This year’s Evergreen collaboration was funded by Statefarm. It was a year of experiential learning at the Evergreen Brickworks. Staff and Students thoroughly enjoyed our time learning outside the classroom. Thank you Evergreen and Statefarm for supporting our environmental learning!
As a whole school we brought together our newly acquired skills from our year-long Evergreen workshops. This year we focused on three themes: Active Transport, Food Systems & Urban Ecology. These themes flowed easily into our final whole school project – Greening the FDC Childcare Outdoor Playspace.
This year we didn’t just “green” the space. We spent hours with the Evergreen garden consultants to learn about the plants that are appropriate for each area and that are able to be placed in an area with toddlers. Students decided they wanted their gardens to meet the following criteria:
Not poisonous (did you know corn stalks are poisonous?)
Here is where we started. Pretty dismal:
Lower playground – soon to be home to a flower garden and an edible gardenUpper Playground soon the be home to 30 planters and a bare foot path
Our Greening happened over a number of days. We planted seeds and prepared the gardens with help from our Ouje Bougoumou friends:
Exchange group working together. ½ skid of soil and compost to nourish the depleted soil
We helped the preschoolers plant seeds for their edible garden and watched them grow over a month. Beans, Peas, Watermelon, oh my!
We designed all four garden areas (flower area, edible area, planters, bare-foot path and slide area)
Our designs. Each group took leadership over a garden area
The EDIBLE GARDEN GroupSLIDE and BARE FOOT PATH GroupPLANTERS GroupFLOWER GARDEN Group
We planted & we watched our garden grow……
The pre-schooler’s edible garden grown from seeds.Planters BeforePlanters AfterEdible Garden BeforeEdible Garden AfterFlower Garden BeforeFlower Garden AfterA look at the lower playground, greened!
A VERY big thanks to everyone:
• Statefarm for your financial support
• Evergreen for your expertise, planning and collaboration
• Academy students for your hard work and vision!
• Academy staff for your support of this project
• Canada youth exchange for allowing us to host our friends from Ouje Bougoumou
• Ouje Bougoumou staff and youth for your energy and enthusiasm
• The FDC preschoolers and teachers for their wild enthusiasm and watering skills
• Our volunteers and Interns; Rein, Todd, Carla, Micah, Gabe, Nanci, Bob, Paul
• And everyone who has supported our project.
The casual onlooker might have assumed a group of hazardous materials experts were surveying the park outside the Central Y for dangerous goods, but a closer look would have revealed the grade 11 visual arts class engaging in a painting lesson borrowed from the great abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. Students dripped, poured, splattered and threw paint at their canvases to create non-representational works that break the rules of conventional, image-based art.
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
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 psychomotor 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, with the help of teachers available at www.musicmattersacademy.com, 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.
A week of hosting the Ouje Bougoumou youth in Toronto
Day 1 – An Awaited Reunion
The second part of our Youth Exchange Canada adventure involved the group from Ouje Bougomou Quebec, visiting us here in Toronto. Our focus changing from being guests to becoming hosts. Although we did not have a long and arduous trip ahead of us this time, there was still some waiting around and killing time to be done. Our guests had a journey two hours longer than ours, and so we had to wait an extra two hours longer than we expected. Alas, at about 9:30 in the evening, the 56 seat Coach Canada bus turned onto Breadalbane and came to a halt in front of our school. Being the energetic bunch we remembered in Ouje, our 8 student guests and 2 adult chaperones filed out of the bus, bags and pillows in hand.
After quick hellos and other small talk, we showed our guests into our school and congregated in the cafeteria. We shared food, drink, a tour of the school, and introductions to Academy hosting families. Our guests and their host families went home to get acquainted and rested as the next day would prove to be a tiring one.
Academy staff and students wait for the Ouje group to arrive Sunday nightGiving a small tour of The Academy to our guests from Ouje Bougoumou
Day 2 – All Aboard!
Day two had us heading towards Evergreen Brickworks for a session of planting. While in Ouje, our community service component had us helping out at a dog and cat spaying and neutering clinic. Our community service theme in Toronto was environmental stewardship, and what better way to be friendly towards our environment than to plant some greenery? When we finished planting over 200 plants, we had a quick bite to eat and then proceeded to the second part of our day, a TTC scavenger hunt which was organized and run by our very own volunteer/teacher candidate extraordinaire Todd.
The purpose of the scavenger hunt was to get our guests knowledgeable and informed about the city’s main transit system that they would be utilizing during their stay. Knowledge and information aside, the scavenger hunt was a huge, fun filled success, with two teams finishing in a tie for most items found (although if one were to be a bit more pedantic we know which team truly won). Upon all groups finishing the hunt, the exchange group made their way to the Acker residence where they dined on delicious chili, salad, and the always crowd pleasing garlic bread. With our bellies full and our feet exhausted from an afternoon of planting and scavenging, day two came to an end and we all departed for home in order to rest up for day three.
Urban Ecology planting at Evergreen BrickworksThe start of our TTC scavenger hunt - Downsview Station!A quick bite to eat before leaving Evergreen Brickworks
Day 3 – Of Worms, Dinosaurs and Bandits (Baseball?)
Our third day started off with an option; more digging and planting or the exciting world of worms. While half the group worked on greening the daycare play area by turning soil and planting various plants, the other half learned about the fascinating world of vermi composting. When you read the words exciting and fascinating preceding words like worms and composting you may think them to be contradictory. Let me clearly state, however, that learning about worms and the role they play in composting was quite literally both interesting and fun. Our workshop leader, the energetic and vibrant Queen of the worms Cathy Nesbitt, owner of Cathy’s Crawlers made something as mundane sounding as vermi composting a delightful and intriguing experience.
Hands washed and lunches eaten, we walked over to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). While at the ROM we saw dinosaurs, swords, armour, and many an ancient artefact. Upon returning to the school we had a wonderful pizza dinner followed by an hour of down time in order to recharge for our evening event, a Jays Game. This was not going to be any ordinary game; for it was promised by a certain staff member who shall remain unnamed that he could get the group on the Jumbotron. Suffice it to say, the unnamed staff member delivered on his promise (as he always does) and the group got on the Jumbotron because out in front of the group was a 25 foot sign that read Bautista’s Bandits (us being his bandits – with bandanas at our necks and all). As if motivated by our sign, the Jays slugger, Jose Bautista hit a home run, sending the stadium into frenzy.
The game ended up being an extraordinary one. From losing by 5 runs, going ahead by 1 run, the game was back and forth, filled with excitement. Then came the top of 9th and final inning, where our opponents tied the game up. In the bottom of the 9th inning, up came lucky number 13, Bret Lawrie. With the swing of his bat, Lawrie hit a walk off home run, winning the game for the Jays. There was so much excitement and drama that you would have thought that it was a scene from a baseball movie scripted by a Hollywood screen writer.
With the help of the Ouje students we start greening the daycare play areaGroup photo outside the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)Enjoying our view of the Jays Game!We get on the Jumbotron twice with our massive Bautista’s Bandits banner
Day 4 – A Market, A Doc and a Tower
After a busy and exciting day 3, day 4 was not going to be any less exciting. We started the day off with a walking tour through the U of T campus, stopping along the way to admire the library shaped like a peacock known as Robarts. Continuing on, we trekked through the famous Kensington Market, and ended up at Rol San in Chinatown for a Chinese lunch buffet. Upon stuffing our faces with delicious servings of Chinese food staples such as sweet and sour pork and chicken fried rice, we started making our way over to the Bloor Cinema to watch “We Are Legion,” at the Hot Docs festival. In short, the documentary resonated with our digital generation students.
From there we rushed down to what was once the tallest free standing structure in the world and now the second largest, the CN Tower. After passing all of our security screenings inside the bomb residue detector we made our way up to the observation deck to take in the spectacular view of our city. As always, the fun yet nerve racking glass floor was a favourite and a great place for funky photo ops. Hungry from a full days worth of activities we made our way back to the Academy where we had a delicious Italian, home style pasta, salad and garlic bread feast waiting for us courtesy of the Anderson family. Fed and ready for more, our last event of day 4 was heading to the Eaton Centre for some shopping.
Group picture during our walk through the U of T campusRol San for Chinese lunch buffetA foggy view of Toronto from the CN tower's observation deck
Day 5 – Shopping, Falling Water and Bumper Cars
The morning of day 5 was used to allow our guests to do whatever shopping they had left because the rest of the day we would be out of town and in the honeymoon capitol of the world, Niagara Falls. Our first stop in Niagara Falls was at the Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory. The place was unreal, somewhat of a scene out of Avatar with hundreds, if not thousands of colourful butterflies flying from flower to flower and sometimes even landing on a hand or shoulder of a lucky passer by.
When we had finished marvelling at the beautiful butterflies, we headed to our second and final stop, the Maid of the Mist boat tour. It was an incredible experience being able to get right beside the amazing Horseshoe Falls. It is one thing to see the Falls from up above, but quite another to see it from such a close and amazing vantage point. Our excitement still high, we headed back to the Dimech home for delicious and mouth watering pulled pork sandwiches, pizzas and a whole bunch of tasty treats. After dinner we headed to a place called the E-Zone where we played a hybrid bumper car/basketball game called Whirelyball. Under thunder and rain, we made our way back to the bus in order to go home and rest up for day 6.
Arriving at the Niagara Parks Butterfly ConservatoryOur exchange group at Niagara FallsEnjoying the spray on the Maid of the Mist boat tourPlaying 'Whirleyball' at E-Zone
Day 6 – A Feast, a Cabin and Meatloaf from the Gods
Our last day with our guests from Ouje was spent in the same place it started; at Evergreen Brickworks. We arrived first thing in the morning in order to prepare a humongous “goodbye” feast. From boiling pasta to cutting up vegetables, everyone was doing something to help with the meal. The whole thing was planned and organized by the students in Kaili’s Managing Personal and Family Resources class. Once the meal was ready, we all sat down together and enjoyed the fruits of our labour.
With the kitchen clean and our hungers satiated, we headed back to school for the afternoon portion of our last full day together which consisted of either a matinee movie (Cabin in the Woods) or a tour of China Town.
Our last event was dinner at the Goodman house where we were treated to an incredible amount of delicious food, most notably meatloaf so delicious it made you want to cry from the joy it gave your taste buds. Everyone ate and socialized throughout the evening trying to forget what the next day would bring.
Preparing our celebration feast at Evergreen BrickworksEnjoying some fresh salad and zucchini bakeOuje students rocking Academy hoodies!
Day 7 – All Good Things
The 2 weeks we got to spend with our group from Ouje was unforgettable and an experience that truly will be once in a lifetime. We got a chance to see how fellow Canadians from another part of Canada live and we got a chance to show them how we live. Over the 2 week period we participated in exchange activities, both in Ouje and Toronto we forged friendships and memories that we will all cherish for a lifetime. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end; and at 5:50am on Saturday May 5, our friends from Ouje headed back home, bringing a close to our Youth Exchange Canada adventures. We hope and trust, however, that with all the social media outlets available to everyone, we will be able to stay in touch with our friends from Ouje and keep the experience and friendships ongoing.
A final group photo before we wrap up the Exchange
