Crescent Blogs

“Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.”
– Adam Grant

A year ago, as my family and I settled into our March Break vacation, I overheard from a fellow traveller that Ontario was planning to close schools because of the health pandemic. It was at that moment that I realized I needed to rethink everything I knew about school. Ten days later, with the extraordinary effort of my colleagues and the support of our Board of Governors, Crescent School made history. We closed our physical campus and opened a virtual one.

When I ran a Minecraft program for Crescent’s virtual camps last summer and the After-School Online sessions this year, I thought of it as a fun way to introduce students to coding. Students picked up the ideas quickly – they even started working with block coding, which was quite impressive. What was more surprising to me was the wonderful interaction between the older student volunteers and the younger participants. Minecraft was fostering the boys’ leadership and mentoring skills, and their ability to simply relax and connect with others.

Welcome to this edition of Teaching & Learning. Now falling under the purview of the Crescent Centre for Boys’ Education (CCBE), this newsletter is a perfect complement to CCBE’s focus on professional learning and research. Dedicated to discovering how boys learn best, the CCBE elevates the role of research in our school and fosters a community of inquiry, particularly through action research, to inform our practice.