mandates a form of student assessment that takes into account the totality of a student’s work over a course, including upward trends and more weight being gives to good work (a product of a student’s cumulative learning) late in a term or semester. In other words, a student doesn’t pay too large a price for one of two missteps in a course; rather a holistic perspective is taken whereby, contrary to what we see in the article, the teaching and learning in class is at least as important as a somewhat arbitrary final result.

Intellectually as well as practically, the fact that so many school systems are stuck in the antiquity that is the focus of the article is silly. Few jobs in this world focus only on the final result or see success through a standardized lens. We see success in our labours as an ongoing thing, our achievements as a product of a body of learning. We acquire experience and walk down a longer road of success.

I flash back to the words of David Bowie in his classic song about pressure (and a remarkable collaboration with Queen’s Freddie Mercury) where he sings:

Insanity laughs, under pressure we’re cracking
Can’t we give ourselves one more chance

Yes. I think we should.

Don Adams, Head of School

Isn’t No Wait No Wait?

Last night I made the mistake of flipping through the dial and a bigger mistake of settling in on the CBC news broadcast from Vancouver. There, I watched a remarkably sad story about an autistic child who doesn’t speak and his wait for therapy. You can read all about the story here.

As you know, I have more than a passing interest in this issue given that I’m the Head of School of Canada’s leading high school for young adults with learning style differences and learning disabilities. We pride ourselves on a lot here, nothing more so than providing thorough and immediate services to our school population.

Back to the story, this child is 4 years old and has been waiting for speech therapy for close to three years. In fact, from his initial referral to this first appointment, the wait was (seriously) 920 days.

It gets better. British Columbia has what’s known as a “no-wait policy,” for autistic children to get therapy. Before we point fingers at BC, the sad reality is that here in Ontario it’s much, much worse. The wait time for therapy here, as per the news article, can be up to four YEARS.

The reality of treatment for autism should mirror the reality of services at our school. Here, students wait for nothing – the services they need are provided daily. And even though we are a private school, we are a part of the YMCA, meaning that we will never turn a mission-appropriate student away because of a family’s inability to afford our tuition.

I hope that this news story drives some change in BC and makes us all better consumers of what our children need. I hope it also helps redefine the term “no-wait,” for people who need to interpret and implement policy.

Don Adams, Head of School

It Begins With Failure

For many young people with a learning disability, schools begins with failure. That failure is a cumulative failure in that they begin to experience problems in school, those problems amplify, the help they need is late or entirely absent, then the cycle usually repeats. It is also a series of individual, often daily failures, where a variety of lessons not absorbed (academic, social, a combination of both and more) repeats upon itself to the point of implosion. Imagine starting every school day knowing that from that point until the end of the day, things will more likely than not go straight downhill.

We have built our schools on the notion that students are responsible for their own success. We expect that the metrics of success are a product of hard work and applying oneself to the tasks at hand. It’s an ethic that works only with some students some of the time.

Imagine how lucky we are at The Academy when we get to invert failure, as we do every single day. When we give students the tools to be successful not in a haphazard way, but consistently, deeply, broadly. This success, as you can imagine, carries outside the classroom and school walls, as it is also met with a change of attitude.

I would like to remind you of something I have previously written when discussing how The Academy changes a student’s trajectory and life. Have a look here. When we talk about success, we are talking about measurement. We are able to show prospective families exactly how we do what we do as a school and community.

As always, we welcome the opportunity to meet you and share what we have accomplished over the history of our school with you. When we talk about mission-appropriate students for The Academy, that conversation begins with our mission: to help you and to help your child.

Don Adams, Head of School

Never Too Late

I read a great piece recently in the New York Times. It tells the story of an 80-year-old man, Robert Titus, who just graduated with his bachelor’s degree.

Why did Mr. Titus return to school after all these years?

“I promised my mother many, many years ago that I would get my degree,” said Mr. Titus, a former salesman who lives in Houston. “To me, it was a major, big, big, huge accomplishment.”

Education is almost never a solo endeavour. At The Academy, we are a community school. Our students haven’t fit elsewhere – our school is the first home that they and their families have had in an education system that has perhaps never served their needs.

Making a commitment to yourself and those who believe in you is essential to success in school. Many studies over the years have shown that it’s never too late for families to commit to a level of positive support and nurturing in the education of a child. There’s also no shortage of studies, and common sense, to show that people who feel that more than just they have a stake in their education tend to fare better.

Re-enter Mr. Titus. Keeping an education promise brought him back to formal schooling after almost an entire lifetime. In fulfilling education promises, everyone wins.

Don Adams, Head of School

Are We Ready for 2013?

I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t be commuting to work in 2013 by jet pack, though I was eternally optimistic and hopeful. This mirrors my position on schools, yet I have found myself equally un-surprised.

At least in my mind, each year the school system should get better. We should end the year, look back as a society, be genuinely pleased at what we have accomplished, then resolve to achieve even more in the new year. I can absolutely assure you that this is how we approach each year at the YMCA Academy.

I ask myself today – honestly – if families of students with learning style differences and learning disabilities in the public school system here in Toronto are better or worse off today than they were one year ago. The answer is obvious and beyond disappointing. It’s also not limited to Toronto, Ontario, or to Canada. Not by any means.

If each of us takes a little more time in 2013 to become an advocate for education we will have a better chance at seeing and experiencing change. There will always be a need for schools such as ours but we should work towards a point of equilibrium between the demand for our schools and their supply. As it stands today, there are far more families who need a YMCA Academy in their community than the availability of these schools that are equipped to help.

From all of us in our community, we wish you the best year yet.

Don Adams, Head of School

Holiday Wishes

This holiday season has brought into focus how very lucky we are as a school community. Our home is in Toronto, an amazing and, by global standards, safe city.

It has been a trying semester for schools and teachers, here and away. Sometimes we lost track of that which is the most important – creating and nurturing safe communities for learning.

To wish for anything less than world peace on this holiday would be to dramatically under-wish. We wish that teachers and students everyone had the resources that our teachers and students do. We wish they could live and work every day in a place that nurtures them, and we wish perhaps most of all that next year is a year defined by stories of hope in education, not fear.

For ourselves, we wish we could help more students and families. We wish that everyone who needed to know about our school did. We wish that every student who needed help could get that help in a timely way. And we wish that the new year is one of positive change and forward motion.

We wish you everything good.

Don Adams, Head of School

Content Content

E.L. Doctorow wrote many things, among them, this superb analysis on what writing is:

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader–not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

I am never content with the content of our blog. It’s not that I don’t feel that we write enough or that what we’re writing isn’t meaningful, it’s that a school – OUR school – is a remarkably dynamic place. We use this blog to let all of our stakeholders (and I count anyone reading this piece to be among them) know about what defines our school: our values, attitudes, activities, perspective, how we process the world.

A great school blog evokes sensation. I’m not sure that ours is always there, but we always try to convey meaning. We use Twitter to communicate that meaning to a larger audience, to let a world far outside of our school feel the rain that we feel, but also the daily sun that literally and figuratively shines through on our students, teachers, classrooms.

As always, we would like to share with you the feeling of what it’s like to go to school within our inclusive walls. Please email me at Don.Adams@YMCGTA.org and we would be happy to show you around. And please remember that no mission-appropriate student is ever turned away from The Academy for financial reasons.

Don Adams, Head of School

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

This has been one of those weeks that even passive news consumption has been too much. Teaching students about world affairs has always been a complicated thing, that much more so when the events of the day revolve around potential war.

I have long advocated that schools need to not only teach peace, but to be places of peace as well. If we can make every school a better, more humane place, we are well on our way to making every city, region, nation a better place. It’s a cumulative effect throughout the world – cumulatively good when we do the right things, cumulatively bad when we don’t take the time to teach what needs to be taught.

I wonder what our students think when they consume news on their own. I worry that they sometimes assume that what they see on TV is the only version of reality, the reality actually being that reality comes in different sizes, shapes and colors. I can imagine that news weeks such as this past one make a lot of young people’s heads hurt. As it does mine.

Don Adams, Head of School

What is an Asset?

The phrase “a school’s assets” is one that we read more than ever these days, the idea being that every school has a set of physical and non-physical assets. It’s often used to describe the school’s buildings (the physical plant), computer hardware, and the like.

I guess I’m very old school – pun intended – here, as I believe that a school’s assets begin and end with its people. Teachers, parents, students, alumni(ae), donors, administrators.

I also believe that anywhere can be a school. I’ve seen some amazing learning and teaching literally in the wilderness. The assets of a great school are intellectual ones. Couple that with a willingness to be creative and to change and you have a magical proposition.

Think about the schools where you went and where you send your children. What would you describe at their greatest assets?

Don Adams, Head of School

The Autism Advantage

The New York Times very recently published an intensely personal piece about autism, entitled “The Autism Advantage.” You can read it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/the-autism-advantage.html

It is a truly remarkably piece, focusing not only on the abilities that are inherent in any disability, but how a family actually found opportunity through their son’s autism. I highly commend the piece to you, in part because it’s not just about one family or about autism. It speaks to the power of abilities of all kinds.

The opportunity the family found came through observing and interacting with their son. I don’t want to spoil the read for you, so suffice it to say that when the parents began to understand how their son’s autism worked, they realized that he, and autistic people in general, had a rare and highly specialized skill set. They also saw that, being rare, it was one that could be highly in demand in certain contexts.

Please read the piece. And in so doing, think about the ability that exists within every disability. An inability to function well on something is often balanced with a special skill, talent, insight. It’s the way the world works – the beauty of contraposition, the finding of strength within weakness, the identification of advantage in disadvantage.

Don Adams, Head of School

To Test or Not to Test

Last week’s education news in the US was marked by former New York City Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein, and American Federation of Teachers President, Randi Weingarten, agreeing that teachers should have to pass an exam very similar to the lawyer’s Bar Exam before being allowed to teach.

While it’s kind of bizarre that Klein and Weingarten agree on anything in education, the fact that what they’re agreeing on is a Bar Exam for teachers brings this most decidedly into the realm of the bizarre. Most experts whom I trust in the United States education world agree that the problem is how difficult it is to remove bad teachers from the system, not that the way to have fewer bad teachers is to dramatically raise the bar for entry to the profession. This is just bizarre and wrong.

I have known thousands of teachers in my life, mostly in the independent school system in the United States and Canada. Many of the best teachers I ever met and had the pleasure to work with never went to teacher’s college, though many did. What is a universal problem in North America is that there are amazing people with great work and life experience who desperately want to enter the teaching profession but can’t because of the barriers to entry, some of which are artificial.

I would love to see a system where it was significantly easier for a skilled and passionate person to enter the teaching profession. I would like to see it become much easier and accepted for these people to get their training on the job, along with any certification the system deems they need. Part of that, from where I see the world of education, should absolutely not be an additional examination that will weed out many teachers who are potentially stellar additions to the profession.

Don Adams, Head of School

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Don Adams, Head of School

Election Day

Last week was the American Presidential election. While the evening itself produced a race that wasn’t very close when all was said and done, the notion of an election is an intriguing one. We “elect” many things in our lives. We choose acts and omissions.

Every family at our school has elected be a part of our community and to entrust us with the care and education of their child. On a smaller scale, that’s as daunting as a population electing someone to serve in an office, such as President. It’s a trust that we take very, very seriously.

When we elect to do something, we also elect not to do something else. When schools in Ontario elect not to give parents of students with suspected learning disabilities the timely testing and Individualized Education Plan that they are legally entitled to receive, they are electing not to serve the needs of Ontario families.

Throughout our history at The Academy, we have elected the opposite. We have always served our populations quickly, thoroughly, passionately. From where we sit, it’s the only thing we can elect to do, given that these are families and teenagers often in dire straits. To elect to do anything less would be to elect not to serve our school’s mission, and that’s an election day you will never see at The Academy.

Perhaps you should elect to give us a call and see the school. You’re always welcome.

Don Adams, Head of School

Spring Ahead, Fall Back

On Sunday morning at 02.00, those of us who were awake set our clocks back an hour at just the right moment. We do that every fall and to remember whether to move ahead or behind, we learned “Spring Ahead, Fall Back” in school.

I don’t like the idea of ever falling back – I think that we should always endeavour to Spring Ahead. It’s a good thing that I’m not responsible for setting our clocks or for teaching students to remember that phrase.

Daylight Savings Time is actually observed in around 70 countries, though it was and remains something US-driven. The idea behind the concept was that it saved electricity. More recent US studies show that Daylight Savings Time may actually increase the amount of electricity used, though this may be state-specific.

Maybe Daylight Savings Time is akin to what we all-too-often do in schools. We look at the information available to us at a given moment and make a decision. We rarely take a fresh look at that decision (say, the idea of putting school desks in neatly-ordered rows), electing instead to just move forward and let the status quo congeal.

I’m wondering aloud how many of the historical decisions we have made in and about schools are ripe for re-examination. Not necessarily a major overhaul (though, of course, many are) but a reasonably gentle tweaking, like moving a clock back or forward by an hour.

What things would you suggest?

Don Adams, Head of School

Alternative

In our recent advertisements and our YouTube site, among other places, you will see us described as an “alternative” school.

Alternative to what?

We think about this question a lot. For many reasons, we embrace the notion of being alternative. First, we are alternative to what was the status quo for the students who come to The Academy. In that way, our alternative is small, intimate classes; teachers who are experts in dealing with students with learning style differences and learning disabilities; administrators who are on the leading edge of research and thought in this area of education.

We are also alternative in our ability as a school to invert the history of a students experience at and with schools. Where schools were previously places of failure, The Academy is a place for success. We spend the entire year spreading the word about our school. We actively prospect for the students and families who would most benefit from being part of The Academy community and an education at our school. We take these students on the way into our school and throughout their time here, empower them to succeed on the way out. This is transformative and deeply alternative for the families who come to our school.

FInally, alternative is an attitude. From the minute the school day begins, the expectation is engagement and success. Students take from an education at The Academy what they put in. We create an environment here that makes it safe, comfortable, rewarding for students to check in. It takes time to change the paradigm from school being a passive thing that probably should be avoided, to school being an integral part of who you are, in a community that not only cares about you, but is equipped to help you succeed.

The Academy IS Toronto’s alternative school. It’s a beautiful time of year in the city – come join us for a tour and a cup of good coffee.

Don Adams, Head of School

The Bare Minimum

So much of what we read in the media today about schools revolves around the bare minimum. Labour battles, unions, governments – it all creates a real mess for our students, all of whom deserve to transcend the minimum each day.

Minimums are something that we quickly get used to. Some think (though I disagree) that most students spend a fair amount of their team figuring out where the level of minimum effort is. They say the same about teachers. At our school, we never see this. We see engagement, each and every day. We see teachers who arrive early and stay late, not out of obligation, but out of a commitment to deliver the maximum that they can for their students, for themselves.

Everything has a starting point, so I wonder where the disconnect began and I know that parents wonder this as well. Every week I hear stories from our parents about low levels of engagement at their child’s previous school. To parents of children with learning disabilities and learning style differences, the disconnect often begins and ends at the intersection of understanding and commitment. It’s remarkably difficult to be committed to something you don’t understand. If a teacher doesn’t understand a student and a student in turn feels lost in a system that doesn’t work for or with him or her, we have a void.

There are no schools that are a perfect fit for every student. We need to divest ourselves of the notion that there are, just as we need to get beyond the idea that the measure of a given day or week or academic year should be the least that we can do for each other. We all need to aim as high as we can, every single day. That’s the bare minimum we owe our students.

Don Adams, Head of School

TEDxYMCAAcademy!

The idea behind TED is simple: spread ideas worth spreading.

On October 13th, we at The Academy will inded spread some ideas worth spreading by hosting our third TEDx event, this one under the theme of “Machines and Minds.” You can learn more about the event at www.TEDxYMCAAcademy.com

TED is huge. Every day, 450,000 log on to the TED site. Here’s an interactive map posted just a couple of days ago to show just how broad TED’s reach has become: http://blog.ted.com/2012/09/28/who-else-is-watching-tedtalks-a-visual-map/

The way it works is pretty simple. Over a few hours, we have some really interesting people deliver a talk on whatever they want, as long as it relates to the theme we’ve chosen. We fill the auditorium at the Central Y then have up to a thousand people or so follow our livestream. Later, we post videos of the event on our site and the TED folks watch these. If they really think that one or two are world-class, they post them on their site and that gives our TEDxYMCAAcademy speaker a chance to be seen not by a thousand people, but potentially by hundreds of thousands.

And that’s how ideas worth spreading actually spread.

We think that education should work more like this. Great ideas should become viral ore easily and not get lost in the constant noise of education battles. That’s one of the amazing things about a TED event – it’s not about point and counterpoint, it’s about a buffet of ideas for the mind. You pick and choose what is to your taste.

We’re pretty confident that the event we’re holding on October 13th will be our best one yet. Over the next few days, we’ll finish loading speaker bios to our site. While the event sold out quickly (the term being used loosely, as the event is free), we’ve had many requests for more tickets. While we’re limited by our capacity, please do show up in the auditorium of the Central Y by 09.45 on the day of the event and we’ll fill any and all empty seats. We’ve always been able to accommodate people who show up at the door.

And between now and then, please do spend some time looking at the TED site, get a sense of the wealth of ideas TED speakers share, and a taste of what you’ll be able to sample and enjoy on the 13th.

See you then!

Don Adams, Head of School

Alternative

In our recent advertisements and our YouTube site, among other places, you will see us described as an “alternative” school.

Alternative to what?

Finally, alternative is an attitude. From the minute the school day begins, the expectation is engagement and success. Students take from an education at The Academy what they put in. We create an environment here that makes it safe, comfortable, rewarding for students to check in. It takes time to change the paradigm from school being a passive thing that probably should be avoided, to school being an integral part of who you are, in a community that not only cares about you, but is equipped to help you succeed.

The Academy IS Toronto’s alternative school. It’s a beautiful time of year in the city – come join us for a tour and a cup of good coffee.

Don Adams, Head of School

Location, Location, Location

I have one of the best views in Toronto.

My office is on the main floor of The Academy. It’s three floors up, has a big window, and looks north. So I look from Breadalbane towards Wellesley and points north. I can turn my head to the left and easily see Bay Street, to the right and easily see Yonge Street. Had I ever the opportunity to hit a golf ball from the roof of our building (assuming that the streets would be completely empty), I’m pretty sure I could at least get my drive to roll to College on the south and Wellesley on the North. I could easily clear Yonge without a bounce.

For a lot of families, location is everything. For a family working in Toronto’s downtown core, they can drop their son or daughter off at school. Don’t underemphasize the role of that commute in family life. We are an urban community school. We feel that we are a part of downtown Toronto. Surrounded by towers that drive Canadian and global commerce, we do something equally important – we prepare high school students with learning disabilities and learning style differences for a lifetime of success and happiness.

Take a look at the school video we made last year HERE. Do these seem like happy young adults to you?

Come by for a visit and let us show you how we make school a pleasure for our families.

Don Adams, Head of School

Maybe Don’t Read the News

I made the mistake today of going to the online Education section of the New York Times. I haven’t been there for a couple of weeks, as we’ve been full steam ahead with preparations for our school year that opened very successfully this week. I like reading the Times Education section, as most heads of school, I assume, also do.

But looking at the totality of this set of headlines would depress event the greatest education optimist. Teacher strikes and lockouts, schools that are literally crumbling, schools competing against each other for the most luxurious dormitories, policy shifts denying teachers earned compensation – there’s just not any good news in the totality of what was published. Today, in fact, we have 350,000 Chicago public school students who have now been without school for an entire week.

What happened to balance in education? How and when did we cross into a land of extremes? I’m not a journalist but I guess I’m naive enough to think that one can attract more flies (readers like me) with honey (some realistic but positive pieces) than with vinegar (see above).

Schools are life-changing places. Done well, a school is a transformative place. Done poorly, I guess, schools are the kinds of places that breed the current Education section of the New York Times.

Elbert Hubbard once wrote that “A school should not be a preparation for life. A school should be life.” Let’s work to make our schools great places that not only create great results but great stories.

Don Adams, Head of School

Winter of Our Discontent

Though my role at The YMCA Academy is Head of School, I’m always going to be Dr. Adams, teacher of English. Once a teacher, always a teacher.

So, as that teacher of English, I was reflecting upon the start of the year and one of John Steinbeck’s best if most underrated works, “The Winter of Our Discontent.” There is a passage in the book that never fails to grab me:

“People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don’t dream at all.”

Inherent in a new school year is the notion of dreaming. Students dream about what they want to become in the future — when they’re fully “grown up” (side note – like many adults, I’m still waiting for that moment to happen). But the idea of dreaming about the future is inextricably linked to the past. Who and what we imagine ourselves as becoming is informed by who and what we have been.

For students who have always experienced success in the classroom, their trajectory of imagining is limitless. The formula in their minds for future success is the past + the present = opportunity. They can see and sense that, because success isn’t foreign to them. But here at The Academy, our students face a different challenge, that of imagining a successful future where their past in school has been an ongoing challenge.

When you spend years in school as the square peg trying to fit into the round hole, it’s easy to give up. You can blame the shape of the hole, but you’ll also look to yourself and why you don’t fit. What we deal with at The Academy are students who, for perhaps the first time, do fit and fit remarkably well. What comes along with that is a re-evaluation of the future. Sometimes, it’s as complicated as showing someone that they should no longer be afraid of their dreams, that what what was once thought of as being unattainable is now a real possibility.

This isn’t a challenge limited to us at The Academy, it’s inherent to the nature of schools. We know that this blog is read in many parts of the world and that students face a range and depth of challenges. But no matter where a student lives and works, part of what a great school can do is to help create a culture where dreams are pursued, not feared.

Don Adams, Head of School

Beginnings

Margaret Laurence loved school. She once wrote “Holidays are enticing only for the first week or so. After that, it is no longer such a novelty to rise late and have little to do.”

If any of our students had that novelty over the past week, it’s officially over as, happily, The Academy is back in session for a new school year. I’m going to go out on what really isn’t much of a limb and predict our greatest school year in the history of The Academy.

The summer was remarkably busy for us. Applications and inquiries were at an all-time high. By the time the dust settles, our enrolment may surpass our best mark ever. The quality of new applicants we have seen has been amazing. We have a full school of mission-appropriate students and families. We are happy and energized for a new school year.

There is a Buddhist proverb: “When the student is ready, the master appears.” That’s the feeling here today. One of preparedness, anticipation. I sometimes think it cliche when people talk about education itself as a journey. I see it as a series of beginnings. Some are in a classroom and some are out in the world (or even in an intersection of the two). Each of these beginning is a checkpoint in the notion of a larger journey of one’s education. And, of course, for something to begin something else must end. So as we bid farewell to this summer, we do so with an eye on the amazing things to come this year.

I want to thank everyone in our community for being so prepared to accept this beginning. Watching the students and teachers today reinforces what a special place The Academy is. So, for another school year, off we go!

Don Adams, Head of School

Great Hands

I’ve always been a big sports fan. As a Torontonian, I’m a fan of the Blue Jays, Leafs – all the local teams, really. I was thinking, the other day, about what differentiates a good athlete for a great one. The conclusion I reached is that the best athletes have great hands.

I see this in two ways. First, literally: no matter the sport, the best athletes have the best hands. This is often discussed in sports analysis. Whether swinging a bat, shooting a puck, throwing a ball, it’s about hand quickness, strength and, of course, intangibles – things that a gifted athlete simply possesses.

There’s also the other meaning of having great hands. Having people in your life who give you a great hand when you need it. Amazing athletes have equally amazing mentors.

I’ve been thinking about all of these things because I’m preparing to greet our teachers in a few days after the summer break. Every one of the teachers at The Academy is that great hand in the life of a student with a learning style difference of learning disability. Every day I see the difference they make in our students lives and can’t imagine a finer group of teachers for our students.

And no matter how great our hands are, we keep working at what we do. We always strive to improve, and, like an athlete, put the gifts we have to their best use.

We can’t wait to have our students back and for the year to begin!

Don Adams, Head of School

Exercise and Learning Disabilities

It’s no secret that we all need exercise. Exercise makes us stronger, does everything from help regulate our appetite to give us a sense of daily structure. Sometimes we think of exercise as that one thing that can drown out the noise in our lives and allow us to focus on our work.

It takes nothing more time-consuming than a google search on “ADHD and exercise” to show that this is not only a huge thread in popular exercise culture, but also the stuff of serious scholarly research. “Physical Exercise as a Reinforcer to Promote Calmness,” “How to Reach and Teach Children with ADHD,” “Sport Participation and Lessened Anxiety in Children with ADHD,” are all part of a growing body of research.

This research supports a simple thesis: kids with ADHD and other learning differences and disabilities greatly, often dramatically, benefit from physical exercise. There’s simply no grey area here – daily exercise can be the tie that binds together your child’s learning, it is the thing that facilities their attentiveness, participation, and ability to retain information.

We are the YMCA Academy. Our school lives in the Central YMCA. That means two things. First, that we couldn’t possibly be more central. Our school has Bay Street to the west, Yonge to the east, Grosvenor to the south, and Breadalbane to the north. Second, and most important, that our school has, arguably, the best fitness facilities of any school in Toronto. We have it all here and student use it as part of our curriculum – a curriculum of health, learning, and community.

As always, I extend to you my invitation. Come out for a visit. Have a cup of coffee. Want to test the facilities here for yourself? Great – I’ll give you a Day Pass when we meet and you can spend the rest of your day exercising at the Y!

School is a week away. Come see The Academy and decide for yourself is this is the right fit you’ve been looking for.

Don Adams, Head of School

Not the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

You know the TV commercial — the one where the parents are buying back-to-school supplies for their kids at the big box retailer, dancing and singing along with the famed holiday tune.

But back-to-school isn’t close to the most wonderful time of year for the vast majority of parents of students with learning disabilities. Earlier this year, Ontarians learned that students who need an Individualized Education Plan are, literally, in a queue that can last up to three years. We know that students with LDs benefit greatly from a highly personalized classroom setting and that these simply don’t exist in the public system.

Yet we’re also committed to the ideal that students shouldn’t be excluded from alternative, niche schools that perfectly match their set of ABILITIES because they can’t afford to attend.

Our school, The Academy, is a community school in every sense of the word. First, we’re housed in the beautiful Central Y, occupying a sizeable block of real estate from Bay to the west, Yonge to the East, Breadalbane to the north, and Grosvenor to the south. It doesn’t get more central than that – we are surrounded by public transportation and excellent parking lots.

As we are affiliated with the YMCA, we also share their policy of inclusion. We will not turn away a mission-appropriate family for financial reasons. Our pledge to you is that we will find a way to make it work financially for your child to attend The Academy if this is the right school for them.

There’s not much I can say here to top that. Our school provides everything that our students need. For students coming to The Academy from years at a school that simply didn’t fit, it IS the most wonderful time of the year.

Don Adams, Head of School

The Resilient Student

One of the most satisfying things for a Head of School is to happen across research that validates and justifies what you are already doing. It was with considerable interest that I read The Learning Partnership’s recent report “Resilience in Children and Youth: Promising Practices from Canada’s Outstanding Principals”. (http://www.thelearningpartnership.ca/page.aspx?pid=913)

For the researchers involved in the study, developing the capacity for resilience in our students – the capacity for children and youth to navigate to the resources they need – is a singularly important function of schools.

According to their research, “When we provide children and youth who are ‘at risk’ with supports that facilitate their growth, the research shows very clearly that eventually all the effort by teachers, educators, guidance counselors and special educators pays a dividend far into the future.” (Dr. Michael Ungar, Ph.D., Co-Director, Resilience Research Centre, Killam Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work, Dalhousie University)

A quick scan of the Criteria for a Resilience Promoting School reads like a description of The YMCA Academy. The criteria are based on research by the Resilience Research Centre across many different cultures. “Both qualitative and quantitative studies have shown that facilitative environments that promote all seven of these aspects of children’s lives are likely to provide children who are disadvantaged with opportunities to experience resilience.”

Schools that promote resilience provide opportunities for students to experience:

Nurturing Relationships

There are positive peer interactions in which every child has an opportunity to show others his or her talents.
There is active participation of parents and other caregivers in children’s learning, with channels for communication open between the child’s home and school.
Educators have opportunities to build strong relationships with students and provide mentorship to the most vulnerable.

Developing a Positive Identity

There are activities at which every child can succeed.
There are opportunities for children to show others their talents.
There are opportunities for children to feel unique and valued.

Power and Control

There are opportunities for students to influence their learning.
Students’ voices are heard in the design of extra-curricular activities.
Students are rewarded with success when they put in extra effort.

Social Justice

Students, regardless of ethno-racial background, gender, sexual orientation or ability,
are treated fairly while at school.
Curriculum, when possible, reflects the cultural and contextual diversity of students.

Access to Resources

Students feel safe at their school.
Extra curricular activities are affordable.
The school building is accessible.
Children’s basic needs for food and clothing are met, when possible.

Sense of Belonging

Children feel welcome at their school no matter what their background.
Children are given opportunities to contribute to their school and the well-being of others.
Children’s families are welcome at the school.

Culture

Children’s diverse cultures and traditions are celebrated at school.
Children are able to share at school aspects of their lives that are important to them.
Children have opportunities to tell stories about their past and the history of their families.

I think parents and guardians of our students will agree that we provide every opportunity to develop resilience in our students based on these descriptors.

If you have a child who is struggling in a traditional high school, you owe it to yourself to visit the Academy to learn more about our program. More importantly, you owe it to your child.

Don Adams, Head of School

Build Your Own School

This year, we’re going to run a competition for students with learning style differences and learning disabilities from around the world. We’re going to ask them to design their ideal school.

Why?

First and selfishly, we think that over the past decade or so, we’ve built a superb small urban high school for students with learning style differences and learning disabilities. While we’re not looking for pats on the back, we’re always looking to improve and refine our school. Why not seek advice from our clients?

But, more importantly, we think that for a student who, because of learning issues, has experienced a lot more failure than success in school, this exercise can be therapeutic. By designing the school they wish they could attend, they can help make it possible for others to one day attend a school that looks like theirs.

How?

Well, we’re going to share the ideas, not keep them to ourselves. We’ll tell school design firms what the students in our contest came up with. We’ll circulate the results to school boards and principals and education ministries. We’ll help spread the word that a huge piece of meaningful school reform should come from the students themselves.

Stay tuned. More on this coming in the fall.

Don Adams, Head of School

Turn it Upside-Down

Imagine being the only person in a room of twenty-five with a condition that everyone feared and no one understood.

Welcome to the daily life of a student with a learning disability. In every classroom in every city, there is a student with a learning disability. That’s a remarkable thing when you actually think about it. The student lives in the shadows for a variety of reasons. He may have never been diagnosed, due to the massive backlog in the public system (certainly in places such as here in Toronto where it might take two years of more for a student to even be tested for a learning disability). She is in a classroom with a teacher who has never had training about how to work with students with learning disabilities. Students with LDs are surrounded by other students who don’t share their condition, who haven’t had the experience or education to understand it and who might isolate them for being different.

This is the bleak, daily reality of a student with a learning disability. We’ve seen and heard this reality through stories our own students have conveyed to us when coming to The Academy. It’s amazing how students with learning disabilities open up when they arrive here, usually their first-ever safe haven in the system of schools that has equally been frustrated with them as students, and has frustrated them as learners.

“…Now at The Academy, everyone fits in.

No one is different from everybody.

Everybody gets the same thing.”

Joseph K, Academy student

Now turn this model upside-down and imagine being one of an entire classroom of students with learning disabilities. And imagine having all of the support you need, every day: from highly-trained teachers to counseling support, to an educational program that not only empowers you, but prepares you for success in life where you’ve experienced only failure in school before. That’s exactly what The Academy is.

We help families make informed decisions about their child’s future. We help students become all they and their parents had hoped they could be. Give us a call, come to the school for a visit, and let us show you how our program works for families. Have a look at our school video for a quick overview of how we affect students’ lives – http://www.ymcaacademy.org/?page_id=3126

Don Adams, Head of School

Summer Update from The Academy

To say that it has been a busy summer here at The Academy would be a huge understatement. While it’s hard to believe that it’s only July, the new school year is right around the corner (we all know that August’s Simcoe Day really brings home how close September is for all of us).

We have had more inquiries and family visits this summer than any other summer in the school’s history. From speaking to families, there are several reasons for this:

First, Ontario and Toronto have become very challenging places to actually have your child receive the learning disability services they are entitled to under the law. As you may remember from the recent People for Education report and the many media stories that followed, it can take, literally, years for children to receive the services they need if they attend a public school in Ontario.

The second reason more families have been inquiring this summer is that we have become better at communicating the stories of our own success as a school. Earlier this year, I summarized the history of that success here: http://www.ymcaacademy.org/?p=3360

Finally, families understand that as The Academy is a part of the YMCA of Greater Toronto, even though we are a tuition-charging school, we never refuse a student for financial reasons. If a student is mission-appropriate for our school, we work with the family to offer the assistance necessary to make it happen. This has been and remains our pledge to you.

So, given that there’s still some summer left, please email me at don.Adams@ymcagta.org and come to visit the school. I will always personally make the time to meet with every family interested in our school.

Don Adams, Head of School

The Home Stretch

I’ve never been a fan of horse racing, but I will admit to finding the highlights of the end of a big race on sports TV pretty exciting.

It’s the same with an end to the school year. Schools are in the home stretch of the academic year, looking to finish with the same energy that fueled the start of the year.

For many families, this is the point in the year where the finish line seems much further away than it really is. When students aren’t experiencing success in school, it wears on them and their families. As the year progresses, this weight gets even heavier.

Here at The YMCA Academy, we define ourselves by what a great fit we are for students and their families. To be a teenager with a learning disability, facing the prospect of another year at a school that isn’t a good fit, is a very tough situation. I invite you to contact me to discuss what we can do for you and your teen.

I would also like to remind you that the fee-payment policy at The Academy fits the spirit of fee-paying at the YMCA: we absolutely make it possible for mission-appropriate students to attend our school. We will not turn away any student who is a great fit on financial grounds. You have my promise on this.

Don Adams – Head of School

Educational Success — A Request

Being a parent, there are some things you never forget. For example, we remember every success our child has in school, which is usually an easy thing to do because kids are the best communicators of their own efforts. When our children figure out how their efforts translate into success in and at school, it’s a beautiful thing to watch.

But there are kids who rarely get to experience those victories in school, so they and their parents watch from the sideline. They feel less connected, more alienated with every missed opportunity.

There is no time during which this is more pronounced than at the end of an academic year. For some students the final report can be a litany of failure. It memorializes nine months of disconnections, of missed opportunities. The end result is lack of hope and nothing less than dread for the cycle to soon be repeated next school year.

This is time of year that our school inquiries begin to peak. It’s a testament to the strength of character of families who refuse to continue to be reactive in an education system that simply isn’t properly equipped serve their child.

The YMCA Academy has a proven history of success working with students with learning disabilities and learning style differences. New families see and describe a change in their child that is truly transformational. That’s what happens when you invert your child’s education experience, transplanting them from a system where they are an uncomfortable exception to one in which they are an equally important piece of a puzzle of school success.

You can do us a favor today as we all, quicker than we can possible imagine, move together towards the opening of the next school year. You can pass along our school’s website information at www.ymcaacademy.org and encourage your friends and family to watch our school video, located on our main page, and to, in turn, pass it on. Our school exists to help families turn around a child’s education history. So please help us, today, to do that with more families who find themselves in need of our school.

Don Adams – Head of School

Announcing TEDxYMCAAcademy 3.0: “Machines and Minds”

As many of you know, one of our new initiatives over the past year has been to establish TEDxYMCAAcademy. It would not be unrealistic to say that the TED and TEDx series of events have become an important part of our popular culture over the better part of this past decade. Our friends at TED self-describe TEDx events like this:

TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading.” The program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.

At TEDx events, a screening of TEDTalks videos — or a combination of live presenters and TEDTalks videos — sparks deep conversation and connections. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis.

As The Academy is a Community School in the truest sense of the word, we love being able to include many of you, our Toronto friends, in our event. In addition, we livestream each TEDx event, bringing thousands of viewers from around the world, as do the videos from the events that we post on our site. Attending (and, for us, curating) a TEDx event is a lot of fun!

So, our TEDxYMCAAcademy 3.0 (it’s hard to believe that we’re already on our THIRD event!) has the theme “Machines and Minds.” As is the case with theme-based TEDx events, we leave this open to interpretation – it is designed to be intentionally elastic.

We really hope you join us on October 13th. Tickets are always free and you can get yours here: machinesandminds.eventbrite.com

We are all looking forward to seeing you there!

Don Adams – Head of School

Playing to Learn

Summer is on the horizon. Soon, kids will be singing the words of Alice Cooper: “school’s out for summer.” But in some fundamental ways it’s not.

Play is one important way that kids learn and summer is about play. I would argue that kids learn more actively than ever now. Playing video games, engaging with a computer is active. In some fundamental ways, it’s far more active than engaging with a book, though many educators and parents are hesitant to admit this. Children with psycho-motor development issues have been greatly aided by engaging with these technologies and the summer is a time for kids to take self-appointed deep-dives into learning new things with computers and tablets.

To me, learning is learning. Recently, I’ve been doing my own deep-dive into the excellent GarageBand, composing my first few songs as I learn to play guitar. If you’re inclined and not a professional music critic, you can find one of my songs here: http://snd.sc/JaC3j8

When I think about playing with and on GarageBand, I compare it with reading about playing guitar. This is much more active learning for me. It’s experimentation, it’s failure and success in real time, and it’s a lot of fun. Over the summer I’m going to get deeper into music composition and learn to play some guitar riffs that I would have earlier believed to be beyond my abilities.

Summer is a great time to push the envelope of one’s ability, to learn new things under the guise of playing, and to find new things to love.

Don Adams – Head of School

Teacher Appreciation Week

When I was in elementary school, I thought my teachers were amazing. Not only did they help me and all of my classmates every day, they did so selflessly. When I was able to catch a glimpse into their personal lives, they seemed to be exactly the same. I grew up seeing teachers as genuinely good people who put others before themselves. I appreciated my teachers every day.

I see teachers the same way today, which is probably a very good thing since I’m the Head of a school.

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week, which confuses me a bit, very much like this weekend’s Mother’s Day does. While some would argue that setting aside a week or a day for recognition is actually an honor to those being recognized, I think that genuine appreciation should be a continuous and daily thing.

In looking at social and other media this week, it seems as if people are saying the right things about Teacher Appreciation Week. But these are some of the same people who will then look at teachers through a darker lens next week, which is really a shame.

From me and all of our superb teachers here at The Academy, we wish all teachers not only a fantastic week this week but every week.

Don Adams – Head of School

People for Education report…

I would usually reserve comment on a major report that’s about to be published until the full report comes out and I’ve had a chance to digest it. But a piece from today’s Toronto Star is so disturbing that I can’t wait.

First, here’s the piece itself: http://bit.ly/KeCFCW

The title itself is depressing: ‘Caps’ mean special education students not getting help, People for Education report says. How, in 2012, are children with special needs in Ontario not only failing to be served by the public school system, but also not even receiving their PROVINCIALLY-MANDATED RIGHT TO BE TESTED?

As the Head of Toronto’s leading high school for students with learning disabilities and learning style differences, I’m very much in the middle of the fray here. When I read something in this piece like: One Ontario board told its principals there could be “no assessments for this school year since they are trying to catch up on last year’s referrals” it infuriates me and, from the comments I’ve received from people even early this morning, I’m not alone.

You need to read this article. The news only gets worse:

People for Education also found the ratio of special education teachers to students has gone up, from 22:1 in 2000 to 36:1 this year in elementary schools. In high schools, the ratio has jumped from 48:1 to the current 69:1.

69 to ONE?

I hope you’ll forgive a bit of self promotion here on behalf of The YMCA Academy. Every one of our teachers is special-education trained, our student-to-teacher ratio is under 5:1, and we’ll keep it that way. Each student at The Academy receives the individualized attention he or she needs and deserves. And no mission-appropriate child is ever turned away from our school for financial reasons. We always find a way to help and make it work for the family.

Imagine that you’re the parent of a special-needs child and you read this report. What would your level of frustration look like?

It’s time for the province to step to the plate and do what’s right here.

Don Adams – Head of School

Satisfaction

According to a significant recent study, only 44% of US teachers say they’re satisfied with their job. That’s an 18 percent drop in 3 years. This raises a question that is very interesting to me as a school principal — what IS job satisfaction for a teacher?

Well, I think I know something about that. The first thing is respect. Teachers want to work in a caring environment. That seems overly simple but it’s true. They want to be in an environment where everyone in the school cares about the students and the community cares about their teachers.

Teachers also want to be able to express their creativity. While every school has Ministry of Education guidelines to follow and their own internal goals, teaching is truly an art form in the hands of an accomplished teacher.

I have long believed that the most important thing a school head can do is to honor the voice of their teachers, individually and collectively. A school leader’s door should be an open one. Work between the administration and teachers should be truly collaborative.

One of the most effective changes I have instituted at the YMCA Academy is what I call “Google” time — an hour or so every week during which teachers can get together to collaborate. They are free to create whatever they wish, and I have no other expectation than that they meet to work together. It has indeed been from this “Google” time that many of the most fertile and original ideas for our school have originated. Just look at our “Updates & Events” page under the “News” tab on this website to see the results of enabling the leadership and creativity of some amazing teachers!

Schools have responsibilities in developing the next generation of leaders. Part of that is creating a fertile dynamic within your faculty.

Don Adams – Head of School

Measure for Measure

At a most fundamental level, it’s the job of a teacher to measure achievement, whether that be scores on a test, understanding of a concept, progress in a whole variety of learning skills, and so on. Such measures of student achievement are commonly the basis for a judgment not only of how well the student is doing, but also how well the teacher is doing.

The problem is, it seems to me, that we measure the wrong things — with all good intentions and due diligence!

We measure test scores which are, to an extent, necessary. They point to the student’s possession of a discrete bit of knowledge.

But we sometimes overlook more important things. When I visit a class at The YMCA Academy, what I see is a community of learners (and this includes the teacher) working together to understand. What I see is deeply engaged students — engaged in their own learning, and that of their community.

The problem for habitual measurers, is that it’s difficult to quantify engagement — but you know it when you see it. You see engagement in faces, you hear it in words. You see engagement also by what you don’t see, specifically the signs of boredom and discontent. You see intellectual struggle, but it’s a struggle to satisfy the innate curiosity to know that has been freed in our students.

An engaged child is an amazing thing to see, particularly if it’s her or his first experience being excited about coming to school.

We hear this from our parents all the time — the child who returns home after a day at The Academy simply isn’t a defeated one; rather, he or she has entered into the struggle to know, and to know more!

Wins are hard to come by in life for young people. We do our best to make that happen.

Don Adams – Head of School

A School’s Vision

Being a school leader in a large organization like the YMCA of Greater Toronto has its perks. You get to learn about leadership and strategic direction from a group of caring leaders who are as concerned with their mission as they are with their margin.

One thing that I have learned is that, in order to achieve success, you must first have a very-clear and thorough vision of exactly what you are trying to do, and how you will go about doing it.

At the YMCA Academy, that’s a lesson we’ve learned very well indeed. As a career educator, I’ve seen many schools throughout North America, and I have found that successful schools are purpose-driven places. The idea that a school can be everything to everybody is no longer true. We have seen that this doesn’t work so well in practice.

Where have we seen this? Well, we’ve seen that many of our own students here at the Academy were lost in schools that were very general in purpose, and, I might say, nondescript in their ideas of what they were about. Each of our students has very specific learning needs – absolutely not a good fit in those generalized high schools many of us grew up attending.

The future of schools is more specialization. It’s about customizing an experience for the students that fits who they are and who they want to become. By doing so in a very focused way, we’ve achieved very impressive results for our students.

We do that here at The YMCA Academy, and we’re always looking for new school relationships so we can help others do the same. Watch for the Academy Summer Institute 2012 in this connection!

Don Adams – Head of School

Are Schools Broken?

Today, Sir Ken Robinson is one of the world’s most well-known and highly-regarded educational thinkers. In a presentation given to the Royal Society of Arts in late 2010, he argued “every country on earth at the moment is reforming public education” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U).

That’s an astonishing claim — why would educational reform be so widely spread? Well, you hear it every day, don’t you, in all sorts of media — “schools are broken.”

I’m not comfortable with such universal declarations of disaster! Imagine if the people criticizing schools donated half the time and energy expended in their criticisms to volunteer in schools in their communities!

“Community” is the key word; without it, any school is only a building, students, teachers, and things. It doesn’t have a soul.

When you’re in a school that is also a community, you can feel it from the minute you walk in the door. There’s a warmth that you feel, fellowship, perhaps best defined in the six core values of the YMCA of Greater Toronto: inclusiveness, health, responsibility, respect, caring, and honesty. These are the qualities that bind together every community. They define the YMCA Academy.

Our school is a community school, part of the new centre of community that is the Central YMCA. You can feel that the minute you walk in the door for your first visit. You don’t see formality; you see people helping each other.

Our staff and students like to come to school in the morning. When we have breaks, they look forward to coming back. They want to see each other and share the experience of what it means to be at our school.

If your school has that, fantastic. Come by and feel what’s it’s like over here, and we’ll share our successes.

If your school doesn’t have that, then please come by and feel what it’s like over here. We pride ourselves on always having good coffee and snacks around. Come in and test us out.

Don Adams – Head of School

The Academy Summer Institute 2012

Much of the outreach I do personally on behalf of The YMCA Academy, and much of the outreach through our website and social media, focuses on data. We collect a great deal of data as required by the Ministry of Education, and a great deal of other data as well — on social determinants of health for adolescents. Because of this, we legitimately claim considerable success with our students — take a look.

As teachers and administrators, we are asked every day how we do what we do. Most often, we are asked by teachers who work at mainstream schools, not those who specifically serve a LD population. Answering that question has formed the impetus for our creating The Academy Summer Institute 2012 — to share our successes working with students with learning disabilities and learning style differences.

When you consider it more closely, though, almost every teacher in the world serves a LD population to some degree in each of his or her classrooms. The techniques and ideas we will demonstrate and share really come down to excellent teaching. You will find that what we do here at The Academy is fully relevant in all classes for all students.

So the Institute was born naturally, out of inquiry, curiosity, and demand. Our goal is to convene a really talented group of people this August here at The Academy.

It’s a conference with an “unconference” component because we want the dynamic of small groups to drive some of the curriculum at the institute.

We firmly believe in having people walk away with tools they can immediately use. That also explains timing of the Institute – August 23 and 24, 2012. The ideas and techniques generated there can almost immediately be put to use in the classroom.

We look forward to seeing you this summer. Space is limited to 200, so I encourage you to act quickly! For more information, please visit our website. To enrol, click here.

Don Adams – Head of School

1,200 Hours

Remember the theme song from Cheers, “Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got”? Well, it strikes me that this thought is truer today than ever — especially so if you are a student with a learning difference and your individual gifts are not recognized by your school.
When you were in school, how often did you get a helping hand just when you needed it? If you did, I’m sure that experience is one that resonates for you still – most of us recall the caring support of an amazing teacher who somehow knew just what we needed exactly when we needed it.
We have worked very hard at The YMCA Academy to design a program and assemble an amazing faculty so that we can constantly give our students such support.

All our students share a common bond: school wasn’t working for them before. Now, it does. Why? Each academic year, every YMCA Academy student receives approximately 1,200 hours of direct support from a caring and fully qualified staff and faculty! We individualize our program for each student, to recognize their individual strengths, and to support their areas of need. We teach our students to learn, to advocate for themselves, and to succeed in the world on their own.

That turnaround is remarkably powerful – it’s like nothing they’ve seen or experienced before!

Come and see for yourself – visits are always welcome!

Don Adams – Head of School

What Have We Been Up To?

Hi, friends. I wanted to take a few minutes today to update you about some of the amazing new things we’ve launched at The Academy this year. It’s a huge part of who we are today and will be tomorrow.

Admittedly, The Academy was one of the best kept secrets on the Toronto education scene for years. Part of the reason is that we’re a relatively small school. But our success in working with high school students with learning disabilities really has been world-class.

For those unfamiliar with the school, we have helped our students to succeed both within our walls and beyond.

Student Exit Paths

But we do much more than that. Adolescent research has summarized 40 specific developmental assets that can increase a student’s life success. At The Academy we strive to increase and support the development in these assets and thus student resilience. A look into just a few of these assets can show the impact of The Academy on students’ non-academic growth:

We understood that the best way for a lot more people to know about who we are and what we do was to do broad school outreach, both in person and through technology. So we’ve done this in both ways this year through several new programs:

TEDxYMCAAcademy: Yes, we have our own piece of the TEDx franchise! Created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading,” the TEDx program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. We had our first even in October with the next one not far away in May. We will very soon be announcing that event.

The Academy Summer LD Institute: As we are a centre for excellence in LD teaching and learning in Toronto, it made perfect sense for us to host a two-day summer institute for teachers. You can learn more about the August 2012 event here: http://ldinstitute.eventbrite.com

Institute for Homeschoolng Parents: We realized that many parents who are responsible for the homeschooling of their children face the same issues as teachers do. Yet they are a very underserved population, especially by schools. So we wanted to change that by offering a one-day event in September 2012. Details to soon folllow.

LD Drop-In Events: The idea is that one evening a month, we host an open forum. Everyone is welcome and we share information and resources about LD, LD education, and much more. We also provide great coffee and treats!

Parent ED 2.0 Series: These new events happen regulalrly (every 6-8 weeks) and are a deep dive into a topic for prospective and current parents. Like all of our events, it’s open to anyone in the community who is interested in attending. Our next event in this series is in two weeks, at 7pm on Monday, March 26th. The topic is: Parental Engagement: Solutions-Focused Parent-Teacher Interviews.

Series for Guidance and Special Education Teachers: We had our first event in this new series last weekend and are planning our next one. There has been significant demand to run these as online professional development events so that a larger group of educators can join in. So we’ll try that, as well as the idea of going into another school, running a PD session there, at the same time as livestreaming it. Out next event is at 8pm on March 20th. Look for details soon on our website.

Our Teachers in the Community: This one isn’t new, but our teachers have excelled this year at sharing their expertise in the larger community of teachers and learners.A perfect example in Nicole’s and Zareh’s Teaching Games for Understanding work, which you can see here: http://www.ymcaacademy.org/?page_id=3291

New School Video: We’ve had amazing feedback on our new school video – huge thanks to all who were involved in the making of it. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s on the landing page of our site at www.ymcaacademy.org

Our Website and Social Media: We’ve ramped to a daily if not hourly presence on Twitter. Through social media, we’re much better able to connect with constituents and make our mark as a leading school in the LD space not only in Toronto but the world. We have spent a lot of time making our website not only highly functional but dynamic. Every brand’s website is their window to and from the world. We understand this and are working hard to make it the place you’ll want return frequently.

And there’s much more in the works. We’re also very open to suggestions! Our home at the new Education Centre at the Central Y is a beautiful and highly functional space. If you have a suggestion for an event or series, please let us know!

Thank you very much for your time today. I look forward to seeing you here at school soon.

Don Adams – Head of School

Academy Credits at Camp Pine Crest…

One of the intentions we’ve adopted this year at The Academy is expanding our curriculum to include a greater number of opportunities to learn outside of the classroom. As you look at our website, you’ll see ample evidence of our success in this connection. As we connect our students to meaningful experiences outside of the classroom, we instill an understanding the relationships amongst what we learn, how we learn it, and the connection to the world outside of the walls of the school. At the same time, we hope that by seeing that education and “the world” are two sides of the same coin, we instill a love of life and learning.

Recently, with Academy teachers Nicole Klement and Melissa O’Leary, I travelled to YMCA Camp Pine Crest, north of Gravenhurst, Ontario. Our purpose there was to develop opportunities for experiential education that were also opportunities to earn Ministry of Education high school credits. We were hugely impressed with the facilities at Pine Crest, and even more impressed with the people there. Andrea Balmer and D’Arcy Munn demonstrated a very highly-developed curriculum with the potential for many ties to high school courses in outdoor education and leadership. As well, they proved to be great tour guides, as we donned show shoes for a look at the amazing facilities after a great lunch of soup and pizza.

D’Arcy, Melissa, Don, Nicole

I fully expect that we will be offering high school credit courses in conjunction with Camp Pine Crest in the near future.

Don Adams – Head of School

Cross-Curricular Teaching at The YMCA Academy

As a teacher at the YMCA Academy, I feel privileged to be part of a team that is constantly striving to learn and implement creative and innovative practices for our classrooms. This constant desire to improve our teaching methods is especially important in a special education environment where it is essential for teachers to present their students with a variety of ways to learn and demonstrate their learning. One such approach is through cross-curricular programming, a practice that allows teachers to collaborate and cover the same theme or topic in different subject areas. During cross-curricular projects and activities, the notion of subject areas being in ‘silos’, i.e. what is learned in English class is quickly forgotten once Math class begins, which is in turn of little importance once the student walks in the Geography classroom is removed and learning becomes organic. A deeper knowledge of a topic can be achieved when a student has the opportunity to examine it from various angles. For a student with an exceptionality, for example a language based learning disability, the pressure to process a great deal of information in different subject areas is removed and the knowledge gained by the student in one subject area can be carried over into others. Since many students with learning disabilities require extra time to grasp new ideas and concepts, the teacher is providing the student with the chance to develop the knowledge and understanding once and then apply this knowledge in more than one subject area. This approach to teaching and learning promotes opportunities for us teachers to collaborate and creatively make connections between subject areas while at the same time giving students the chance to see their learning as multifaceted.

While cross-curricular learning at the Academy has been attempted in the past at varying degrees of success, this year has brought an exciting opportunity for this holistic approach to teaching to be further explored. Each Thursday, students are dismissed early, and teachers have a designated time to meet and plan opportunities to cover curriculum across various subject areas. While we’re currently in the early stages of planning how this might play out this semester, the following is an example of how this teaching approach can be put into practice. As an English teacher, I might plan to collaborate with our History teacher, who will be covering World War II. In the History class, the students might examine the causes leading up to Word War II, the significant events and dates, and the impact of these events in Canada. As the students move into my English class they might study a text such as Hanna’s Suitcase or Maus and have the opportunity to study World War II from a more personal account, learning valuable lessons about bias and perspective along the way. A culminating activity such as an essay examining the historical accuracy of events in Maus satisfies expectations for both courses, promotes critical thinking and alleviates pressure on the student. This is only one example of the many ways learning can be carried from one subject to the next and how work need not be piled on students, particularly those with exceptionalities, many of whom require more time than others. This is a learning environment that allows teachers the opportunity to collaborate in exciting and meaningful ways and more importantly, promotes the success of our students.

Michelle Johnson – Teacher

“Don, why do you have so many field trips at The YMCA Academy?”

I’ve been told that teachers don’t get invited to parties because all we talk about is teaching — but that’s not quite true. We do get invited to parties — family parties, reunions, the odd child birthday party (as chaperones for our own children). It was at one of these that I was speaking about what we do at The YMCA Academy. (I know what you’re thinking, “See, that is all they talk about!) Anyway, after describing the several excursions we’ve had thus far this year, I was asked the question, “Why do you have so many field trips?” Although the questioner didn’t stick around for an answer (that happens to me a lot), I thought I’d write it up, as it seems like a reasonable question, and one I should be able to answer.

Because we are inspected and accredited by the Ontario Ministry of Education, our curriculum must meet their standards and intentions. By design, Ministry of Education courses are objectives based. That is, each course must meet a large variety of “Overall Objectives” and and even larger variety of “Specific Objectives.” Because many of these objectives are quite general in nature (e.g. “evaluate approaches, policies, and principles relating to the protection and sustainability of the planet’s life-support systems” or “listen in order to understand and respond appropriately in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes”) they can be achieved in very many different ways – outside of the classroom as well as inside. In fact, a single rich activity can achieve objectives from several different courses at the same time.

That’s how we design and organize our excursions out of the classroom. In each case, students are achieving objectives from different courses as they learn to work together as a team, as they assess and protect the environment, as they become involved in service to their fellow human beings and so on.

A very wise friend of mine once asked rhetorically “If we want students to think outside of the box, why do we keep them locked up inside one (the classroom)?” His solution was to open a school that travels the world (see www.thinkglobalschool.org). Ours is equally radical, though not quite so exotic. At The YMCA Academy, we feel that it’s very important to educate the whole person. Traditional schools treat individual subjects as silos – what is done in English class has little relevance to what is done in Science, say. We intentionally break down such silos in rich performance tasks, in cross-curricular projects, and in our “field trips” in which we get outside the box. In fact, there is dedicated planning time weekly for teachers to get together to organize such opportunities.

What we are doing is trying to motivate our students in the best possible way, not by the promise of external awards (traditional focus on high grades as rewards for hard work for example), but rather by tapping into each student’s intrinsic motivation – his or her inner drive to make a difference, to do interesting things, to enjoy learning for the sake of learning.

That’s why we have so many field trips. By the way, I’m open to any party invitations that might come my way.

Don Adams – Head of School

How to Use a Motorcycle Center Stand

Learning in the 21^st Century

I have been thinking a great deal about curriculum lately. Curriculum – the collection of courses studied at a school, or the collection of courses studied during one’s career as a student

One of my duties as Head of School is to ensure such course collections express the mission and vision of a school – how can it attain its goals through the courses it offers? Traditionally, the focus of curriculum development is on scope and sequence, order of concepts, progression of assessment and evaluation models, and pedagogical approaches.

I think it’s time to make a bold declaration: this notion of curriculum is dead. Curriculum as the source of what you know – well, it no longer is, at least to the extent that it once was. For many students today, AND FOR MOST LEARNERS OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL, what you know isn’t the important issue. Rather, discovering what you need to know, and developing the skills to locate sources of such knowledge, is what is often given the label of “21^st Century Learning.”

A case in point – I recently bought my first motorcycle. I tried to put it up on its centre stand, and couldn’t do so. I thought it would be just like putting my bicycle on its kickstand when I was a kid. I couldn’t, though. It was too heavy, and it simply slid on the stand as I pulled back on the handlebars. I knew what I had to discover – how to use the centre stand. Hmmm…nothing in the motorcycle’s manual to help. So I searched YouTube, and immediately found a short video clip showing how to do it. That visual knowledge, along with the audio explanation, was perfect. Back to the Honda, first try – piece of cake.

My 1976 Honda CB400F, on its center stand!

Still, such use of YouTube is very limited. In my example, while the medium is different, the process is still much like finding information in a textbook or encyclopedia. It’s up to me to find the information I need. YouTube, however, is more than just a “post and retrieve” portal. As Peter Skillen (a teacher at The YMCA Academy) demonstrated the other day, it presents a learner with an opportunity to visually represent a problem, and seek solutions from others. This is learning is a social context! Have a look at the following, and you will see what I mean:

In this post, a young learner leverages the social media aspect of YouTube to solicit solutions to his problem — how to start a fire with a bow drill set. He engages a loosely-formed learning network to provide answers to a problem he has creatively expressed visually and verbally.

I think we have to embrace a new educational paradigm. Variations on a cliché will express my meaning:

Original paradigm – “It’s what you know.”

Later (especially espoused by graduates of elite schools) – “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”

Today – “It’s not what you know, but HOW you know.”

Curriculum must focus on how one learns, not just what one learns. A recent series of meetings I attended in Silicone Valley demonstrates how far ahead of the educational curve many tech-related companies are – providing many more ways of knowing than I could have imagined in my days as a student — listening to teachers, copying notes from the chalk board, watching the occasional filmstrip, churning out an essay or report. Since Gardner, of course, we are all aware that intelligence encompasses several types, and that we must design our pedagogical approaches to serve each of them. Textbooks, Blogs, Wikis, Videos, Labs, podcasts, conferencing – each of these allow access to information appropriate to different styles of learning. Each is facilitated by technology solutions to be found in the YMCA Academy.

Technology functions to make a greater repertoire of communicating understandings available. But not just communicating them to the students. Students have available to them many modes of expression, enabling a huge variety of ways students can demonstrate their understandings to their teachers and peers. The opportunity to express their understandings in ways they find creative and interesting is, I think, the best motivation for student learning. Step into The Construction Zone at the Academy for so many examples!

The YMCA Academy. With a curriculum designed to meet the exacting demands of the Ministry of Education, it embraces, but moves far beyond, the knowledge a student needs to acquire, to focus on how it is acquired, and how it is expressed.

Don Adams – Head of School

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