Contributing to the Urban Forest!

Zoe Rutherford Beyond the Classroom, Environmental Stewardship No Comments

On September 12, three classes from the YMCA Academy took a field trip to the beautiful Toronto Islands to help plant native trees and shrubs to contribute to the urban forest! The Grade 10 Personal Fitness class, Grade 11 Math class and Grade 7/8 class all participated in this great initiative, organized by the City of Toronto. It was a beautiful, sunny day outside and the student’s ended up taking the ferry to Ward’s Island and then walking east towards St. Andrew-by-the-Lake Church. The walk was long but ended up being a nice warm up hike before getting to planting.

Once the classes arrived, a City of Toronto worker gave the students a tree planting demonstration. There are lots of important steps involved in planting a tree, especially making sure that the hole is big enough for the tree to grow in. After the demonstration, student’s paired up and started planting! The students worked together really well and got better at digging and planting with each tree they planted. It was great to see older students pairing up with and the Grade 7/8’s. About 2 hours later, the job was done! Together with other volunteers, our students helped to plant more than 200 trees on the Island! Though it was hard work, the classes did hands on work for a great cause. All students had a great time and were grateful to have spent their morning in such a beautiful place contributing to Toronto’s urban forest.

Food and Nutrition Class Potluck

YMCA Academy Beyond the Classroom, Community, Environmental Stewardship, Healthy Living No Comments

On Friday, March 2nd, The Food and Nutrition Class had a potluck. We had this potluck so we could learn how to cook and bring in our meals to show to the class. The whole class was there and some of the other teachers outside of class like Dayna, Zoe, Luka, Andres, Zee and others came to try our food. Everyone enjoyed it. It was exciting to see what other people had made and to try everyone’s meals and to bond as a class and watch a movie while eating. Some of the meals that people brought in included:

  • Mac And Cheese (Rosie)
  • Crusty French Bread (Charlotte)
  • Pizza Rolls (Owen)
  • Pizza (Logan)
  • Grilled Cheese with Ham (Adrian)
  • Beef Stir-fry and rice (Spencer)
  • Addie brought some delicious mac and cheese It Was LIIIIIIT.

After having a huge buffet, I think everyone was stuffed at the end! There were leftovers and we ate them at home over the weekend. We are really looking forward to the next potluck, in April. Yum yum!

Blog post written by: Students of the Food and Nutrition Class

Annual Cedar Glen Trip

Zareh Demirdji Beyond the Classroom, Community, Environmental Stewardship, Experiential Learning No Comments

Ah the yearly Cedar Glen overnight trip. The three day, two night trip the Academy gleefully looks forward to every year during the latter part of October. This year, from October 18th to the 20th, students and staff made the annual pilgrimage with a bit more excitement than most years based on the splendid weather forecast promised by meteorologists. During the three day trip, everyone was delighted that they were not lied to by the weather experts, as we enjoyed three days beautiful, sunny, and warm weather.

During our first day, students participated in several new experiences. First, they participated in their second Insight Global Education simulation (this time about equity and resource allocation). Later that evening after dinner, students partook in an Aboriginal quilt activity where they learned about and discussed about the trials and tribulations the indigenous peoples of Canada endured at the hands of European settlers. After an eventful first day, students shared a campfire at night before heading to bed.

After breakfast, our second day saw students lending helping hands at Cedar Glen’s farm, doing various tasks such as mulching, de-weeding, and harvesting of crops. Upon completing their farming tasks, students were given a workshop on mapping and orienteering, a skill which they would need for their afternoon challenge! When the afternoon rolled around, six student teams competed against one another in the Academy’s Cedar Glen Amazing race, where they implemented their mapping and orienteering skills for the ultimate glory of boasting supremacy should they win the race. The evening saw students participate in a variety of indoor games, capped off by a night hike, game of dungeons and dragons, or watching a movie (whichever option tickled their fancy).

On our last day, we went down into Cedar Glen’s valley and participated in our traditional teachers vs. students animal survival game as well as archery. Our memories filled yet again of familiar activities (new ones as well), and of delicious food, we ate our last lunch and headed back to school. We impatiently wait for our return next year!

Check out the rest the rest of the pictures on our Facebook page!

Album One | Album Two | Album Three

Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup

Zoe Rutherford Beyond the Classroom, Community, Environmental Stewardship No Comments

The Shoreline Clean Up is an initiative that started in 2002 to help clean up garbage around Canada. The Shoreline Clean Up is now the largest and most popular environmental initiative in Canada. The students at the YMCA Academy participate in this initiative every year by cleaning up a site in downtown Toronto.

On October 6th, the students of the YMCA Academy participated in the Shoreline Clean Up at the Don River near Riverdale Park. The students left the school around 12:10pm and took the subway to Broadview station. Then we walked to the park where we ate lunch. We really liked eating lunch in the park as a school because we don’t get to do that very often. It was a really nice day and it was fun being outdoors together. After we ate lunch, we firebolted to the playground and climbed up many tall scary structures. From the top it was terrifying but lots of fun. Once we finished playing, we got into our advisory groups and listened to Rein about the rules of the clean up. He told us where we were all going because each group went to a different location along the river. Zoe loudly reminded us NOT to pick up any needles. Then we walked to our locations and got down to cleaning!

Two students from each group had to keep track of what garbage and recycling we were collecting. They had to do this because we had to send the data to the Shoreline Clean Up organization. These students were from Katie C’s Grade 11 math class. The rest of the students helped to pick up every single piece of garbage that we found. Zee and Andras were taking photos of us cleaning. Some of the weirdest garbage we found were tires, a fisherman’s jacket, a dead salmon, a broken umbrella handle and a pair of rollerblades. In the end, we had a fair amount of garbage and recycling. The garbage bags kept ripping so for next year, we should double bag the garbage or get much stronger bags.

Overall, the day was a success! It was really great to come together as a school and play a part in cleaning up our city.

Check out more photos from this event on our Facebook page!

Written by: YMCA Academy Students

Introducing: Meatless Mondays!

YMCA Academy Community, Environmental Stewardship, Healthy Living No Comments

YMCA Academy students participate in the "Meatless Mondays' program
On Monday, March 24th, Lunch Duty Supervisors, Katie and Rein, along with help from Rein’s Food and Nutrition Class kicked off our weekly participation in Meatless Mondays.

The idea of Meatless Mondays is to commit to eating meat free, one day a week, in order to improve our health, the environment and consider animal welfare. The Food and Nutrition class visited all Period 3 classes, presented the concept, and encouraged their participation at the school by bringing in, or buying, a meat-free lunch every Monday.

With roughly half the school population participating, we expect that this movement can be sustained long term, with the hopes of eventually having the whole student body participate. Every Monday, I find myself greeted by excited students, eager to show off their meatless meals.

Katie and I will be tracking participation, and collecting recipes from students to share with everyone interested in joining the movement.