Steady as she goes for new principal at Granite Ridge

Jeff Green | Mar 09, 2016

The turnaround was pretty quick at Granite Ridge Education Centre last month. Principal Heather Highet, who oversaw the construction of the new school and remained at the helm for two years after it opened, found out in January that she would be moving to Bayridge High School in Kingston for the second semester of the 2015 - 2016 school year.

In her place, the Limestone District School Board decided to install the school's vice-principal, James McDonald, as acting principal until the end of the school year, when he may become the school's principal on a full-time basis.

For McDonald the new role is his fourth in the so-called northern reaches of the Limestone board. He taught at Clarendon Central in Plevna for six years when he first came to the board, then worked as vice-principal with Emily Yanch at Hinchinbrooke and Land O'Lakes Public Schools. When Hinchinbrooke and Sharbot Lake public and high schools were closed, and Granite Ridge was opened he became the new vice-principal.

“Heather and I worked on the direction of the school,” he said last week in an interview at his office. “Our school goals haven't changed: increase literacy, increase math skills and student engagement. These are fairly standard and important goals.”

There are mechanisms to evaluate progress that the school uses, such as report cards and province-wide EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability) testing to evaluate literacy and math skills in students, and Granite Ridge also employs other benchmarks to monitor student progress in these areas.

As well, beyond measuring and teaching skills, Granite Ridge has been working at creating a culture of reading in the school.

“GREC Reads is a program where at a certain time in the school day, every one of the students, from K-12, spends 20 minutes reading. Students get a wide variety of choice; the idea is for them to read out of interest. The program culminates in a book talk. As the program has developed, there has been a remarkable increase in our students just reading for the love of it, and some have indicated a connection between their interest reading and required reading,” McDonald said.

There are also reading groups in the school, which are designed to help students work on specific skills together, with the help of trained staff.

McDonald said that in terms of administrative style he prefers to use a collaborative rather than a top-down approach. “I see myself working with the teachers and staff here, not over them in any way. We all have different roles, of course, and I am adjusting to my new role. There is a great deal of expertise in this building; it is really truly phenomenal. My role is to foster that, to provide the circumstance to make it all come together.”

One example of teacher innovation comes from grade 3/4 teacher, Scott Flegal. Flegal has his students working with a tablet-based app called “explain everything”, which enriches all the material they access on their tablets with a click through to a wealth of background material.

Flegal's classroom is also unusual, almost borrowing a page from surrealist artists. The desks are there; there is a bank of computers by the window and the walls are covered with charts and student art and posters. Everything looks just like a busy grade 2 class, except that in place of chairs there are large blue balls. “The students sit on the balls instead of chairs so they are able to rock, to move their body while staying in place. It's something that has been tried elsewhere. Mr. Flegal wanted to try it in his class and he has had some success. We went to the school council for some funding and we found the rest in our own budget.”

Some of the older students have been involved in the development of an aquaculture project using the two ponds on the school property, and there have been a number of initiatives directed at providing opportunities for elementary and secondary students to learn together.

“It all comes down to building a school community,” said McDonald. “When we all came together we were having to develop a brand new culture of learning here, based on the needs of the students and a collaborative approach by staff. When Sharbot Lake High School was here there was a sense of family. Everyone talked about it, and that's something we have been building on now that we are Granite Ridge.”