Congratulations to Ben Caplan!
Ben completed at the Special Olympics in Corner Brook, NL earlier this month. His floor hockey Team, the Scarboro Cyclones, won the silver medal and Ben received the MVP award.
Well done, Ben!
Toronto musicians visit Academy music class
This semester, for the first time, The YMCA Academy is offering a music class. As part of the learning experience, the class welcomed two special guests in the first weeks of the semester: singer-songwriters Luke Correia-Damude from the band PEERS, and Graydon James of the group The Young Novelists.
Luke shared with students his approach to writing songs, and demonstrated how a song starts as an idea and builds into a finished product. “I liked the songs he sang,” says Lita, a student in the class. “They were real.” Ben, another music student at the Academy, agrees. “I liked the music that he made,” he says. “I’d never seen that before.”
Graydon focused his visit on the experience of being a live performer. He discussed stagecraft, and explained how musicians set up tours and make a living through their art. “He was a pretty cool guy to have,” Ben says. “I didn’t know you can travel to different cities. This was new for me.” Lita adds, “I just liked hearing stories about how he toured.”
Inviting people from the community into our school is a vital way to provide authentic, experiential learning opportunities. This is especially important in the arts; hearing a wide variety of creative voices helps our students shape their craft and discover their inner artist.
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Students visit Tattoo Sound + Music
As part of a unit on the world of sound, the Academy’s two Grade 10 Communications Technology classes travelled to Tattoo Sound + Music earlier this week.
Dana, Steve, and the Tattoo staff spent their morning conducting an interactive, hands-on workshop for the group. Students learned about the process of creating a rich sonic tapestry, how to get started in the industry, what it’s like to work with major clients, and how the equipment in a professional recording studio works. Then, volunteers from each class got behind the microphones and recorded some foley sound effects for a commercial!
Authentic learning experiences like these are vital and highly engaging opportunities for students to build on and apply the skills they learn in class. The Academy group asked many excellent questions, and were excited to learn that some major musical stars had once graced the very spot where they stood.
But we couldn’t do it without support from people like Dana, Steve, and the Tattoo Sound + Music crew, who opened their doors to the school and took time out of their busy schedules to enrich our students’ learning. You can read more about our commitment to experiential learning here.
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Volunteering at Habitat for Humanity
On Tuesday November 24th and Wednesday November 25th, Academy students, staff, and a volunteer took part in the Home for the Holidays campaign at Habitat for Humanity.
“Habitat for Humanity GTA helps low-income families build and buy simple, decent quality affordable homes through a no-interest mortgage with payments set at less than 30 percent of gross income. This solution not only helps to provide available housing for families in need, it enables low-income families to build assets, reduce their dependence on other forms of social assistance and break the cycle of poverty.”
The Home for the Holidays campaign is a yearly opportunity for groups of youth to volunteer together at Habitat sites to help finish off houses so that the new owners can move in for the upcoming holiday season. Students at The Academy worked at two locations. One was in the beginning stages of construction and will likely be a series of houses being finished for next December and one was truly a Home for the Holidays as they are just putting the finishing touches on.
On day one the Green Industries class and the co-op class met up bright and early at Wellesley Station and travelled to our build site on Brimley Road. Upon arrival, we met and checked in with our Volunteer Coordinator Brenda and got suited into our safety gears (hard hats, steel toe boots, safety vests, and gloves). We were then given the build site safety speech and we learnt the Habitat Cheer (Oyee, a Swahili saying, which means “we can do it” in English) before starting our shift. While partner families have moved in to the first block of this particular site already, the second block is yet to be completed. And this is where the Academy crew came in to the rescue; the two classes helped paint, trim, and finish the last 9 homes on the second block of the site.
On day two, the Drama class and the Literacy class met up at Wellesley Station and this time headed to the build site on Birchmount Road. Like all the first day, the two classes met with their Volunteer Coordinator Darren, got suited into safety gears, heard the safety speech, and learnt the Habitat Cheer before their shift. As foundations is still being poured at the Birchmount Road site, our tasks were very different compared to the first day. Instead of painting and trimming, our students prepared the work site by stacking flooring joists and lumber in a large tent to keep the rain off as they will be used to frame the four houses next week. We also stacked prepared walls and floor boards. Some students worked on digging a 5 foot hole in the ground for a 300lb post on the corner of the property using a post hole digger. We all worked together as a team lifting heavy 3-400lb items. It was interesting to watch our supervisors calculate the weight of the items and how many people were needed to distribute the weight. They ensured that we kept it under 30lbs per person at all times (Yeh!! Math in action!!)
Despite the hard work, the groups had fun and were happy that we were able to give back to the community by helping families get into their home … hopefully just in time for the Holidays.
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Update: We just got word that the homes that were being painted on Brimley Road will be handed over to the families on December 9th!! These families will be Home for the Holidays!!
Donation to the Art Class
You never know what kind of connections you will make. At our recent Student Art Sale fundraiser at the Central Y, Academy art students met Alta, a YMCA member and artist, who was perusing the art for sale. A couple of weeks later, she emailed art teacher Alexi to see if the program could use some supplies she didn’t need anymore. Yesterday Alta arrived at our school with her car full of calligraphy ink and pens, unused pastel sets, tubes of acrylic paint, piles and roles of paper, art books, paint brushes, professional pencils, drafting tools, and many, many more generous offerings!! We promised to gives these donated items a second life in the art room. Thank you, Alta, for your amazing generosity!