Towards the end of Term 3, staff and students competed against each other in a series of fun lunch-hour games.
First up was Staff vs. Students Volleyball, with students coming out on top (a recent newspaper article points out just how impressive our Sr. Volleyball team is). Staff answered back with field hockey, and the students came out on top again with basketball. Staff tied it back up with soccer (winning 3-1), but the students took the staff in a very close Ultimate match. The very next day the staff won the School Reach trivia showdown.
See the photos from Staff vs. Students. The full photo gallery is here.
Gr. 12 I-Think Workshop: evaluating two opposing models.
For three days at the end of January we had the pleasure of hosting the Rotman School of Management’s I-Think Initiative. Through a series of workshops, faculty were introduced to integrative thinking and learned how to apply it to the classroom. Integrative thinking is an approach to creative problem solving that helps you move from a pro/con mindset to a “pro/pro” one. Problems are reframed so that you take the best aspects of multiple solutions to create a new one.
Gr. 7 I-Think Workshop
On Friday, January 30th, the Grade 12s and the Grade 7s were led through this new model by our trained faculty. Grade 12s explored decision making around life choices, and the Grade 7s went through an exercise about a small business and their challenges. The questions and ideas that came out of these discussions were thoughtful and engaging.
Faculty I-Think Workshop
This approach to creative problem solving was developed by Roger Martin, former Dean of the Rotman School of Management. Through researching and interviewing hundreds of business leaders, he determined that successful business leaders had the capacity to take opposing models and integrate ideas in order to find solutions that were creative and innovative. The Rotman School has continued Roger Martin’s work through the I-Think Initiative, where students learn to seek and create new ideas or ways of doing things by rethinking and combining divergent choices.
From L-R: Josie Fung, Acting Director at I-Think; Chantal Gionet, Head of School; Noga Kornberg, Research Associate at I-Think, and Ellie Avishi, Director at I-Think.
