The Giving Season

Posted on December 22, 2022 by KCSMATTERS

In the past 2 weeks, we have held our annual Christmas Concerts. It was the first time we have been able to gather for this tradition since 2019. It was wonderful to see all our families in the audience as they watched their children perform. When you see the smiles, you cannot help but feel a warmth and joy that comes out at this time of year. I ended the evening by reading a letter about the difference that the KCS community donations had recently made to 11 families identified by The George Hull Centre. Each family had their own story and needs ranging from resettling to a new country due to war in their home country, a single mom who recently lost her four-year-old child to cancer, families affected by mental health issues, to families torn apart by domestic violence. The KCS community has been providing financial support through the Reason for the Season for 17 years. This is a Parent Network driven event and our volunteers do a fantastic job collecting for those who are in need.

It got me thinking about some of the other things that have been happening at KCS and I wanted to share more about our students’ initiatives at KCS that also make me proud to be part of such a giving community. In the Junior School, students organized and collected gently used books to donate to the Children’s Book Bank in Toronto. They collected 22 boxes full of books for children who might not be able to afford to buy their own books. The organizing committee of students for this project were overwhelmed by the generosity they saw.

The Junior School also organized and held a food drive to support the Mississauga Food Bank. The Grade 5 class delivered the donations to the Food Bank and spent some time volunteering and sorting the donations on-site. Food insecurity is a huge issue, and sadly with the price of food escalating, the needs are increasing. Watching our students bring in their donations and seeing that they understand that others in the city are struggling and hungry, shows me that KCS’s Citizenship Door to Learning does make a difference. Students are learning to have empathy and to care for others.

Our Senior School students were also incredibly active. The Grade 9s learned about food insecurity as part of the curriculum in math and geography. In both courses they learned about the factors that influence food insecurity in Toronto and throughout Canada. As part of their learning, they visited the Four Villages Community Health Centre at Jane and Dundas to take action to mitigate food insecurity in the city. The Senior School also initiated a toy drive and delivered toys to the local Fire Department. As well, our students headed out into the city and donated food directly to those in need.

It has always been important at KCS to ensure that Citizenship is part of what we teach. At school, we know that academics are important. Sports and arts as well. At KCS, we also believe that becoming an empathetic, honest, good person is also integral to our students’ education. As I think about the last month and the activities led by students, parents, faculty, and staff to support and help others, I feel that warmth and joy. As the Head of School, I feel proud knowing that KCS and its team of educators, support staff, and volunteers have helped to instill a sense of citizenship in all our students.

It is the season of giving and I wish to thank everyone in the KCS community for their generosity towards others. I wish you all a great holiday season.

KCS Head of School

Derek Logan

KCS Student Leadership in the Classroom

Posted on December 7, 2022 by KCSMATTERS

KCS students in Grade 7 have been working on their leadership projects. They were inspired by Autumn Peltier, a clean water activist. Students designed projects of their choice. Here is a sample of just some of the projects that they have been working on at school.

Our group decided to make a presentation to tell the Grade 3 classes more about water pollution. We presented a slideshow, played a game of Kahoot, and did a little demonstration to show how much water we actually have to drink. We also told them about the ways we are polluting our water as well as helping it. We gave them a coloring sheet at the end of our presentation that had some messages about what is happening to fish in the ocean. Some of the messages were: “Less waste, more fish, better life” and “One ocean, one future.” We feel that it went pretty well and the Grade 3 students learned a lot about water pollution.

By: Zoe, Olivia, Abigail, Lauren

Our group decided to present what we learned to the Grade 2 students and teach them about water pollution. We started with a warm-up game because they just got back from their outdoor time, so they could be a little more active. After a few minutes, we started the presentation. We told them about plastic pollution and asked them if they knew about it. We also asked them if they could guess what else was in the water. After teaching them some ways to keep the water clean, we played a game. The purpose of this game was to simulate picking up garbage from the ocean. Each of the students got plastic bags, except for three of them. The three students were “it” and could tag those with bags. The students with the bags would collect dodgeballs, and put them in their bags. The winner was given a special sticker at the end of the game. Our presentation ended up going very well, and all of the students and presenters had fun.

By: Kate, Sara, Maggie, Amelia

Our group came up with the idea to send a letter to the Legislative Office of Ontario, more specifically Premier Ford. We decided to send this letter to raise awareness about the lack of clean water in Indigenous communities. We believe that it is poisoning the youth, and these marginalized people are at a loss for necessities. In the letter we explained why the government should divert funds towards clean water in Indigenous communities. From oil spills to diseases in the water, the Indigenous communities have been through enough. We recognized this is not right. We believe that the need for clean water, which is key toward our well-being, should be recognized and be a priority. Overall, the Canadian government has not been vigilant enough towards protecting the original inhabitants of this land.

By: Henry, Oscar, and Murad

KCS Senior School Update #10 – Where We Were

Posted on February 17, 2021 by KCSMATTERS

The last blog in this series was dated Feb 11, 2020. “And So We Begin” shares the excitement of our January 2020 announcement: that we had secured a site for the Senior School and would be open for grade 9 in September 2021. After the effort of a generation, it was finally going to happen.

We had no idea that our largest obstacle was yet to come.

I’m willing to guess most adults have a vivid memory of where they were when the provincial lockdown announcement was made last March. I was in the middle of a quiet March Break. A trip my husband and I planned had already been cancelled and was replaced with a solo trip to Ottawa to visit my father. On the drive along the 401, I joined senior management and Board members on a call to discuss the implications for the Senior School. Though the ensuing ten months weren’t at all what we expected, they became part of the Senior School story.

Where have we been since the last update? Those in the KCS community know we launched a fully online K-8 program by the third day post-March Break. Then we redesigned anew to provide our In-School/At-Home program, including substantial commitment to pandemic mitigation, this past fall. What many don’t know is in the midst of these unprecedented transformations, some of us explored possible paths forward for the Senior School. Could we get construction done for 2021? Offer grade 9 at the Junior School until the Lake Shore site was complete? The unpredictability, and the need to focus on the Junior School, pushed these ideas aside.

By October, attention returned to include the Senior School. It was clear the Lake Shore site couldn’t be ready for 2021, so the updated construction timeline and financial modelling had September 2022 as our opening date.

That’s when our Senior School founding families entered this story.

They reminded us that we could make 2021 happen. They wanted our Senior School for their children currently in grade 8. The pandemic brought into focus what mattered most for them – the school they respected, offering the experience they believed in, and the attention to safety they expected. If nothing else, the pandemic had taught us all to be patient. They were willing to be patient when it came to the Lake Shore site. Their determination to help make 2021 happen reignited our own.

We figured out what a Bridge Year could be. The founding families re-registered, and external families are joining this founding group. A terrific new partnership with Centauri Arts meant we would have a compelling location for grade 9 in addition to some impressive expertise joining our program. On January 20^th, almost one year after that first major announcement, it was confirmed that we would indeed be offering our first grade 9 class in September 2021.

This was a lengthy detour, and a test of our mettle. The excitement marking our achievement in early 2020 is now fully returned at the imminent offering of grade 9. I will be teaching again, we have some great new KCS staff joining our team, and we’re securing Learning Partners to further enrich our program. Our story is far from over, but we’re back where we were, making this dream a reality.

Setting Students Up for Exam Success at KCS

Posted on February 19, 2020 by matinamosun

Imagine you are sitting in a rowboat all by yourself. You’ve been told you need to get to an island in the middle of a lake. But there’s one small problem – you have no oars. So, you struggle to travel in the water, splash aimlessly, and ultimately end up frustrated with your goal still out of reach. Having the right tools can make all the difference in feeling prepared and in control of working toward our goals. This was just one analogy shared during out exam preparation sessions with Study Spot, one of our many learning partners, this fall.

At KCS, we want to ensure that we have done everything possible to set our students up for success. This means we don’t just teach students what will be on an exam – we also teach them how to prepare for an exam.

It begins by embedding backwards planning into our grade 6-8 program as a way to build and develop exam preparation skills long before anyone sits down to write an exam. This year it also began by having the grade 6 and 7 students work with one of Study Spot’s academic coaches, where students and parents learned that preparing for a big test such as an exam begins with establishing study and organization routines that stick.

During these coaching sessions, the students are introduced to many exam prep strategies, such as making a plan, sticking to a schedule, self-testing, and maximizing the “spacing effect” (the phenomenon whereby information is remembered longer when studying is spaced out over time). They also talk about the importance of work/life management, the importance of sleep, and managing screens and distractions. Finally, they are provided with a wealth of planning materials, including study schedule templates, an action priority matrix, weekly planners, and guides to the pros and cons of different visual organizers and information capturing tools. (FYI – all of these materials are available for download on the Parenting Resource tile on the KCS website.)

Continued throughout the year, our teachers design their program in a thoughtful and intentional manner, as we know that it takes careful planning to teach kids how to thrive at school and in life. Our students will be writing exams throughout high school and university, so we know that now is the time to teach them these essential study skills and organizational habits. And even though exams aren’t a regular part of adult life, those skills and habits carry over in different ways. Exams teach you to be organized, deal with pressure, persist, ask for help, identify key points, and sift through large amounts of information – all useful lessons for adulthood.

We know that even after all this preparation, exams can still be scary. But that’s okay. When we’re scared, we rethink our habits and apply them in ways that make us better equipped to handle the unexpected. Every time we try something new or challenging, we get better at handling it. The exam experience helps our students become more organized, pay closer attention to their homework, and learn to prepare for future challenges. Many students feel a great sense of accomplishment as exams wrap up.

Our hope is that by the time our students leave us for high school and beyond, they will have learned new habits and had many opportunities to put those habits to work. We also hope that because there will be elements of frustration and challenge along the way, they will also leave us with a deep and genuine sense of empowerment and confidence. In the end, we don’t want anyone to feel stranded in a rowboat with no oars. We want them to have the skills and tools they need to take their boat and navigate toward any destination they choose.

-Dr. Matina Mosun

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Reconciliation and Land Acknowledgements in Grade 3

Posted on January 8, 2020 by mshurleykcs

In this blog, our KCS Grade 3 homeform teachers – Meghan Hurley and Kerrie Robins – talk about the ways in which they and their students are evolving the Grade 3 Social Studies curriculum to better reflect the ongoing dialogue around Indigenous peoples and reconciliation.

Social Studies is a wonderful subject to teach – because it’s all about learning how to explore our shared history and experiences in a thoughtful and meaningful way. In Grade 3, a large part of the Social Studies curriculum is built around the experiences of different communities in Canada between the late 1700s to the mid-1800s.

When we were kids, that mostly meant learning about European pioneers. But over the past number of years, schools have made a real effort to incorporate into the curriculum the experiences of Indigenous communities during this time period. Here at KCS, we’ve been making the same effort for many years. But this year, we decided to begin our Social Studies program by focusing on those Indigenous experiences, in order to help our students better understand the need for an active and engaged approach towards reconciliation.

We began with some introductory events around Indigenous peoples in Canada, during which the students developed their own initial questions and identified areas they wanted to learn more about. This was followed by lessons around the ideas of apologies and reconciliation, out of which came a few key questions. What does it mean to apologize? What does reconciliation mean? How do we make things right when we’ve made a mistake? These open-ended questions led us to one core driving question: Why should our government be apologizing to Indigenous people?

Using techniques we learned during our professional development at the PBLWorks Institute this summer, we helped the students develop a series of questions that grew organically out of our driving question. We then used their questions to inform our planning for the remainder of the unit.

Throughout the unit, we explored this topic from a number of different angles. We talked about the legacy of residential schools and learned about the purpose behind the Orange Shirt Day initiative. We invited a guest speaker – Talitha Tolles from the TASSC (Toronto Aboriginal Support Services Council) – to come and speak about her culture and language. She shared stories about her own family’s experience with residential schools, and she worked with the students to build an Indigenous history timeline.

After that, the students took part in a group project where each group studied an Indigenous nation from a historical perspective. We also learned about treaties, what traditional land KCS is on, the Toronto Purchase/Treaty 13 (the treaty that governs the western half of Toronto), and the land acknowledgments that are currently taking place at other local schools.

Obviously, this was a significant amount of new information for our students to process. We gave them time to think about all they had learned, and we began to use this information to answer our driving question: Why should our government be apologizing to Indigenous peoples? Once we had some answers to this question, we asked the students, “What do you want to do?” After much discussion, the Grade 3s decided that they wanted to make a difference by starting a land acknowledgement at KCS.

Both classes sent letters to Mr. Logan and Dr. Mosun asking permission to create a land acknowledgement for KCS. These letters were received with enthusiasm, and they encouraged the students to work with our current artist-in-residence – Lindy Kinoshameg from Wiikwemkoong Unceded First Nation – to develop and write an acknowledgement. This process has begun and will continue to evolve over the next month or so. Our hope is that the students will be ready to present our KCS land acknowledgement during an assembly in January.

For us, the most powerful piece of this journey can be summed up with two of our Habits of Mind, Body and Action – “Lead to Make a Difference” and “Make the World Better”. When we began the year, some of the students felt like this was a problem that couldn’t be solved. As one student said in September, “We can’t do anything, we’re just a bunch of kids.” But now, that same student is saying, “We’re doing one thing, and it’s making a difference!”

We are so proud of this group of students and the ways in which they have opened their minds to new perspectives and taken on the challenge of making the world better. We look forward to sharing their land acknowledgement with the entire school community in the new year!

Meghan Hurley & Kerrie Robins

Learning Partners Come in All Sizes

Posted on November 27, 2019 by Mark Magee

At KCS, we’re deeply committed to looking outside our school walls in order to connect with a range of learning partners in our city and beyond. But sometimes you don’t have to look that far to find experts who are ready and willing to share their knowledge and experiences.

At the end of the last school year, Madame Fanjoy heard about a young boy named Ethan in grade 1 who wanted to start a rock club at KCS. She supported the idea wholeheartedly, but it just couldn’t get rolling in the short time left before summer. The first week back in grade 2 she asked about his plan to start a rock club, and discovered that he was still very determined to share his love of rocks with his community.

Madame Fanjoy said that the grade 4’s were about to start studying rocks and minerals, and asked if he would visit the class as an expert. He immediately embraced the idea and started explaining what he would do to prepare. It was amazing to see his passion and commitment, and hear him speak about his “process” and “Plan Bs”! He quickly reached out to me (the grade 4 science teacher) to lock down a visit. He also let me know that his Uncle Ben was a geologist who travelled all over the country exploring potential mine sites, and that he might want to come and visit as well. This was going to be an exciting opportunity for both Ethan and the grade 4s!

A few weeks later, both Ethan and Ben ended up sharing their collective wisdom and knowledge with both the grade 4 classes. Ethan shared his rock collection and talked about how he learned so much about rocks, while his uncle talked about mining engineering, mine safety, and ways in which we can minimize the environmental impact of mining.

What was striking to me was the way in which the grade 4 students treated both their guests. They treated the “grown-up” guest with great respect and manners, and peppered him with a number of insightful questions and interesting facts. How did Ethan fare with this group of students? They listened attentively, spoke to him as an equal, and treated the entire experience with great gravitas and sincerity.

We take it for granted that we learn from those older and more experienced than us. And yes, in this case, we learned a lot about mining and engineering from a professional geologist with an impressive resume filled with university degrees and real-world experiences. But we also learned another valuable lesson from a grade 2 who just happened to love rocks. Namely, some of the best teachers and learning partners come from the most unexpected places, and that everyone who walks into a KCS classroom deserves our respect, attention, and willingness to learn from them.

KCS Engages in CAIS Green Schools National Student Discussion

Posted on November 20, 2019 by jomulvaney

KCS students are taking climate action seriously. On November 5, six students from Grades 7 & 8 connected with 20 other CAIS Green School students from across the country in the first national online discussion forum. The students thoroughly enjoyed connecting and sharing their sustainability work, while learning a lot and having fun collaborating with other environmentally responsible fellow students from other schools, nation-wide.

“I got lots of notes and it was fun to learn. I’m glad I participated in it. The best idea I heard was that one of the schools has a green roof,” KCS Grade 7 student, Robert expressed enthusiastically.

Fellow Grade 7 student Sophia really enjoyed taking part in the forum as well, “I thought it was very fun. I liked the idea that we got to say what was happening in the school. It was very informative. There were a lot of schools in the meeting and they did lots of different things, which was cool to learn about.”

One of the ideas the KCS students liked and wish to initiate is a KCS “Sweater Day”, in collaboration with National Sweater Day held in February – where the entire KCS community would participate by sporting a sweater and turning down the heat, wear another layer and save some energy for a day, and perhaps even a week!

Other green initiatives discussed that generated excitement were:

Set up proper recycling and compost bins in each classroom
Conduct food waste competition, grade vs grade or house vs house
Grow plants in the science lab in the winter
Install solar panels
Run Trash-less Tuesdays
Remove plastic utensils
Help clean up Humbertown Park
And more…

Grade 7 and 8 students from across the country were invited to participate in these national conversations about sustainability with independent schools. This was the first for independent schools, and it’s a great way to share what other schools are doing. The CAIS Green Schools project is interested to hear and share what student are doing at their schools to advance sustainability goals.

Our thanks to the following students for their sharing their time and wisdom to help make our school a greener place!

Grade 8: Maya, Maia & Jack

Grade 7: Sienna, Sophia & Robert

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Putting the “Home” in Homework

Posted on October 30, 2019 by Kirsten Tenebaum

Homework is often seen as a thankless job, but when it’s approached in the right way, homework can be an amazing opportunity to build relationships, make connections, develop healthy routines, and cultivate a positive sense of ownership over one’s own learning. Because it’s not about getting homework done. It’s about how you get it done.

Teamwork & Support

While we want our students to be independent, that doesn’t mean homework should be a solitary endeavour. Start by sitting down with your child and have them pull out their agenda or log on to Edmodo. Ask them to walk you through their upcoming assignments and projects, and then have them explain their homework timeline for the next few days or week. This ensures that your child is learning to plan and manage their own responsibilities, but in a way that allows you to provide them with advice and feedback before the work piles up and becomes unmanageable.

Making Connections

One of the benefits of homework is that it can help you learn a bit more about what your child is working on in school. Once you know what they are discussing and exploring in class, you can help them make connections between their learning at school and the wider world. If you are aware of what your child is working on at home, you can use that as a jumping-off point to initiate and extend conversations that will help them take their learning to the next level. Parents who do this often tell me that a quick homework chat can end up sparking deep and wide-ranging family conversations over dinner.

Healthy Routines

Homework will be a part of your child’s life for many years, so now is the time to develop a consistent set of homework routines and habits. Start by having them block off time that is just for homework – the earlier in the evening, the better! Adjust the schedule to accommodate personal and family commitments such as sports teams or activities. Have them set up a space where they will always do their homework. They may want to retreat to their bedroom, but you should encourage them to work in an area that has fewer distractions and better access to help. While the dining room table may be a slightly noisier workspace, it is a location that ensures you can keep an eye on them and redirect their attention as necessary. Sticking to a consistent time and space will help make homework a more calm and focused experience.

Staying Positive

Helping your child develop a positive attitude towards their homework is probably the single most important piece of this puzzle. If you stay positive in the way you talk about homework, you can help your child understand that there is value in the experience. If you talk about homework as a way to develop and improve upon their skills, then you help your child create and foster a growth mindset. If you talk about homework as a way to become more independent, then they learn to have confidence in their abilities. And if you talk about the ways in which you can use homework as a way to learn from each other, then they learn to both share their knowledge and seek out help when needed.

The School’s Role

Of course, teachers have a big role to play in making homework a positive and healthy experience. Faculty at KCS follow a set of homework guidelines to ensure that homework expectations are clearly communicated, flexible, relevant, and motivating. Of course, they also strive to ensure that the amount of homework given is appropriate and reasonable. For more information on KCS’s homework policies and guidelines, please consult the Parent Handbook and the Homework at KCS document.

At the end of the day, homework is something that kids need to learn to manage. And if they learn to manage it in a positive and proactive way, it will end up being a rich and rewarding experience. Homework is like most things in life – the more you put into it, the more you get back.

Connecting KCS with the World

Posted on October 11, 2019 by Andrea Fanjoy

How do you connect elementary students with the world?

You rethink elementary school.

At least that’s how we’re doing it at KCS, and it has led to relationships with experts from an unlimited array of fields, many of whom with a global reach, including journalists, artists, social entrepreneurs, edtech developers, and many more. Rethinking school includes stepping outside our walls (literally and figuratively), welcoming external experts in, and seizing opportunities when they appear to enrich student learning. Here’s a current example.

KCS has recently partnered with engineering.com, a GTA-based business that shares a newsfeed for “the global community of engineering minds who make a difference” (modelling the KCS Habits!). How big is this community? The site enjoys 2.6 million unique visitors each month, and its social media following includes 1.4 million on Facebook and 44,000 on Twitter. Eight thousand have gone one step further to embrace their newest initiative, ProjectBoard, where they can share the problems they’re solving and get feedback in return.

How did we meet?

Part of my role as Head of Senior School is to notably increase our KCS community of learning partners – individuals and organisations who bring learning to our students, in ways beyond what field trips and guest speakers usually provide. A significant learning partner we established over a year ago is the Centre for Social Innovation, a multi-thousand strong community of entrepreneurs, agencies, and charities sharing coworking and co-learning space in Toronto, New York, and London, Ontario. Engineering.com, like KCS, is a member.

The problem-solvers engaging with ProjectBoard form a community where we believe students belong. KCS is now the first school to join this global network of engineers who are using the online platform. This beautiful tool allows our StEP and Makerspace students to share their creative work, engage in dialogue in our KCS “Makerchat”, and receive comments on their creative process. As a desirable feature, ProjectBoard also allows us to share our student initiatives with the global engineering.com community and through our social media.

KCS is an amazing place to be. The world outside KCS is also amazing. Rethinking school is bringing the two together. What follows, we’re finding, is the unlimited learning students deserve.

Knowing Our Place

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Andrea Fanjoy

“Wisdom sits in places.” – Apache proverb

Six years ago, KCS grew younger. In a fervent commitment to best teach our youngest learners, the teachers of our 3, 4 and 5-year-olds have created learning environments they consider the “third teacher”. Beautiful, nature-rich spaces both inside and out that inspire, provoke, engage, and support important learning.

At the same time, the rest of the school embraced similar principles of intentional classroom design. It started with comfy nooks, soft lighting, floor cushions, and wobbly stools. Then we began upgrading student chairs so they could support all kinds of positions and movement, and added desks tall enough for standing.

This summer, a transformation of our outdoor greenspace has yielded a striking play structure that all of our students from grades 1 to 8 can enjoy. It’s as delightful to the eye as it is inviting to the child in all of us. Complicated to navigate, students are using their minds and bodies at recess as they never have before.

And as we increasingly welcome and embrace external experts to help enrich student learning, the wisdom connected to our KCS space expands. It’s in fact, limitless.

We are committed to making KCS a limitless place. Wisdom is nurtured in the physical environment the KCS staff have created to convey respect, consideration, and confidence in our students. It is being developed when imagination and curiosity are inspired through invitations to question, lead, and pursue learning for the love of it. And it is found in a community that includes people from KCS and beyond, sharing experiences from their respective places with our students.

Knowing what matters includes knowing one’s place. Teaching what matters includes a place that is both right here and limitless. Designed with intention and limitless in reach, learning, and even wisdom, sit here.