Nothing like your granddad's school days

ALLISON DUNFIELD

Sept. 03, 2008 03:36 PM EDT

It's mid-morning just before Thanksgiving at Bannockburn School in Toronto and the smell of turkey with all the fixings wafts through the halls. In the Upper Elementary class, (ages 9 to 12) several children are gathered excitedly around a big pot of steaming mashed potatoes on the stove. Another class has made cranberry sauce and another, corn on the cob.

Bannockburn School

Students in the ages 9-12 class at Bannockburn School in Toronto prepare mashed potatoes for their annual Thanksgiving feast. Each classroom has its own kitchen area, and preparing food together for the turkey dinner – during which the whole school community sits down for lunch – is part of the learning process at an alternative school like Bannockburn, which follows Montessori principles.

Bannockburn School

Students in the ages 9-12 class at Bannockburn School in Toronto prepare mashed potatoes for their annual Thanksgiving feast. Each classroom has its own kitchen area, and preparing food together for the turkey dinner – during which the whole school community sits down for lunch – is part of the learning process at an alternative school like Bannockburn, which follows Montessori principles.

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"Those look great, girls," vice-principal Helen Traicus tells two older students as they prepare a tray of carved pumpkin centerpieces that will decorate each table for the school's annual Thanksgiving luncheon.

But this isn't home economics. Each classroom has its own kitchen area, and preparing food together for an annual turkey dinner — during which the whole school community sits down for lunch — is simply part of the learning process at a school like Bannockburn, which is a Montessori school.

And it's just the kind of experience that parents of children enrolled in non-traditional private education want their children to have.

Increasingly, parents are placing their children in these private, non-traditional alternative schools, which cater to the child as an individual and focus on creativity and community.

"They are [schools with] alternative philosophies that are very legitimate and work very well. There are some students who do very well in the traditional [classroom] ... and other kids do not. And that's why there are such a nice variety of choices around the province," says Elaine Hopkins, executive director of the Ontario Federation of Independent Schools (OFIS).

In Ontario alone, 885 private schools are registered with the Ministry of Education; many are considered alternative and are usually based on a particular learning philosophy, often developed by the founder of the school.

While Montessori schools may be the best-known, such schools include the Waldorf and Sudbury models, along with a wide variety of individual schools that follow a teaching system developed by the founders. In Ontario, about half of these schools are not-for-profit institutions run by a board, and half are for-profit, Ms. Hopkins says.

At Bannockburn Montessori, one of the first things a visitor notices is that for a school of children from toddlers to age 12, it's very quiet. In one classroom, a boy carefully wipes the leaves of a plant. Other children in the hallway outside of a classroom are adding bars of beads to what's known as the "1,000 chain," a learning tool that helps children visualize exactly what 1,000 units looks like.

Bannockburn children spend the bulk of their days choosing an activity, completing it and returning the materials to a shelf. Their teachers act more as guides, helping when needed, but otherwise the focus is very much on individualized learning.

"Independence leads to self-confidence," says Adalove Gorrie, the school's head.

The founder of the philosophy, Dr. Maria Montessori who opened her first children's centre in Rome in 1907, decided that the best way to teach children was to respect them and help them learn skills that would apply to the real world, so they learn using real-life objects.

For example, young children practise carrying glass pitchers made specially for small hands.

"Because of their self-esteem, they develop into well-rounded, balanced students," says Ms. Gorrie.Many parents respond to alternative schools because they are looking for something different than they experienced as children. "The reason we chose the Montessori system was that when I went to school it was, 'Do what the teacher says.' That just totally turned me off," says Isabella Pippo Foster, who has two children in Bannockburn. "These guys are given the option to do things at their own time," she says.

"The teachers are very nice," agrees Claire Mazzia, a Grade 6 student at Bannockburn. "They don't demand that you do stuff — you have the freedom that you will decide when to do things."

Most Montessori schools stop at Grade 8, after which students head to other schools. Montessori schools do not conduct many tests, or necessarily follow provincial curriculum. But teachers say their students adjust well when they move to other secondary schools.

Another independent private school, the Waldorf, was developed by Rudolf Steiner in Germany in 1919. Waldorf schools are based on his concepts of a holistic learning approach that combines imagination, creativity and the natural world as part of study.

Canada has 23 Waldorf schools, 12 of them in Ontario. One of its main philosophies is "the right thing at the right time," meaning that children are given the opportunity to learn based on their developmental stage.

At the Toronto Waldorf School, says faculty chair Todd Royer, curriculum closely follows a child's growth. For example, he says that in Grade 7, when kids are hitting puberty, they study subjects such as chemistry and magnetism. "In all of our subjects, we try to relate to the human being," he says.

Waldorf schools can follow provincial curriculum, but they may do it differently. At Toronto Waldorf, for example, students spend the first two hours of the morning on the main lesson. And they may spend a month on one subject, so it's intense learning.

As well, many Waldorf schools incorporate what they call a main lesson book, in which students record not only notes but also detailed drawings of what they're learning, the idea being that art and imagination is another means to understanding.

Another form of alternative school is the Sudbury school, which do not follow a curriculum per se. There are no traditional subjects, teachers are referred to as staff, and students do not get marks. The Sudbury model is student-based learning with a strong focus on student democracy. Students from toddler to teen mix together, and each day decide what they want to "get into."

"Last year, some of the kids wanted to learn Japanese. So they asked if others wanted to do it and we set up a class," says Nicollette Groeneveld, co-founder of Indigo Sudbury Campus in Edmonton.

Sudbury schools have behaviour and safety rules, she says, but "very, very few classes. Very few kids doing bookwork." But students are well-educated, she says, because they spend much of their day in discussions with staff and other students.

The school was a lifesaver for parent Shauna Schwartz, who has three sons at Indigo. When he attended public school in British Columbia, her eldest son had very low self-esteem, she says. Since the family moved to Edmonton and he enrolled in Indigo, the change has been remarkable, she says. He now plays in a band at school and is much more self-assured.

Along with schools based on belief systems, there are also many individual "stand-alone" alternative schools in Canada. Toronto's Freemont Academy, for example, is a secondary school developed by principal Sean Meggeson to "really address a lot of the limits in public/private school."

Classes are 2-1/2 hours each, which Mr. Meggeson says allows for deeper learning and understanding. About 97 per cent of Freemont students go on to postsecondary education, he says.

Freemont is purposely kept small, with about 50 students, and classes are meant to immerse kids in the subject matter. "Every student who's here wants to be here," he says.

Here is a sampling of websites offering information about alternative schools:

Waldorf Education in Canada: www.waldorf.ca

Canadian Council of Montessori Administrators: www.ccma.ca

Sudbury Valley School: www.sudval.org/index.html

Canadian Association of Independent Schools: www.cais.ca

Ontario Federation of Independent Schools: www.ofis.ca

Ontario Ministry of Education (list of private schools): www.edu.gov.on.ca

Special to The Globe and Mail

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