ESL BOARDING ACADEMY

Leveraging Experiential Learning to Develop Language Skills

Pickering College launched the ESL Boarding Academy in September to provide an immersive environment for English-language learners in Grade 9 and 10 to improve their skills and experience all that a Canadian education has to offer.

Students enrolled in this program earn a full year of required Ontario Secondary School Credits, prepare for and take the TOEFL Junior test, use Duolingo to track their progress, and participate in exciting excursions to explore Canadian culture. They are learning skills valued in Canada such as public speaking, group work, writing with personal voice and synthesizing research.

The ESL Boarding Academy is housed in one of the homes on campus, which has been converted to include classroom space, but also student boarding rooms.

“How the group is set up, between the small group size as well as the unique facility that we have here, it really is like a family,” says Kyle Krause, boarding academy faculty. “That’s the heart of what makes this program unique, and everything flows from that. We’re able to do a lot more presentations, dialogue, debate and to have some very good conversations. Every lesson kind of becomes more about sitting around a kitchen table talking to friends.”

The small nature of this program means they can adapt the learning to meet the students’ needs and interests.

“This is a program that really allows us to listen to our students and to modify our lessons to make sure that they’re engaged and that they’re doing things that they are interested in,” Krause says.

They have done a lot of hands-on activities tied to the curriculum, such as meal prepping and cooking as part of healthy active living or creating models of the solar system and periodic table for science.

“We fundamentally believe that students learn better through actively participating in their content, especially when it comes to language. Because we were creating an entirely new program, we had a wonderful opportunity to build it from the beginning in the way that we felt best benefits the ESL learner,” says Julia Hunt, Assistant Head of School, Strategic Programs and Initiatives, who oversees the ESL Boarding Academy.

In the first half of the school year alone, the students visited the Toronto Zoo as part of their Ecosystems and Climate Change Science units, played a short round of golf at a nearby course for phys-ed, explored concepts related to healthy living, including community and social connections, at a local farm market, learned about Canadian wartime conflicts at the Georgina Military Museum, spent an action-packed day at the Ontario Science Centre and much more.

To ESL Boarding Academy faculty Robin Lee, the military museum excursion is one that stands out.

“I have a bunch of students who are very interested in military hardware, and they were just so excited to go through that one section of the museum. They were having such an engaging conversation about the evolution of military hardware over the past century,” he says.

Back in the classroom, they were able to apply that knowledge to their First World War unit and look at how technology has impacted warfare.

“They all went into that trip with this professional curiosity, this academic curiosity, so that was a really big shining moment for me,” Lee says.

For Krause, the science trip to the Toronto Zoo is one of her favourite experiences as they were able to review materials beforehand, take an audio tour of the zoo, engage in conversations about the animals and habitats, and take photos for their unit project.

“That was a really big win, and we made a lot out of that day, so I felt it was a really great learning moment,” she says.

These experiences have not only tied into the curriculum but have contributed to the success of the language learning component of this program.

Ongoing Duolingo tests and TOEFL Junior practice tests have shown that all students in the ESL Boarding Academy have improved their English significantly. They have also had a strong academic performance in all of their courses.

In the fall, several students in the ESL Boarding Academy will transition into Pickering College’s core program to begin the 2024-2025 academic year.