Reflective of the dynamic contemporary moment in which we find ourselves, The Dragon has added a host of new programs that will give students a greater awareness of their capabilities, and insight into the complexities of the world around them. Three Advanced Certificates – in the Philosophy of Science, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation, and the History of Ideas – join our already sturdy curricular offerings. These certificates bring the intellectual challenges most often found in colleges and universities into the high school classroom, challenging Dragon students to think critically and ethically about the world they will inherit. I am eager to see the next set of Dragon graduates earn these certificates beside their OSSD’s next June.
Leveraging the already fertile realm of teacher, student, and alumni entrepreneurial activity, The Dragon will begin operations as an incubator of young companies, teaching them the basics of business operations while encouraging them to think entrepreneurial and indicatively. Under the banner of entures@DragonAcademy or V@DA, a self-selected group of students will be encouraged to design a strategy for building an actual for-profit company, with Dragon instructor David Tollefson acting as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Dr. Sealey (me!) acting as CEO. With the involvement of parents and alumni who are already building or running technology companies, and what I hope will be the eventual involvement of business school students and professors to help us refine our planning and marketing, The Dragon is poised to become a critical node within the growing network of start-up driven learning organizations in the global marketplace of ideas. More about this exciting initiative as the year progresses.
Knowing the centrality of STEM fields - science, technology, engineering, and math – to the world of commerce, I am pleased to see that our Scientists-In-Action program continues to attract multiple students to its experiential format, placing them besides working scientists in labs across the city to learn science by doing science. Indeed, involving our students in the life of the city, using Toronto as an extended classroom, has always been a part of a progressive Dragon education, expanding our educational directions outwards into the hospitals, conference rooms, museums, and parks that animate this wonderful city.
The Dragon Academy is on the cusp of its second twenty years of existence, and I am pleased to lead the charge deeper into this complicated century. It is within The Dragon Academy that I hope our students learn what it means to be their best selves, to live lives of kindness and fortitude, to recognize the benefits of giving overtaking, of sharing, and loving in a world deeply in need of less selfishness and more love. With all the powers at my disposal, I intend to ensure that Dragon students are ready for the next phase of their lives and enter that phase confident in their ability to succeed.
Kids have trouble seeing the use of a lot of what they are taught. Even the highest achievers often report that their chief motivation is external – they want to do well so they can get into a program and then a profession they see as desirable. They often complain of being forced to cram, of having to regurgitate. How can we get away from this model of teaching as the transmission of textbook material?
What makes us want to learn at any age? Something stirs us to curiosity and wonder. Where’s the pleasure in it? Not in being tested, but in finding out. Not in assignments and limitations, but in freedom to explore. Museums are treasure houses full of rare, strange, and telling objects, made to prick our desire to know.
Museums are perfect settings for learning in other ways – they hold research as well as display collections they are staffed with knowledgeable curators. And they are welcoming. They are not for adults only or an elite membership: they are open to the general public. Museums have a mission to educate as well as to collect, preserve and exhibit.
There is something about a museum that invites wandering and examining and asking questions. You are surrounded by objects for study, and each one leads out to a myriad of fields. This is a natural setting for active, individual learning.
Being museum-based means we frequent the key Toronto collections – the A.G.O., the Gardiner Museum of Ceramics, the R.O.M., the Textile Museum, and dozens of other sites and collections. We bring our students into the world of all that the Muses love, for other cultural institutions are also literally museums. We attend lectures and masterclasses at Toronto’s many post-secondary venues. We go to concerts and performances, laboratories, observatories, studios.
Artists and thinkers bring their work to us. Using these holdings and experiences, our students reach advanced skills in inquiry and research. The Dragon Academy is a unique experiment. There are only a handful of true museum schools worldwide, and we believe ours to be the only complete high school program.
