UNDERLYING PEDAGOGICAL BELIEFS: GROWING SUCCESS

These new insights into gender identity have significant ramifications for all-boys educators. We are discovering that what we say about masculinity and how we say it has an impact on shaping boys’ understandings of what it is to enact healthy masculinities. The use of the plural here is intentional because there are many ways to be a man. Some of those ways are what society defines as “toxic” in nature. Obvious toxic attributes can present as being disrespectful to others, aggression, and arrogance.

We are of the understanding that boys’ school cultures that are overly hierarchical, conservative, and hyper-rational are not healthy for young men. Additionally, the celebration of the hyper-masculine and the hyper-competitive serve to reinforce conventional and ultimately limiting notions of masculinity. One example of our school’s response to these understandings is our dedicated time to participating in the arts. These weekly sessions provide boys with opportunities to explore the arts in settings that encourage creativity, freedom of play, and imagination rather than focusing on grades and academic expectations.

We continue to engage in a careful review of the language we use; our culture, rituals, and symbols; the way we teach boys to use technology; the way our health and wellness initiatives support healthy understandings of masculinities; the way our classroom practices impact boys’ understandings of themselves; and the way we help our community to understand our vision for boys’ education. Our understandings of gender as it pertains to education will continue to inform our approach and provide an affirmation that, done well, all-boys education can be a force for good in the world. As a community, we are collectively responsible for looking carefully at the way we educate boys and interrogate past assumptions about what it means to be educators of boys. There are many opportunities for us to engage in the future such that our students become their most human and compassionate selves.

As educators, we are called upon by the Ministry of Education to adhere to the policies identified in the 2010 publication titled Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting in Ontario Schools. In short, the document follows up on a decade of research and practice pertaining to the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy through the Achievement Charts, the effective use of assessment for, as, and of learning, and a renewed focus on and refinement of learning skills and work habits.

In addition to our adherence to the Ministry of Education’s Growing Success policy, we have also undertaken to develop best practices in assessment through our professional development endeavours. The following reflects our current thinking on how to motivate students to learn through assessment.

The school uses the Achievement Charts and criterion-referenced feedback to move students along the continuum of learning. Departments develop the most appropriate approach to the Ministry’s Achievement Chart and grading expectations. In every case, students and parents should be able to identify the relationship between their grade and Ministry expectations.

The Learning Skills represent an equally important aspect of student achievement. St. Andrew’s College believes that strong work habits serve students best in the long term. The Ministry requires us to evaluate students in the areas of responsibility, organization, independent work, collaboration, initiative, and self-regulation. This is intentional in the sense that courses are designed in such a manner that these skills are practiced regularly and inform instructional choices.