Author: Don Adams

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

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

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

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

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