Building an Accessible Pathway to Lakefield College School

LCS has long been a school that is dedicated to placing community first. In an ongoing effort to continually promote diversity in all aspects, from geographic and socioeconomic to ethnic and cultural, the school remains committed to partnering with families, regardless of individual financial circumstances.  “It’s incredibly rewarding to be a member of a community that prioritizes both belonging and community and works to remove financial barriers that may otherwise prevent a family from exploring the school.”  - Assistant Head: Enrolment David Darby With roughly 400 students joining us from over 45 countries and seven provinces, we believe young people learn and mature best when they are encouraged to embrace their individuality within a richly diverse and supportive community. We welcome students and staff of all cultures, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, gender identities, religions, and sexual orientations, and believe that our community is strengthened by this diversity of perspectives. With this…

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Math, the pandemic, and finding ways to love the struggle of learning

Assistant Head: Learning, Dean Van Doleweerd Early in December, Bill Gates published an article on his GatesNotes site that highlighted some troubling and inspiring news about the struggles students currently face, in particular, struggles with math. In the article, Gates addresses the fact that math (and in particular, Algebra 1) was the course that was failed by more students than any other in American high schools. The result of failing Algebra so early in high school led to a 20 percent chance of a student actually completing high school, and thus a diminished chance of attending college or university. The article then went on to consider the issues surrounding current math instruction and how teaching strategies can change to better suit the needs of students today.  At Lakefield, we are not plagued with these kinds of results. All of our students attend university after high school graduation. Despite our students’…

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Alumni For the Environment: Everyone Can Contribute (Peter McArthur ’80)

As a senior at Lakefield College School, Peter McArthur ’80’s physics teacher assigned a parabolic mirror, about five feet in length, with the instruction to ‘do something’ with it. Running a copper pipe through the focal point above the mirror, adding a pump and solar cell to track the sun, he and a classmate created a solar water heater. The pride in innovative accomplishment made a lasting impression, and Peter is now in a position to reward entrepreneurial innovators with eco-friendly business ideas. As vice-president and national cleantech lead at RBCx, Royal Bank of Canada’s cleantech commercial banking practice, he is in charge of the bank’s loans to small-to-medium sized companies using innovative technologies to improve environmental sustainability. “Cleantech is very high-risk,” he acknowledges. “It’s not something banks are usually inclined to do, but we have developed a good grasp of what the risks are and how you address them.…

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