The Jays of ’92

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The Jays of ’92

I ran into one of our students’ favourite guests, ‘Museum Rob’ (curator at the South Grey Museum) the other day.  As many of our locals know Rob is always full of insight.  He referred to out school as the Jays of ’92, a reference, for those who might now know, to the Toronto Blue Jays of ’92 and ’93 who were on top of the baseball world.

With the amount of humility that is due, as the Founder of Headwaters, I must admit I agree with Rob.  At this moment in time at Headwaters we have so much ‘going right’ that the overused phrase ‘magical place to be’ comes to mind.  I wanted, today, to give insights from the past 24 hours as to how it could be.  These aren’t my usual deep and moving musings – just simple things that I see at school.

The Value of a One Room Schoolhouse

 As we started lunch yesterday one of our Grade 4 students noticed that the Kindergarten students had been learning to tell time with clocks.  Without a nudge he went and found a teaching clock and spent his lunch time quizzing our 5 year-olds on time.  He both built times for them to read and asked them to quiz him back.  It was inspiring teaching and the 5 year-olds, while maybe missing a little bit of eating for that moment, were inspired to learn.  Why did we ever gave up on the one room schoolhouse?

A Gracious Community

 The students recently voted to let everyone try all 25 spelling words for the week, with the words increasing in difficulty from 1-24 and the 25th being a very difficult and unique word.  A Grade 1 student achieved 23 of 25, with the more impressive part being making the attempt at all 25 (well above his expectations).  The spontaneous applause that erupted from our students, when he allowed his result to be shared with the class, was yet another example of the character we see in our students on a daily basis.

Eager to Help

 Our students are such a strong community that helping has become the de facto way of being.  A young girl’s pencil case dropped to the floor today, open, spilling 40+ crayons and pencils on the floor.  Three students were walking through on their way to another set of tables (class transition) and without a word each dropped to their knees and cleaned up the pencils.  This seems minor but when put in the larger context of our school, it’s just another example of what happens.  I have not, in the past two months, seen any student walk by a job that needs done or walk by someone who needs help.  A group of Dads working hard to build the children an ice rink saw our group first hand as they quickly did everything in their power (they are mostly small children, after all) to clear snow, flatten an area, and make it all come together.

As I noted at the start of this post – this isn’t a deep post.  What it is, instead, is a quick look inside our walls.  Children helping others, children accepting each other for who they are (there are no judgments), and children working to lead others to be ever stronger and more able.  Working in an environment like this makes excellence not just possible, but a reality.

Like Rob, I’m guessing this is what the locker room was like at Skydome in Toronto in 1992.

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