By Staff

October 10th, 2017

BURLINGTON, ON

 

The Burlington Fire Department is recognizing Fire Prevention Week from Oct. 8 to 14, 2017 with a contest for residents who connect with them through social media.

Residents are asked to look for Fire Prevention Week transit shelter ads around Burlington, take a photo clearly showing the safety message– selfie optional – and tag @BurlingtonFire on Twitter or @BurlingtonFireDept on Facebook to be entered into a draw to win a Fire Prevention Week gift pack.

The contest runs from Oct. 2 to 29, 2017.
Fire Prevention week is a province-wide initiative held each year in October. This year’s theme of Fire

Prevention Week is “Every Second Counts: Plan 2 Ways Out!”

In a fire, you may have just seconds to safely escape your home. Be prepared in advance with these simple steps for home fire escape planning:

Consider the needs of everyone in your home
Identify anyone who needs help to get out of the home safely, such as small children or older adults.
Make sure that you have working smoke alarms on every storey of the home and outside all sleeping areas
Make sure everyone in the home knows the sound of the smoke alarm.
Identify all possible exits (doors and windows) and make sure they work
Know two ways out of all areas, if possible.
Everyone must know what to do when the smoke alarm sounds
Name someone to take care of those who need help.
Identify a safe meeting place outside.
Call the fire department from outside the home – from a neighbour’s home or a cell phone.
Practice your home fire escape plan at least twice a year
Have everyone take part.
Make changes to your plan if necessary.

Burlington Fire Chief Dave Lazenby tells people that “Fire and smoke move faster than you. There’s no time to figure out how to escape your home after a fire starts. Practice an escape plan before there’s a fire so you can get out safely.”

By Staff

October 6th, 2017

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Community organizations and members of the public are invited to a meeting on Wednesday, November 8, 2017 at 7 p.m., to discuss potential planning and partnership opportunities within Halton District School Board facilities.

Partnership opportunities in existing schools and co-build opportunities in proposed new schools, as well as a new Board Administrative Centre, will be discussed at the J.W. Singleton Education Centre (2050 Guelph Line, Burlington).

The full list of facilities available for community partnerships and the community planning and partnerships policy can be viewed at www.hdsb.ca.

Potential partners are requested to bring relevant planning information such as population projections, growth plans, community needs, land use and greenspace/park requirements to the meeting.

It’s a bit of a step in the right direction.

The HDSB has not been as aggressive in marketing the opportunities that exist in the buildings they have. There are numerous opportunities for the Board of Education to partner with the municipalities.

There is a pressing need for additional facilities for Seniors north of the QEW – this is the time to start those conversations.

There are a number of people who were members of the Burlington PARC who thought there was a sharing of facilities opportunity that would keep Pearson high school open and the Nursery operation at the location.

Hopefully the Board will be more open to some innovative ideas.

By Pepper Parr

September 26, 2017

BURLINGTON, ON

 

The Halton District Board of Education is always looking for opportunities to make the course offerings more creative and relative to the work force students will be going into when they graduate.

During the PARC discussions members of that committee wanted to see some innovation – they weren’t at all sure that the school board had the same understanding of just what innovation is in the eyes of the public sector and the way it was interpreted by the private sector.

The Board had an addition problem – enrollment at the Aldershot high school was low – 358 now with a capacity for 558. One school board Superintendent summed it up pretty well when she said “there are elementary schools in Burlington with higher enrollments”

Aldershot is a grade 7–12 school. It was originally just a high school that had grades 7 and 8 added in 2001 to make use of spare capacity.

Aldershot was at risk during the PAR process – it was spared but the Board knew that it had to do something to increase enrollment.

The community is being asked by the school board what they would like to see added to the school’s curriculum.

All kinds of ideas have been floated – an alternative school, an arts school or a school that focused on entrepreneurship. What had become evident was that the school board did not have a clear idea or pedagogical objective – they seemed to be flailing about for the “right idea”.

Given the continued enrollment challenges at Aldershot High School, the School Board decided to explore possible theme/magnet/incubator programs that are in alignment with the Multi-Year Plan, will increase student enrollment, and enhance student choice.

The asking for ideas is being labelled the Aldershot High School Focus Exploration.

The decision to go looking for something that will boost enrollment came out of the Program accommodation Review process – the concern was the possibility of closing yet another high school and have all the Aldershot students bused to Central high school. The political flash back from that was more than anyone wanted to take on.

Aldershot is in the awkward position of having an older population that is going through a process of transition. There are a number of developments that will add significantly to the student population which includes the ADI Station West project next to the Aldershot GO Station; the National Homes project that is being proposed for Brant Street, a project on Plains Road where there is currently a Bingo Hall and then the long term upgrade to the Georgian Court Community.

Add to that the long delayed Eagle Heights project that Paletta interests have been sitting on for more than a decade.

Lots of development in the pipeline – the School Board’s problem is that it has empty seats today and needs to do something.

It will be interesting to see what gets put into the ideas box,

The School Board has said it “will explore (and potentially develop) unique programs that currently exist provincially, nationally and internationally.

Whatever they recommend will align with the Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum expectations.

The request to the community for ideas ends on October 20th with the following meeting dates

Exploration Committee Meeting #1 – Oct. 24 (3 – 5 pm) @ Aldershot High School
Open House – Nov. 13 (5 – 7 pm) @ Aldershot High School
Exploration Committee Meeting #2 – Dec. 7 (3 – 5 pm) @ Aldershot High School
Exploration Committee Meeting #3 – Dec. 12 (3 – 5 pm) @ Aldershot High School

All those meetings are in the afternoon – doesn’t exactly encourage parent attendance. There are some really smart people in Aldershot that shouldn’t have to take time off work to participate.

The ideas that come in are going to be sorted through by the committee formed to figure out what can be done with Aldershot. Committee members are Superintendent Jacqueline Newton, she handles the innovation file, Superintendent Gord Truffen – he oversees IT, School principal Maria McLellan, Student representation, Terri Blackwell, Superintendent of Education responsible for the Aldershot file and Superintendent Julie Hunt Gibbons

It will be interesting to see what they find in the Ideas Box.

In an earlier edition of this story we noted that the name of the ward trustee was not on the list.  The staff people we interviewed did not mention the name of the trustee.

They apologize for that error

 

By Pepper Parr

September 25, 2017

BURLINGTON, ON

 

The high school education I got – more than 60 years ago, is a lot different than the high school education Andrea Taylor got before she started her university studies at McMaster and then went on to Queen’s to do graduate work in education.

And the high school education that Taylor was responsible for delivering to students at M.M. Robinson high school where she was principal for five years was different yet again.

“It used to be that students had to fit into the mold the classroom teacher created” said Taylor – “now the classroom teacher has to find a way to fit into and work with what the students bring to the classroom. “There is no pigeon holing in schools today. The challenge today is huge and the dynamic is a lot different.”

“How do we prepare our high school students to develop careers in areas that don’t exist today? What are we preparing students for? We often don’t know but we do know that we can give them the tools they will need to grow and prosper.

“The challenges are immense.”

Today’s student has to deal with forces that are new to society. Student mental health was not an issue when Taylor was a high school student; today it is a prime concern for every principal in the system

Taylor was the recipient of a Learning Partnership award and named one of Canada’s Outstanding Principals for 2017. She was one of two principals named in Halton. The award is given to high school principals from across the country who are then brought together for a five-day leadership training program at the Rotman School of Management.

Taylor, born in Toronto, spent some time in Vancouver and returned to Toronto.

She is one of four girls in the family.

The system Andrea Taylor became a part of in the early 1990’s when she started out as a classroom teacher was not all that healthy province wide.

In 1998, Michael Fullan and British educator Andy Hargreaves co-authored “What’s Worth Fighting for in Education?” It was the beginning of a much different look at the way we were educating our children.

Fullan was the Dean of the Faculty of Education in 1988; and remained Dean following its amalgamation with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in 1996.

His work is what brought Ontario’s schools out of the troubled state they were in. “The system had flat lined across the province — results were stagnant year after year. Morale of teachers was low; the schools as a whole could be characterized as ‘loosely-coupled’ and without focus” claimed Fullan.

Fullan served as Special Policy Adviser in Education to the Premier of Ontario from 2004-2013. His work worked and by 2013, the overall performance of the almost 5,000 schools in the province had dramatically improved on most key measures and continues to improve to the point where Ontario is recognized as and proven to be one of the best school system in the English-speaking world — right up at the top with Finland, Singapore and South Korea.

Taylor was part of that process as she moved from the elementary school level into high school, served as a vice principal and then was made principal of M.M. Robinson were she spent five years until her recent appointment as principal of Gary Allan – a school with four campuses and strong relationships with The Centre, a trade school that operates at arm’s length from the Board of Education, self funds but is tied into School Board policies.

Ontario had developed “from good to great.” The challenge now was to move from great to excellent.

“Greatness is the enemy of excellence because it is easy to be complacent, and take things for granted” claims Fullan.

The challenge now for educators like Taylor is to sustain improvement as well as go beyond it into new levels of learning through focused innovations.

There were significant achievements: Literacy and numeracy improved from 54 per cent to 70 per cent on average across the province’s 4,000 elementary schools as measured by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO).

Those numbers are even better for 2016.

Graduation rates improved by about two per cent every year, bringing the province’s 900 high schools to an 82 per cent graduation rate from its starting point of 68 per cent.

Fullan tells us that “What really sticks with the external researchers and the numerous site visitors to the province’s schools from all over the world is what they see and hear when they visit schools. They can go into almost any school in the province and they will find consistency of good practice. When they ask teachers or principals to explain what they are doing and why, they get specific. Educators can point to particular actions and show the link to student learning. They know where each and every student is on the learning journey.”

Taylor was a classroom teacher and a principal during this period of significant change. Chosen as a one of the best principals in the country was recognition that she not only participated in the change but was one of the leaders

Ontario’s full-day kindergarten now has all 250,000 four and five year-olds in full-day kindergarten, the first program of its kind in North America

Instructional strategies have been modified in grades 1 and 2 to match the new capabilities and confidences of the children being served.

The superb, best ever results in Halton for grade 3 reading and writing is a reflection of the full day kindergarten program.

What all of the above means is that teachers, individually and collectively — and the system as a whole — know what they are doing. They are doing it because it works. They are intrinsically motivated to keep on improving.

They are driven not just because they care, but also because they are actually making a measurable difference that affects the lives of their students.

The public has also noticed. Public satisfaction with the education system has moved from 43% in 2004 to the present all-time high of 65 per cent.

Just what the 21st century is going to require of educators was a large part of the week long session Taylor spent at the Rotman School of Business Management University of Toronto where the group of 49 Outstanding Principals met each day with leaders from different professional groups.

“They explained the changes they saw coming and dialogued with us on how our schools were a critical part of preparing students for a world that is in a constant state of change”, said Taylor

In a paper “Energizing Ontario Education”, three core priorities were established:

• High levels of student achievement — in literacy and numeracy at 75 per cent and in high school graduation at 85 per cent.

• Reduced gaps in school achievement for all subgroups of students.

• Increased public confidence in publicly funded education — greater two- way partnership and confidence with parents, communities and the public at large.

Fullan talks from that 40,000 foot up level when he says “People have been talking about skills for the 21st century for at least a quarter of a century — a conversation marked by superficiality and vague notions of what it means. This is rapidly changing as new pedagogical specificity and powerful technology converge. Ontario now has the capacity to make pedagogy the foundation in learning through the use of technology and new digital resources. What makes this even more exciting is that the new work is already happening in many pockets across the province.”

Taylor is one of those “pockets”. “Teachers have that special relationship with their students” she said. “I never had a student I didn’t like” and quietly recalled a student that was lost due to an accident.

Taylor has hired some of the students she taught in high school and added – as they grow up they do get away from calling me Ms Taylor. Some never do she added with a kind of “perky” smile.

Schools don’t offer cookie cutter programs anymore. There is an almost a limitless list of courses they can take.

“Every student has a gift, the task is to discover that gift with the student and then nurture and grow it”, said Taylor.

“Teachers don’t stand in front of the classroom any more, they partner with their students and prepare them for a world that is confusing, fearful at times and prone to change every 30 days.”

The six Cs that Fullan brought to the table form the agenda: character, citizenship, communication, critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration and teamwork, and creativity and imagination.

Fullan explains that “As we delve into the meaning of these concepts, it is important to stress that we should not launch into an abstract discussion. In the next period of development, these core priorities must be defined, operationalized in practice, measured to mark success and to clarify progress. These next steps have to be widely shared because they work. This process of specificity and dissemination is our strength. We must put it to good use for the next phase of success.

“The capacity of educators in Ontario, as noted, is at such a high level as a result of the strategies of the past nine years that much of the leadership — what we might call leading from the middle — is already in the system. It needs to be cultivated and spread throughout the province, including establishing clarity of each of the six clusters and their interrelationships, learning experiences that develop the skills and dispositions in question, and the means of measuring and fostering progression in their development. But the middle cannot lead in a vacuum. Focused leadership from the government will continue to be essential for whole system excellence.”

Teachers use the six C’s which are defined as:

• Character education— honesty, self-regulation and responsibility, perseverance, empathy for contributing to the safety and benefit of others, self-confidence, personal health and well-being, career and life skills.

• Citizenship — global knowledge, sensitivity to and respect for other cultures, active involvement in addressing issues of human and environmental sustainability.

• Communication — communicate effectively orally, in writing and with a variety of digital tools; listening skills.

• Critical thinking and problem solving — think critically to design and manage projects, solve problems, make effective decisions using a variety of digital tools and resources.

• Collaboration — work in teams, learn from and contribute to the learning of others, social networking skills, empathy in working with diverse others.

• Creativity and imagination — economic and social entrepreneurialism, considering and pursuing novel ideas, and leadership for action.

Some distance from the reading, writing and arithmetic – and that rote learning that was used when Taylor was an elementary school student.

Fullan adds that “The fundamental purpose of education in an excellent system is to produce in all of its graduates — as close to 100 per cent as possible — the quality of leadership. By that they mean the capacity and commitment to act for one’s own good and for the common good.”

When the province implemented Full Day Kindergarten it set in place programs that promote the development of self-regulation, social- emotional learning, inquiry skills, and play-based learning that fosters creativity, imagination and problem solving.

It is that vast and significant change that Taylor rode to the point where she now leads a program that wasn’t even thought of when she first became a teacher; heading up a school that has four campuses and a mandate to work with students who are as diverse as it gets and who are on learning curves that can range from catching up or taking a course that wasn’t available elsewhere.

The student body at Gary Allan ranges from late bloomer high school students to adults who are upgrading or getting a high school diploma that wasn’t available to them in their country of birth.

The Gary Allan school is just up the road from what used to be Elgin high school, it got renamed to Bateman when it was merged with what was General Brock. Now Bateman is scheduled to be closed.

It has indeed been a changing world for Andrea Taylor; one wonders what she will do at Gary Allan in the next five years.