Nourishing a Culture of Reading

What is the most important skill you learn at school? Is it the social skills: taking turns, sharing and asking questions? Or perhaps numeric skills: how to add and subtract and discovering more complicated solutions to math problems? What about reading? Reading impacts everything we do in our lives - DAILY When I was the Elementary Principal at the International School Bangkok, we made it a point to tackle reading. We researched the latest theories on reading, we taught our teachers how to teach reading, we taught our parent community how to support their children in learning how to read and we focused on sharing our passion for reading with the kids – nourishing in them a love of reading. The results were remarkable. We created a culture of reading. Everyone read - everyday. As the principal, I too made every effort to share my love of reading and modeled…

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The Lakefield Educator’s Apprenticeship Program

Nourishing our teachers within an exemplary learning community “Every year’s a LEAP year at Lakefield College School!”  It’s the expression a beaming Joe Bettencourt, Assistant Head: Academics, used last Wednesday at our program meeting as he shared the many successes of our newest initiative: the Lakefield Educator’s Apprenticeship Program (LEAP). Coming out of a very successful pilot launch in 2013/14, LEAP is well into its second year with equally strong results. In addition to strengthening and advancing the 21st century learning experience for our boarding and day students, the purpose of LEAP is to support new teachers as they begin their professional career as educators. Through a competitive process attracting some of the best teacher graduates from across Ontario, four outstanding candidates are selected each year to participate in our program. Teaching Fellows contribute fresh talent, resources and support to our greater LCS faculty team who, in turn, provide mentorship…

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