More than Spring has Sprung at KCS

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Andrea Fanjoy

Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn.
~Quoted by Lewis Grizzard in Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You

The warm sunshine, return of the robins, dancing daffodils and burgeoning tree buds weren’t the only new arrivals to recently grace our community. Though the emphatic entrance of spring was deeply appreciated, something else has awoken that even topped the weather for its sheer delight.

After years in our thoughts, dormant but developing, KCS is now proud to offer electives, electives with some significant twists, twists that had many of the grade 6 students, who get first crack at this opportunity, beside themselves with excitement.

A general introduction to electives was in last week’s parent e-newsletter Stay Connected. They’re designed for students to just learn for the love of it, learn by choice, not for marks, nor because the Ministry of Education says you must. It’s a time to develop the Habits of Mind, Body and Action that indisputably set us up to be successful. And it’s a time to offer an unlimited array of meaningful learning. If teachers and students can dream it, they now have time to do it. Directly connected to our school mission of developing lifelong learners, it’s designed to stoke the flames that fuel lifelong learning.

Judging from my small group of third-language learners, it’s working.

Students in grade 6 were given eight electives to choose from. Based on their choices, the forty-two students are now in one of six electives for 100 minutes each week of third term. One group is learning to cook from Chef Cirillo of Cirillo’s Culinary Academy. The result of their labours this past week was a mouth-watering chicken cacciatore dish that went directly to a youth shelter. Another group is engaged in geocaching. Enriched technology, art and drama are also taking place. And my group has each student learning the foreign language of their choice. Concurrently, (and thanks the significant help of Rosetta Stone language learning software), the students are learning the following languages: Mandarin, Japanese, Italian, Spanish and Filipino. Just because they want to.

Some of you may have read Sir Ken Robinson’s book The Element: How finding your passion changes everything. He’s right, of course. The bulk of his book exposes the far too common disconnect between the regular school day and finding one’s passion, as if passion only has relevance in extra-curricular pursuits. Not here.

One of my students announced he was going to try to learn enough Mandarin to use it exclusively with the flight attendant on an upcoming family trip (hmm, not sure how that will go but keen to know!) To achieve his goal he has asked if he can use the software at home and if there are apps he can download on his iPad.

Lifelong learner, check.

A Tribute to Quiet Leaders

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Andrea Fanjoy

Be quiet. If you listen, you will hear them roar.

A quiet leader at KCS told me about the new book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. Susan Cain, introverted author and now uncomfortable-yet-superb TED Talk speaker (see her speak here), makes the compelling argument that volume, voice and unabashed extroversion should not be treated as a preferred modus operandi, the standard all should strive to reach. Communication matters, but so does quiet, and particularly so for some.

This reminds me of some students I know.

Each term, a student from each class in grades four through six is chosen to receive the Junior Merit Award. The second-term ceremony was the week before March Break. Making the ceremony a teachable moment for all students in the audience, homeform teachers introduced the recipients with a speech that made clear why they were chosen. Here are some of the many ways in which the recipients are exceptional:

Concise writing
Clever sense of humour
Hard-working
Always listening and learning
Showing concern for others
Consistent sportsmanship
Listening carefully to suggestions
Though shy, first to participate
Exceptional effort
Courageous
Exemplary work

The second term awards were handed out the same week this quiet teacher-leader and I were talking about Susan Cain and her work. Though talking about ‘quiet’, it was loud and clear to us that the very worthy recipients were living proof of Cain’s message. Knowing the six students, they are quiet leaders. They are supremely able, significant contributors. Their modus operandi is a model to us all.

In our rather loud and busy world, take time to be quiet, and notice the quiet leaders in your life. Their example speaks volumes.

Andrea Fanjoy,
Assistant Head, Academics

Lead to Make a Difference

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Andrea Fanjoy

A student entered my office this morning. “I have the chocolate”, she said, then promptly opened her pink flower-covered backpack, pulled out a bag and showed me multiple packages of fair-trade chocolate, each tied up with ribbon. We’re approaching the big moment when she and her friend present their powerpoint at a school-wide assembly and initiate the leadership project they have been working on since last year: Fair Food Friday.

They are in grade three. How we got here is an interesting story.

They knew about leadership projects, because they happen here frequently and visibly. They approached me about doing a project on chocolate, “because everyone loves chocolate.” One thought it would be great to collect recipes, and maybe students could win something by contributing recipes.

During one of these early meetings, her friend remarked, “I don’t know. Most of the projects here do something. They matter. This one doesn’t seem to.”

“But just doing something you like matters!”, she replied.

“Yeah, but…” Back and forth they went.

At this point, I told them about a leadership project from a previous year when students spoke at assembly about the connection between the chocolate we all love, and child labour in Africa. Upon hearing this, raising awareness of this underside of the chocolate industry, and awareness of fair trade foods, became the compelling purpose of the project. The plan is as follows: They will start the project with a presentation at assembly that tells the story of chocolate, child labour and fair trade. Also during this presentation, they will invite students and teachers to contribute their favourite recipes. Every week, they will randomly draw one recipe from their box, and give fair-trade chocolate to the person who shared it. At the end of the year, the recipes will go into a e-cookbook, and a hard copy cookbook for the KCS library.

With the plan in place, the girls wrote their speech, decorated their recipe collection box, bought the chocolate prizes, and are almost finished their power point. The official launch of Fair Food Friday is imminent.

Last year, the article “Student Leadership, Gone Viral”, first published by OurKids, explained the bigger picture of student leadership at KCS. But it’s the details that go into each project that excite me most. And it’s the details that convince me our students are really learning to be leaders, because the students are behind the details every step of the way. As for making a difference, without these two students, 310 people would likely not hear about the connection between chocolate and child labour. Most wouldn’t learn how fair trade practices have been established so that consumers can make things better by their purchasing choices, not worse. They would not be reminded of these things week after week, making the memory of this lesson stick. Many would not have the opportunity to savour fair trade chocolate under the envious eyes of their school community over the course of the upcoming year.

This is leadership that makes a difference. As icing on the (chocolate) cake, it inspires me to follow their lead. And it is just one of the dozens of student-led projects I’ll witness over the year.

This is not what schools were designed to do. But they could be. Imagine what a difference that would make.

Andrea Fanjoy,
Assistant Head, Academics
Follow Andrea @afanjoy