Author: Don Adams

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

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

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

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