May 7th, 2012 – People for Education report…

Don Adams Head of School, In the News

I would usually reserve comment on a major report that’s about to be published until the full report comes out and I’ve had a chance to digest it. But a piece from today’s Toronto Star is so disturbing that I can’t wait.

First, here’s the piece itself: http://bit.ly/KeCFCW

The title itself is depressing: ‘Caps’ mean special education students not getting help, People for Education report says. How, in 2012, are children with special needs in Ontario not only failing to be served by the public school system, but also not even receiving their PROVINCIALLY-MANDATED RIGHT TO BE TESTED?

As the Head of Toronto’s leading high school for students with learning disabilities and learning style differences, I’m very much in the middle of the fray here. When I read something in this piece like: One Ontario board told its principals there could be “no assessments for this school year since they are trying to catch up on last year’s referrals” it infuriates me and, from the comments I’ve received from people even early this morning, I’m not alone.

You need to read this article. The news only gets worse:

People for Education also found the ratio of special education teachers to students has gone up, from 22:1 in 2000 to 36:1 this year in elementary schools. In high schools, the ratio has jumped from 48:1 to the current 69:1.

69 to ONE?

I hope you’ll forgive a bit of school promotion here on behalf of The YMCA Academy.  Every one of our teachers is special-education trained, our student-to-teacher ratio is under 5:1, and we’ll keep it that way.  Each student at The Academy receives the individualized attention he or she needs and deserves.  And no mission-appropriate child is ever turned away from our school for financial reasons.  We always find a way to help and make it work for the family.

Imagine that you’re the parent of a special-needs child and you read this report.  What would your level of frustration look like?

It’s time for the province to step to the plate and do what’s right here.

May 3rd, 2012 – Satisfaction

Don Adams Head of School

According to a significant recent study, only 44% of US teachers say they’re satisfied with their job. That’s an 18 percent drop in 3 years.  This raises a question that is very interesting to me as a school principal — what IS job satisfaction for a teacher?

Well, I think I know something about that.  The first thing is respect. Teachers want to work in a caring environment. That seems overly simple but it’s true. They want to be in an environment where everyone in the school cares about the students and the community cares about their teachers.

Teachers also want to be able to express their creativity. While every school has Ministry of Education guidelines to follow and their own internal goals, teaching is truly an art form in the hands of an accomplished teacher.

I have long believed that the most important thing a school head can do is to honor the voice of their teachers, individually and collectively. A school leader’s door should be an open one. Work between the administration and teachers should be truly collaborative.

One of the most effective changes I have instituted at the YMCA Academy is what I call “Google” time — an hour or so every week during which teachers can get together to collaborate.  They are free to create whatever they wish, and I have no other expectation than that they meet to work together.  It has indeed been from this “Google” time that many of the most fertile and original ideas for our school have originated.  Just scroll down on this page to see the results of enabling the leadership and creativity of some amazing teachers!

Schools have responsibilities in developing the next generation of leaders. Part of that is creating a fertile dynamic within your faculty.

Don Adams – Head of School

Apr. 24th, 2012 – Measure for Measure

Don Adams Head of School

At a most fundamental level, it’s the job of a teacher to measure achievement, whether that be scores on a test, understanding of a concept, progress in a whole variety of learning skills, and so on.  Such measures of student achievement are commonly the basis for a judgment not only of how well the student is doing, but also how well the teacher is doing.  The problem is, it seems to me, that we measure the wrong things — with all good intentions and due diligence!  We measure test scores which are, to an extent, necessary.  They point to the student’s possession of a discrete bit of knowledge, but sometimes we overlook more important things.  When I visit a class at The YMCA Academy, what I see is a community of learners (and this includes the teacher) working together to understand.  What I see is deeply engaged students — engaged in their own learning, and that of their community.  The problem for habitual measurers is that it’s difficult to quantify engagement — but you know it when you see it.  You see engagement in faces, you hear it in words.  You see engagement also by what you don’t see, specifically the signs of boredom and discontent.  You see intellectual struggle, but it’s a struggle to satisfy the innate curiosity to know that has been freed in our students.An engaged child is an amazing thing to see, particularly if it’s her or his first experience being excited about coming to school.We hear this from our parents all the time — the child who returns home after a day at The Academy simply isn’t a defeated one; rather, he or she has entered into the struggle to know, and to know more!

Wins are hard to come by in life for young people. We do our best to make that happen.

Don Adams – Head of School

Apr. 20th, 2012 – A School’s Vision

Don Adams Head of School

Being a school leader in a large organization like the YMCA of Greater Toronto has its perks.  You get to learn about leadership and strategic direction from a group of caring leaders who are as concerned with their mission as they are with their margin.

One thing that I have learned is that, in order to achieve success, you must first have a very-clear and thorough vision of exactly what you are trying to do, and how you will go about doing it.

At the YMCA Academy, that’s a lesson we’ve learned very well indeed.  As a career educator, I’ve seen many schools throughout North America, and I have found that successful schools are purpose-driven places.  The idea that a school can be everything to everybody is no longer true.  We have seen that this doesn’t work so well in practice.

Where have we seen this?  Well, we’ve seen that many of our own students here at the Academy were lost in schools that were very general in purpose, and, I might say, nondescript in their ideas of what they were about.  Each of our students has very specific learning needs – absolutely not a good fit in those generalized high schools many of us grew up attending.

The future of schools is more specialization.  It’s about customizing an experience for the students that fits who they are and who they want to become.  By doing so in a very focused way, we’ve achieved very impressive results for our students.

We do that here at The YMCA Academy, and we’re always looking for new school relationships so we can help others do the same.  Watch for the Academy Summer Institute 2012 in this connection!

Don Adams – Head of School

Apr. 17th, 2012 – Are Schools Broken?

Don Adams Head of School

Today, Sir Ken Robinson is one of the world’s most well-known and highly-regarded educational thinkers. In a presentation given to the Royal Society of Arts in late 2010, he argued “every country on earth at the moment is reforming public education”.

That’s an astonishing claim — why would educational reform be so widely spread? Well, you hear it every day, don’t you, in all sorts of media — “schools are broken.” I’m not comfortable with such universal declarations of disaster! Imagine if the people criticizing schools donated half the time and energy expended in their criticisms to volunteer in schools in their communities!

“Community” is the key word; without it, any school is only a building, students, teachers, and things. It doesn’t have a soul.

When you’re in a school that is also a community, you can feel it from the minute you walk in the door. There’s a warmth that you feel, fellowship, perhaps best defined in the six core values of the YMCA of Greater Toronto: inclusiveness, health, responsibility, respect, caring, and honesty. These are the qualities that bind together every community. They define the YMCA Academy.

Our school is a community school, part of the new centre of community that is the Central YMCA. You can feel that the minute you walk in the door for your first visit. You don’t see formality; you see people helping each other.

Our staff and students like to come to school in the morning. When we have breaks, they look forward to coming back. They want to see each other and share the experience of what it means to be at our school.

If your school has that, fantastic. Come by and feel what’s it’s like over here, and we’ll share our successes.

If your school doesn’t have that, then please come by and feel what it’s like over here. We pride ourselves on always having good coffee and snacks around. Come in and test us out.

Don Adams – Head of School