Torch - Spring 2017

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school, luck has nothing to do with it. Our strategic plan Havergal
2020: Our Vision is Limitless guides us in connecting every girl to
her dreams, favourite activities, learning and community.
It’s no accident that our broad educational strategies tap into what
matters most to students as they advance through the years: creativity
and curiosity for our youngest learners, growing independence for
our Middle School girls and an expanding community network
for our Senior School students, who increasingly take their active
thinking out into the world beyond Havergal. These strategies build
student engagement by accentuating what students care about at
each stage of development.
We’ll leave you with this thought: a 2006 High School Survey of
Student Engagement explains why students tune out in class:
75 per cent said the material wasn’t interesting, 39 per cent said it
wasn’t relevant and 32 per cent said it wasn’t challenging enough.2
This is an American survey of public schools, so the numbers don’t
apply to our context, but the survey does reveal what students need
in order to feel engaged.
Our role at Havergal is to take those needs seriously at all levels and
in all areas of school life. That’s why we have such a strong emphasis
on inquiry and thinking (challenge), connections to the real world
(authenticity) and students’ own interests (relevance). Whether our
girls are collecting leaves to study lines and surfaces, asking
questions about what history reveals and hides or engineering a
solution for a shifting slope, their engagement in the task is evident.
And those tasks are designed, of course, by teachers who fill our
girls with excitement about the future.
Senior School students organize lunchtime STEM panels to highlight the various careers available in science, technology, engineering and math.
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