"A School of Inquiry, Innovation and Impact"

Tay Shores PS is "a school of inquiry, innovation and impact". This is the statement that will guide our learning and teaching at our school for years to come. I can't take credit for coming up with this slogan. I came across it during my research. It is the slogan for the Mount Vernon Institute for Innovation. I couldn't put what we are trying to accomplish at Tay Shores PS in any simpler language. I hope that they don't mind that we are borrowing it as our slogan?

This is a powerful statement. It encompasses exactly what it means to learn and to teach in the 21st century.

Knowledge acquisition is pretty simple in this day and age. Quite literally, all that mankind has ever learned is available in the palm of our hands. We have instant access to knowledge, data, learning aids and teaching aids. If this is indeed true, why do our children need to attend Tay Shores PS?

Inquiry: With all that is available around us, we need to develop skills in our children to question, investigate, explore, probe and research. These are extremely important skills in this day and age. These inquiries require the development of what we are calling the 6 C's.  The 6 C's are Critical Thinking, Communicating, Creating, Collaborating, Citizenship and Character. These 6 C's have been developed and discussed in multiple dialogues of educational discourse. Most commonly, it can be found in the work of Michael Fullan and his international NPDL Project. Our teachers will be embedded in ongoing professional development at our school, and at the board level, related to how we can implement these skills in our daily work with students. Not only will our students be involved in inquiries, our teachers will be as well.

Innovation: One of the highest forms of learning is the ability to take what we've learned to make changes, remodel, break new ground, be a pioneer. We are focused on providing our students with multiple opportunities to be creative with their learning. Allowing students to demonstrate their understanding of the world in multiple ways/forums will promote innovation and creativity and will allow students to work with their strengths. To help with this, the newly renovated Tay Shores PS will have a state of the art "Maker Space" embedded in its library. This maker space will include a robotics lab, video production space, a green screen for shooting video, wiring for multiple digital technologies, easily re-configurable furniture for multiple purposes, all within a glassed in room. It truly will be one of the most interesting rooms in any public school in Simcoe County. This year, our teachers will be embedded in multiple projects around our school and board in how to promote, engage and implement these innovative programs.

Impact: Not only will our work at Tay Shores PS be innovative and inquiry-based, we will strive to embed citizenship and character into all that we do. One of our main goals is to ensure that our learning and teaching is based on solving real-world problems. When our learning is based on the real-world, it has the potential to have a real impact on our children, our local communities and even globally. Our teachers will be heavily involved in Professional Learning Communities which will study and investigate how we can intentionally plan on having our students solve real-world problems, that will have an impact on themselves and others.

This is very heavy work - but it is necessary. If we are to have our students prepared for the world that they live in now and the one that they will be running in the future, we owe it to them to do this heavy work.

Look for exciting things to happen in your child's classroom this year and in the years to come at Tay Shores PS. We really are "a school of inquiry, innovation and impact".