Creativity

There was an interesting story about Google on the Sunday CBS Morning show this past weekend. The correspondents interviewed the key graphic artists responsible for the artistic interpretations of their company logo.

If you haven't already noticed, Google's world recognized logo is constantly changed to reflect the importance of a day, person, place or thing. The leading web search engine company also holds world-wide contests in this regard.

A panel of artists changes the appearance of their company's logo to reflect the cultures of countries around the world. For example, the visual appearance of the Google logo would be different in Canada, Russia, China, Israel and so forth on a daily basis.

Changing the appearance of a company's logo is taboo in business circles. Your company logo should precisely represent what image and/or product or service the company is marketing. Manipulating the look of the logo would diminish its effectiveness in brand awareness.

Google has torn down this conventional wisdom and has only added tremendous value to its brand by piquing the interest of its customers around the world who look forward to seeing what image it will represent on a daily basis.

It is this type of ingenuity and thinking outside of the box that goes unheralded in our classrooms and co-curricular activities.

The 2010 Halton Youth Awards for Environmental Excellence were given to students in environmental clubs and programs that have raised awareness of environmental issues in their community on April 20th.

Club Green at CtK received an award recognizing its efforts in biodiversity. Led by Ms. Typer, one of our school's many outstanding educators, Club Green has been implementing creative environmentally friendly initiatives in our Catholic Learning Community for the last three years. These efforts have catapulted our school to two Certified Silver Ecoschool standings and our first Gold certification for 2009. CtK is the only Gold Certified secondary school in the Halton Catholic District School Board.

In addition, the 2010 Halton Environmental Scholarship Awards were given to five students, once of which was Emily Dimytosh, a recent graduate of CtK. She was recognized as the founder of Practically Green Solutions, a company that helps small-businesses make the switch to an environmentally friendly workplace.

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to your comments

Cold Souls

My wife and I rented the movie "Cold Souls" over the weekend. We found it in the "Critic's Picks" section of Blockbuster.

It involved actor Paul Giamatti...playing himself....disembodying his soul to a company that specializes in this process...."The Soul Storage Company." While the movie turned out to be very entertaining, it was the first conversation between Mr. Fintstein (CEO) and Mr. Giamatti that caught my attention.

In motivating Giamatti to go through with this procedure, Fintstein cited an anecdote regarding the training of baby elephants. He stated that they are put on a short leash that is tied to a wooden peg in the ground. It trains them to not stray far as the wooden peg would stop them in their tracks. This effect is so profound that when they reach adulthood and could easily yank the peg out of the ground, they have been conditioned to think that it is an impossible task and therefore never test it.

Fintstein offers that humans never question their self-imposed limitations and the soul can end up being the wooden peg.

As educators, we strive to motivate and encourage our students to "move" their own wooden pegs to opportunities and pathways that not only enrich their lives but the lives of others.

What are you doing to "move" your wooden peg?

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to your comments.

Cycling Club Exploits

I went cycling this Sunday with a Cycling Club for the first time this year. Prior to this, the bulk of my cycling over the years has been solitary or with a friend. Life is busy and as a novice triathlete I thought that in joining this club that it would motivate me to put more kilometres on my legs than in years past.

So off we went on what would have been a 120 km journey with some hard core cyclists. I met another new member to the club as we were rolling along at speeds between 36 and 40 km an hour. This gentleman was putting in a strong effort and I wondered if he would be able to maintain such a pace once we hit the long incline from south Burlington into Dundas and then up Sydenham Hill....not once but twice!!

Well it became apparent 30 km in that he could barely keep up on modest hill inclines and was dropping back rapidly. I was pushing hard keeping up and was near the back of the pack happy to still be with the peloton. I looked back and this gentleman was not even in sight. It was at this point that I made a decision using a simple cost/benefit analysis. I came ill prepared with one bottle of electrolytes while my peers had three or four. Also, I was pushing hard and last but not least I was concerned about the rider who was nowhere to be seen.

I stopped and waited as the peloton sped away.

The gentleman was grateful that I waited as I lead him up to the top of Snake Road while he got his bearings back. We ended up putting in about 76 km together and I was resolute in my decision to stay and help.

As I reflect, this is what we do as educators on a daily basis. We stay and help. We bring students along at their pace and in accordance with their needs.

In the end, we do this as a Catholic Learning Community to build resilient, caring and productive members of our society.

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to your comments.

The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test

April 8th, 2010 is a very important day for Grade 10 students across the province of Ontario. They will write the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) on this day.

This standardized test is one of two such assessments that students write during their tenure in secondary school. The other test is the EQAO Grade 9 Math Assessment. The difference between the two is that students must pass the OSSLT in order to graduate or achieve the literacy requirement by passing the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Course in Grade 12 if they fail the test twice.

What is your opinion on standardized tests? Can we fairly and equitably compare literacy scores or math scores for that matter of our students across the province? Detractors would cite that there are too many variables at play like demographics and socio-economics that skew results.

The Halton Catholic District School Board has been either first or second overall in the province of Ontario on the OSSLT. That is quite an accomplishment. Detractors would allude to the fact that our board is also geographically situated in one of the most affluent areas in Ontario.

While this is a generalization, one can't deny the correlation. However, I happen to think that our outstanding results are mainly due to our board's commitment to literacy across the curriculum.

I would like to invite you to take a look at our school improvement plan on our website. It will become obvious that CtK has a very intensive literacy strategy that involves literacy checklists, literacy IEPs, graphic novels, assessments with embedded literacy prompts, a Grade 9 and 10 English program that is modelled after the OSSLT, after school literacy preparation, literacy computer modules, mock literacy tests and so on. It is important to note that our data on student achievement drives the creation of our instructional and assessment strategies. As with anything that we do at CtK, it revolves around meeting the needs of our students to the best of our abilities.

We are blessed with an excellent teaching staff that embraces change and leads by example in many instances. Their dedication to our Catholic Learning Community has yielded excellent results in all of our data indicators including the OSSLT especially over the last three years.

I pray and hope that this contingent of students will be successful this Thursday. It is a stressful time for them.

I have had many discussions with my colleagues over the dedication that all of our schools have with respect to literacy and numeracy. Are we dedicated because it is the right thing to do? Is it the pressure that arises from the province comparing schools and boards that drives us?

Looking forward to hearing your opinion. Thanks for reading.