The Braemar Life Skills Academy Podcast

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Much of the research and conversation around education today emphasizes the importance of fostering inclusive and supportive learning environments. This episode dives deep into the transformative power of social justice in education, bringing you insights from a passionate lifelong learner and advocate for equity.

Mina Alves, with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Toronto Metropolitan University and a Master’s degree in Education focused on Social Justice from the University of Toronto, has spent nearly a decade working within and for marginalized communities. Their diverse experience includes program coordination at the UofT Academic Accommodations Support Centre, resilience training with the TMU Thriving in Action team, and advocacy at Students for Barrier-Free Access.

In their current work as a learning strategist, Mina facilitates personalized equitable learning strategies, promoting accessibility and inclusion. Their work is centered on the belief that every individual has inherent worth and deserves to have their needs met with compassion, advocating for a future in education where diversity is celebrated rather than pathologized.

In this episode, Mina shares the profound lessons learned from their various experiences, including the primary obstacles witnessed in the learning lives of students, the most effective learning strategies and personal wellbeing routines, and the practices and people who’ve inspired them most. If topics like this resonate with you, Mina’s insights can offer a wealth of knowledge and actionable strategies.

Engage with Mina’s work and become a part of the movement towards a more equitable and inclusive educational landscape. Wherever you’re at in your journey, we encourage you to explore resources like those Mina advocates for, and to become a student of inclusive education as a foundational part of a whole-life learning experience.

Some topics and resources to listen for and take further:

Dr. Eve Tuck (“we learn best when we’re taught by someone who loves us”)
Special Topics in Being a Human
Feel Good Learning: On how to prioritise, focus, study, and learn everything
Thriving in Action
The Self-Care Wheel: Wellness Worksheets, Activities and Templates
Self Care Checklist Templates

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Jenny Sampirisi is a dream guest for the BLSA podcast. We could have invited her to speak to us about literature and creative writing, or about learning strategies, or about post-secondary teaching and program design, or about accessibility and inclusion for students with disabilities, and she would be able to speak about each topic from a place of experience and expertise. She is a published and celebrated poet, an award-winning teacher, and is currently engaged in the unique role of Learning and Inclusion Education Developer at Toronto Metropolitan University, helping faculty to see and understand student needs with better clarity and compassion.

As you’ll quickly realize when you listen to our conversation, Jenny does that special thing that everyone swears they’ll do when they’re older, but rarely manage to achieve: she remembers what it is like to be younger. Of particular relevance to this episode, she remembers what it is like to be a young student in the process of deciding what to do after high school.

In this episode, you’ll hear Jenny talk about the often unacknowledged systemic barriers that face so many students as they make the difficult transition into post-secondary and adult life. She unpacks some parts of our hidden curriculums so that we can reckon with them in the light of day, and brings much needed attention to the invisible disabilities that so many live with, often in silent isolation. Her mission, her passion and her insights are deserving of attention and emulation, and we feel lucky to share a glimpse of them with you here.

Some topics and resources to listen for and take further:

Jenny Sampirisi
“Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing” by Hélène Cixous
TMU’s Spanning the Gaps program
What is an Education Developer?
TMU Policy 159: “A Shared Responsibility” – Academic Accommodation of Students with Disabilities
“Nothing about us without us”
The Hidden Curriculum
Invisible Disabilities
Niagara College – Health Wellness and Accessibility Service
University of Guelph: Strategic Plan 2022-2027
Universal Design for Learning

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In our previous episodes with representatives from the University of Toronto’s UNICEF group and York University’s MUN president, we talked about the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and how schools can help to encourage awareness of and participation in the pursuit of these goals. Discouragingly, the 2020 UNICEF Report Card states that “Overall, Canada ranks 30th in child wellbeing among 38 of the world’s richest countries. The Report Card tells us that Canada’s children are worlds apart from each other due to wide inequalities, and worlds apart from the happiest, healthiest children in rich countries. If the Report Card ranking was a school grade, it would not be posted on the fridge.” Obviously, change is needed in the ways youth health and wellbeing are approached, here and around the world.

In this episode’s conversation with representatives from Physical and Health Education Canada, we take a broad look at the current state of youth health, as represented by the quantitative and qualitative data gathered by the organization in partnership with public health and education groups around the country. We discuss the work that PHE Canada is doing to achieve their vision of ensuring that ALL children and youth in Canada lead active, healthy lives, and dive deeper into the cultural and educational contexts that inform this process.

Some topics and resources to listen for and take further:

PHE Canada
Exploring Physical Education in Canada
UN Sustainable Development Goals
2020 UNICEF Report Card for Canada
7 Sacred Teachings (Indigenous Guide to Community Relations)
Emotional Well-Being Education Activities
Check out the PHE Canada’s Teaching Tools & Learning Centre to gain access to practical and fun physical and health education activities for Kindergarten to Grade 12.
PHE Journal: Your central hub for all things related to physical and health education. Dive into featured articles, stay up to date with relevant research, and enjoy insightful podcasts covering a variety of topics to support the teaching of quality physical and health.

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One of the themes we return to on this show time and again is the human need for connection, and the ways that education structures can either hinder or enhance connection in the lives of learners. Lifelong learning is, by definition, a process of participation in an ever-expanding complex of ideas, but we’re not just talking about connection with the academic subjects being taught in the classroom; we mean connection of all kinds: with the body, with our evolving concepts of self, with other people, with the learning environment, with nature, with creative expression, and with the rhythmic energy that flows in and around our interconnected beings. This complex, interdependent web of connection is our basis for meaning, giving our efforts and lives a sense of shared purpose that can be felt in powerful, even physical ways.

Holistic connectedness does not come about automatically or easily in our increasingly isolating world. We sit in bedrooms, cars, busses, offices and classrooms, plugged into earphones and screens, bounded by walls and schedules, hounded by duties and to-do lists, and we lose contact with the world and our embodied beings in it. Students, educators and parents alike are challenged daily to cultivate the space and patience for real connections to emerge in lives that often feel too chaotic, competitive and desperate. But we CAN recenter, and return to the foundations of our being, where we find the curiosity, creativity, and togetherness that are the stuff of learning and personal growth.

In this episode, Honour Stahl teaches us about how a return to the body, to movement and to nature can connect us with our selves, with each other, with the world around us, and with the values that matter most in our changing and endangered world. She shows us how learning to move your body can help you learn so much more, and can, indeed, move you to places of meaningful growth and change. If you’re feeling a need for more grounding, more sharing, more moving, and more purpose in your life, Honour’s words and wisdom may be the starting point you’ve been looking for.

- - Honour Stahl - Charb Arts Studios - Women’s Healthy Environments Network (WHEN) - Synchrony * “Being in a crowd bonds people through physiological synchrony” (2022, Nature) * “The joys of physical synchrony” (2015, The Guardian) * “The Mental Health Benefits of Dance” (2023, Psychology Today) - Grounding * “Grounding, the Universal Anti-Inflammatory Remedy” (2023, Biomedical Journal) - Mirella Stroink and Teresa DeCicco: Metapersonal Self-Construal * “Embodied Ecologies” - Nicole Spiegelaar: * Sustainability Pedagogy - Tich Nhat Hanh and Plum Village: * Interbeing * “Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet” - James Bridle’s Ways of Being

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Regular listeners to the Life Skills Academy podcast will know that we often try to emphasize how wellness and optimized learning states can be accessed through the body. This emphasis is a response to the noticeable lack of appreciation for physical awareness and movement within the dominant education cultures that determine the quality of many of our learning experiences. In this episode, we bring you another guest whose experience and wisdom in the world of movement and health can help us find comfort, capacity and wholeness in both our physical lives and our learning situations.

Jill Bodak is a self-described connoisseur of movement. An Osteopath, a writer and a speaker, she works in the realm of wellness, but particularly in the project of understanding bodies. This is a specific kind of education – to help people learn how to understand the machine they are in. Sometimes she does it through hands-on clinical practice, but recently and especially since the pandemic, she’s been having that conversation in new ways – through podcasts, online course, workshops and group sessions – where clients try to deepen our own understanding of what a body is, what it does, and how it works. It is Jill’s belief that this understanding piece, instead of the “point and label” style of learning, is the key to helping people navigate their life in a body in an enjoyable way.

Part of that understanding is to learn about being, in Jill’s words, a soft-bellied beast who declines over time. She is committed to helping her clients recognize their limits, and embrace the process of aging and decline. These are lenses that are largely absent from our educational discourse. We talk a lot about how to improve; we often forget to talk about how to decline, as we all must do, and hopefully with as much grace and understanding as possible.

If topics like this hit home for you, there’s a world of knowledge and insight waiting for you at Anatomy on Purpose, Jill’s digital education platform offering workshops, webinars, group training sessions and a whole lot of actionable information about how the body works and how it can be healed. Wherever you’re at in your journey, we encourage you to engage with resources like these and become a student of the body as a foundational part of a whole-life education.

Some topics and resources to listen for and take further:

- Jill Bodak & “Loved Into Being”
- Anatomy Trains (BIG resource on the intersection between Anatomy, Mechanics and Real Life)
- Sport Psychology
- Visualization
- Body-based agitation in classroom settings
- Ido Portal and Movement Culture
- For deep exploration of the following four topics, check out Jill’s Warming-In Workshop, available online:
  - We are “Circular” beings, not “Linear” ones
  - “Slide and Glide” vs “Stretch and Strain”
  - “Warming In” instead of “Warming Up” to start your day
  - Rate, Rhythm and Repetition
- The power of Yawning
- Learning through Play
- Fides Krucker on the Healing power of Sound and Voice
- Tom Morrison – Simplistic Mobility Method
- David Belle – Parkour
- MovNat: Natural Movement Fitness
- GMB Fitness
- Petra Fisher

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Meg Houghton – learning strategist, student services programmer, education consultant and soon-to-be psychotherapist – gave us the title for our episode about five minutes into our conversation, and the power and seriousness of her message came through clearly from that moment onward. Meg doesn’t mince words when she describes the dire need for action in all phases of our personal and public lives as we seek to address the challenges and crises that present so much uncertainty in this moment when we are searching for a coherent cultural narrative to gather around.

These are big ideas that may seem beyond the scope of an education podcast, but as anyone who listens to this episode will soon realize, our learning and education systems are exactly the spaces where the sort of world-changing thought and action required by this cultural moment need to happen. We wrapped up our Season 2 Resilience series with an in-depth conversation about the state of uncertainty in our education systems and culture at large, how theories of Wellbeing and Resilience are being put into practice in educational institutions, and how students and practitioners are responding to related programs, systems and theories.

Meg is generous with her wisdom and the lessons she’s taken from her years working with students and staff in post-secondary education, highlighting some recent successes moving towards more effective care in these settings , and complicating the picture by emphasizing the difficulties that students continue to face in accessing the supports and resources they require to lead academic lives of dignity and vibrancy. Our conversation with Meg also sets the stage for the podcast’s upcoming focus on Accessibility and Inclusion in education, coming in Spring 2024. We hope you’ll follow along on this ongoing journey and take something away to help you, in Meg’s words, “let the ceiling come off of your life and find new levels that you didn’t know existed.”

Some topics and resources to listen for and take further:

Su Ting Teo and the Centre for Innovation in Campus Mental Health
“Our Time to Lead” (TMU Academic Plan for Mental Wellbeing)
“Postsecondary students dealing with multiple mental-health issues” (Globe and Mail, 2013)
The Five-Factor model of Resilience
Albert Bandura, esp. Self-Efficacy and Social Learning Theory
Angela Duckworth and “Grit”

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At the Life Skills Academy, we’re committed to bringing you a range of perspectives on the most important education topics, from theorists and administrators, professional academics, teachers and students. Too often the voices of those most impacted by systemic policies, structures and methods aren’t heard. It is only by seeing concepts like Resilience through multiple lenses that we can build informed opinions, and guarantee inclusivity in our approaches.

With that in mind, in this episode we bring you the voices of three experienced educators working in the primary and post-secondary domains, but also working as full-time graduate students in the field of Education. Ravina, James and Timmy are compassionate, informed and creative educators whose genuine empathy for their students and investment in their vocation comes through clearly in everything they say. Their diverse perspectives provide valuable insights into how we can encourage Resilience and Wellness in ourselves and the students in our care, and how the two can often be one and the same.

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As our worlds get more complex and interconnected, the forces that can compromise our health, relationships, focus, learning, memory and motivation can easily become overwhelming. We need to develop new perspectives, habits and resources to meet these destabilizing forces, and to build resilience into our lives. Few scholars are more qualified to define and discuss Resilience in all its forms than Dr. Suna Egeryit-Madzwamuse.

Dr. Eryigit-Madzwamuse has been an Associate Professor of Human Development, Learning and Culture in the department of Education at UBC since 2022. Before that she was a faculty member at the University of Brighton, in the School of Sport and Health Sciences. There she served as the Deputy Director of the Centre for Resilience for Social Justice at the University of Brighton since 2017. Her current research focuses on understanding the risks and protective mechanisms associated with youth development and wellbeing.

In this episode she helps to orient us in the fast-growing field of Resilience research, defining what it shares with Wellness Theory and where these two fields diverge. Our conversation revolved around the situation of young people, and especially teenagers, whose deteriorating mental health outcomes are indicative of broader deficits in our schools and cultures, the insufficiency and toxicity of online communities, and the missing meaning in their developing lives. Suna’s research and message about how communities thrive and how youth can be made to feel like they matter are not to be missed.

Some topics and resources to listen for and take further:

- The Characteristics of Wellbeing: - Freedom from intolerable pain and stressors - Developing strengths and positive attributes - The health, wellness and coherence of relationships and community - The expectation of further mobility, progress and improvement
- Carl Rogers’s Humanistic/Holistic Self-Concept Approach
- Positive Psychology’s Strength-Based Approach
- Public Health’s influence on “Wellness”
- The Growing Mental Health Crisis for young people
- The Adultification of young people
- Impacts of Climate Change threat on teen Mental Health
- 50% of adult-life Mental Illness indicators emerged between ages 10-16
- The Need for a Trusted Adult
- Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory
- Erikson’s Stages of Development
- Dr. Suna’s research on Blackpool’s “Bounce Forward” and “Resilience Revolution” program
- Isaac Prilleltensky’s work on Mattering

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At the Life Skills Academy we are deeply grateful and indebted to our friend and supporter Dr. Deena Shaffer. Dr. Deena brings decades of experience as an educator, researcher, administrator, speaker, education leader, author and parent to each of her conversations with us, helping us wade into the massive complexity of our learning lives and understand them more clearly and more compassionately. Her expertise is rivalled only by her extraordinary empathy for the situation of learners in today’s educational climate.

As the founder and CEO of Awakened Learning, Dr. Deena leads a team of expert educators who offer a diverse range of perspectives and skills to the students and parents they support each day. We’re lucky to have a number of Awakened Learning educators helping us to elaborate on our various themes this season, and will look forward to many of their insights on how we can bring holism and authenticity into our learning journeys.

In this episode Dr. Deena shared some of what she’s learned from past mentors, lived trauma, travel and teaching, and she really hit home some of the ways we can think of ourselves and care for ourselves in and outside of school, absent of toxic comparison or competition with others. If her words resonate with you, you can take some meaningful steps forward into her world of wisdom by finding her on Instagram @AwakenedLearning , or by reading her recently-published book Feel Good Learning.

Some topics and resources to listen for and take further:

Processing long-held emotions (esp. re: the Pandemic)
Daily and Yearly Rhythms of Life
Self-Esteem vs Self-Belief
Dr Kristin Neff and Self-Compassion
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Model
The steps that come before asking for help
How “the system” makes us feel broken
Self-Compassion as an antidote to Perfectionism
Dr. Shawna Faber – Coaching Pedagogy
Noticing tension and cultivating ease in our educational lives
Naomi Klein
On Being with Krista Tippett
Paul Taylor’s Evenings and Weekends
Trevor Massey and Leadership by Design

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“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

At the Life Skills Academy we think that too many conversations about education happen in absence of student voices and the lived experiences they have to share. We are committed to avoiding this omission, and are thrilled to bring listeners conversations with students from all over the world as a regular part of our programming.

In our first thematic cycle of season 2, we spoke with five students from four different countries about their various educational experiences, including their struggles and successes. Listeners will benefit from these students’ first hand experiences navigating unfamiliar subjects and settings, socializing with people from different backgrounds, learning through language barriers, maintaining personal wellness, finding life balance, and planning for the future.

Parents thinking about giving their student an international education and anyone wondering what life is like from the perspective of an international student will find these conversations especially engaging.

Some topics and resources to listen for and take further:

Learning high-level subjects in a non-native language
Peer pressure and social comparison
Self-quizzing (ex. w/ Anki)
Finding help from others
Strategies for learning in long classes
The benefits of Student Leadership
Practices to find balance in life
Turning competition into cooperation

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“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

Some topics and resources to listen for and take further:

Learning high-level subjects in a non-native language
Peer pressure and social comparison
Self-quizzing (ex. w/ Anki)
Finding help from others
Strategies for learning in long classes
The benefits of Student Leadership
Practices to find balance in life
Turning competition into cooperation

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“Whether you think you can’t or you think you can, you’re right.”

You’ve likely heard this quote before (and you’ll hear it again when you listen to this episode), but its deceptive simplicity can cause us to overlook the enormity of its implications.

In our first episode of Life Skills Academy season 2, we’ll learn from experienced educator, speaker and mental health coach Rebecca Bitton about the mentalities and conditions that contribute in positive or negative ways to our belief in ourselves, our ability to learn, and in the purposefulness of our personal journeys. Rebecca’s insights will be inspiring and immediately useful to the students, parents and educators out there whose learning or teaching experiences are infused with any amount of doubt, and will offer routes to greater self-efficacy and satisfaction in the future.

Some topics and resources to listen for and take further:

Comparing international perspectives on Mental Health and Learning Disorders
Student Leadership and Mentorship
Intercultural Socialization
Defensive Isolation and Imposter Syndrome in Classrooms
Student Self-Esteem
“Growing Success” student interviews
“The Curse of the Overachiever”
Fixed vs Growth Mindset
Identifying character strengths and talents
Avoiding educational “Future Telling”

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Welcome to Season 2 of the Life Skills Academy Podcast, a show dedicated to bringing you thoughtful, informative conversations about the world of 21st-century education, and the many forces that shape each of our learning lives. If you’re a student, parent or teacher hoping to expand your educational knowledge and resource-base, or to see what other education stakeholders are doing to optimize their approaches to education, this show is for you.

To get a better sense of the show and our plans for Season 2, check out this introductory message from our host, Mike Helsby. Once you understand what we’re up to, you can jump into our episode catalogue anywhere you like, depending on your own interests and needs. And if you want to engage further, you can always post on our YouTube page, with questions, comments, and suggestions for future episodes.

Thank you for joining us on this Education journey. Let’s start learning together!

Click here to go to our podcast page

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Braemar welcomes students from all over the world to our school in downtown Toronto. We regularly emphasize the diversity of our students’ backgrounds as an incitement towards mutual engagement and learning. Multiculturalism is at the centre of our school’s and our community’s ethos for good reason: when we encounter new identities in an equitable space, we grow in ways that were previously impossible, and we introduce the potential for a more supportive and vibrant world.

In the course of their educations, many of our students come to embody this value, and become ambassadors of empathy and engagement in their respective spheres. Three such students joined us on our podcast this week.

Anya, Masha and Yammies are some of the most experienced students at Braemar. Each has experienced enormous growth during their time here, moving from wide-eyed newcomers to confident leaders whose attitudes and actions invigorate our school culture.

Their progress sheds light on the popular theory of “Cultural Adaptation” and gives a much clearer idea of what the prescribed stages of that framework look like in our lived experiences. We’re thrilled to be able to share their energy and perspectives with you in this final episode of BLSA: Season 1!

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Mr Garson Karrel is a professional fitness trainer and musician who has been responsible for designing and helping to implement a weekly “Flow Fitness” training program at Braemar College since the autumn of 2019. The student-focussed fitness program encourages teens to become aware and responsive to their present state-of-being, and to work towards holistic health with a spirit of compassion, for themselves and those they train with. The weekly training sessions teach a series of low-impact, equipment-free exercises that can be integrated into a guided “fitness flow” that becomes a form of dance, accompanied by music and verbal cues from the trainer.

Garson is currently pursuing advanced certification in an exercise modality known as “Animal Flow” – a “bodyweight, ground-based, primal movement series”.

In this episode, we delve further into the nature of this type of fitness training, in direct contract to the traditional canon of western fitness training and athletics that many will be more familiar with. We hit on such concepts as multi-vectored health, the power of communal activity, the hazards of traditional sports, and the process of turning passion into profession.

If you like what you hear, and want to learn more, you can check out Garson’s Instagram page @garsonkarrel, or if you’re located nearby you can drop by on one of his training sessions at FLYT Club Toronto.

And if you’re interested in exploring the connection between exercise and the brain further, consider reading Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, by John Ratey, M.D.

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The BLSA podcast’s primary objective is to look clearly and honestly at the situation of young learners in today’s education climate, and to ask what can be done to improve their personal wellbeing and learning outcomes. We can think of no better guest to help us move towards this objective than Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer.

In addition to being a kind, smart and charismatic conversation partner, Dr. Shaffer is an educator, learning coach, resilience consultant, wellness writer, and public speaker. She has recently taken on the new role of Director, Office of Student and Academic Services (OSAS) in the Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change at York University.

In this episode, Dr. Shaffer helps us to look more clearly and compassionately at the ways that humans learn, the obstacles that can prevent us from doing so, and the roles that nature and personal wellbeing can play in our reception and retention of new knowledge. Young or old, wherever you are, if you’re interested in learning better, this episode is not to be missed!

And if you’re intrigued by Deena’s #LearnThat project, you can record your own “learn that” story of “what was the hardest thing you ever had to learn and how did you learn that?” and email your 60sec videos to info@awakenedlearning.ca

A few of the stand-out programs, references and quotes to look out for in this episode:

Programs

Awakened Learning – Strategies to Learn and Live Well

@AwakenedLearning (Instagram)

TMU’s Portage Program

Assignment Calculator example

References

Erich Fromm – Biophilia

E.O. Wilson – Consilience

Dacher Keltner – The Science of Awe

Johann Hari – “Stolen Focus” and “Lost Connections”

Quotes:

“That’s a linear story made out of a non-linear life. It’s a lot messier than it is ‘wow’”.

“What are the Health Determinants of Learning?”

“We can be not just both, but all.”

“Prioritize the Relational.”

“The body is all the way there with you.”

“Be 15 things when you’re introduced”.

“It’s not simple, but it’s interesting”.

“I’m a late-onset learner”

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When you think “field trip”, what comes to mind? Where would you go? What will you learn?

Whether you’re an educator, a student, or just someone who’s spent time in an education system in the past, your answers to these questions likely include some reference to a museum.

Museums are spaces where important artifacts and exemplars of culture are preserved, exhibited, explained, and reframed within our ever-changing cultural contexts. As you’d imagine, the work that goes into this can be laboursome, complex, and in many cases quite controversial. Because no culture is homogenous or fixed, it’s hard to select which cultural expressions to highlight, and how to present them so that they educate and enliven those who experience them.

Braemar College is lucky to be located close to the Royal Ontario Museum, where educators like Julie Tomé and Leslie McCue are constantly reimagining how history, science and culture can be made real to those who experience this extraordinary museum space.

In our conversation with Julie and Leslie, we get a behind-the-scenes look at the development of educational programs offered at the ROM, from conception to delivery, and get to know the background and motivations of the people who design these programs. We learn about their journeys from passion to professionalism. We discover the difficulties and the joys of confronting our pasts. And we experience the spirit of those who are reshaping historical narratives to help frame new visions for our collective future.

We’re so thankful for the work that people like Julie and Leslie do, and we hope this episode inspires you to think about how public institutions in your area might initiate similar cultural conversations.

If you’d like to learn more about some of the specific ideas discussed in this episode, you can use the links below as a starting point:

Land Acknowledgments

The Indian Act

The First People’s Gallery at the ROM

Being Legendary art exhibit

Kent Monkman lecture

John Ralston Saul – A Fair Country

Related Interview

21 Things You Didn’t Know about the Indian Act

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada

The Potlatch Ban

The Dish-with-One-Spoon Territory

Seek App

The Native-Canadian Centre

Hack the ROM

Hands-On Biodiversity Gallery at ROM

Youth Cabinet

Booking school visits at the ROM

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The Ontario secondary school curriculum demands completion of three criteria for a student to earn a diploma:

Complete a required number of Academic credits
Demonstrate an adequate capacity for English language communication
Provide at least 10 hours of service to one’s community per year of schooling.

The first two requirements seem obvious as graduation criteria, but the third may be surprising to those who have studied outside of Canada. It reflects a value-system that insists on Community Involvement as a foundational aspect of any healthy life, and imparts this value to young people in the strongest terms possible.

Among the local organizations dedicated to serving the most vulnerable people in downtown Toronto, the Fort York Food Bank (FYFB) has stood out for its willingness to welcome young volunteers and integrate them into its operations. The FYFB is a multiservice agency dedicated to connecting individuals with their broader community. Braemar students have earned Community Service hours at the FYFB in a number of ways, notably by cooking food and preparing food hampers for distribution, building and maintaining their community garden, and helping to run their annual Coldest Night of the Year fundraiser. And none of this would be possible without the kindness and dedication of Julie LeJeune.

Julie is the Executive Director at the Fort York Food Bank. She is an experienced Senior Leader in the charity sector with more than 20 years of community-based development work. This experience has afforded her a deep understanding of poverty issues in Canada and globally, especially as they relate to health and nutrition. Her diverse roles and responsibilities include fundraising, developing and operationalizing strategy, and strong project management skills including: critical path, risk mitigation strategies and project budgets.

Having just wrapped up another massively successful fundraising event, Julie gives us a birds’ eye view of her experience as a community and event organizer, sharing some of the ideas, goals, challenges, and hopes that are involved in the pursuit of communal resilience.

You can find more information about the Fort York Food Bank and Julie LeJeune’s community-based efforts below:

https://fyfb.com/

https://www.wishandgive.ca/

https://cnoy.org/home

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Perhaps the most striking thing about living in Toronto is that one is constantly exposed to unfamiliar languages and cultural expressions in almost all public contexts. Whether you are a lifelong Torontonian who speaks fluent English or a newcomer with any number of other languages at your disposal, it is a regular experience to not understand a conversation overheard on the subway ride to work, or to have to ask your restaurant server to explain unrecognized items on your menu. Myriad diverse cultures swirl and mingle in a million different ways in Toronto each day, and while it can be challenging to jump into the flux, the richness and vibrancy of life here more than compensates for the effort.

Braemar College attracts language teachers who live and breathe this interculturalism. They share their passion and expertise in language learning with students from literally dozens of language backgrounds. We’re lucky to have educators like Annie Chan and Olivia Carter on staff, communicating both the structures and the spirit of language learning to young people whose world is made more available and vibrant by their increasing ability to address themselves to it.

In this episode, Annie and Olivia shared their experiences as veteran language teachers with years of educational development in multiple countries and contexts. We find out about the challenges and joys of language learning from both student and teacher perspectives, and discuss ways in which language teaching may continue to evolve in the future. This episode will rejuvenate and enliven anyone hoping to connect more fully with their world through language.

If you’d like to learn more about some of the specific ideas discussed in this episode, you can use the links below as a starting point:

Jamaican Patois

The Open University: “The History of the English, in 10 Minutes”

Sadhguru – Isha Schools: “English as a Passport to the World”

Tim Ferris – How to Learn Any Language in 3 Months

12 Strategies for Language Learning

Chinese English Learning Industry

Immersion Learning

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In recent years there has been a growing call for us to recognize the isolation and disconnection that have become a common part of how we experience modern culture. Thought leaders like Johann Hari have gone so far as to draw correlations between the square footage of private residences and the rates of mental illness and addiction in a given culture. We are increasingly distanced from one another in all kinds of ways – physically, socially, intellectually and culturally – and the negative consequences of this distance are quickly overwhelming us. The job of any educator should be to reduce the distance between their students and the world around them, and finding ways to do this across all situations and school subjects is paramount in this moment.

Enter community leaders like Maria Solakofski, the founder and visionary behind Wild By Nature, an urban homestead that encompasses mentoring programs, herbal workshops and a herbal apothecary. She is the matriarch, magician, and mentor for all those she welcomes to the homestead, including community stakeholders, aspiring gardeners, and some lucky high school students.

Maria is inspired by everything herbal, sustainable gardening practices, community building, self-sufficiency and homesteading in the city. She emphasizes nature connection as a pathway to lifelong learning and to living the life our wild nature longs for. Maria teaches that the opposite of resilience is isolation; that our instinct to contract and to separate in the face of modern existence is in fact causing some of our most profound problems. In the garden, learners are able to experience an expansiveness and connectedness – with their environment, their peers, and themselves – that generate awareness, appreciation and healing for all involved. Her wisdom is needed now more than ever, and we’re so grateful for her ongoing presence in the Student Life of Braemar College.

In this episode, we get an introduction to Maria and her work with the Wild By Nature homestead, followed by a discussion of the place and benefits of gardening and engagement with nature in the education of young people.

If you’d like to learn more about the work, education and healing being done at Wild By Nature garden homestead, you can find out more here:

www.WBNbotanicals.com
https://www.instagram.com/wildbynature.to/
Evergreen Brickworks
Whychwood Farmer’s Market

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“The family was an art … and the dinner table was the place it found expression.”

Don DeLillo, Underworld

How do we mark holidays? How do we welcome someone to the neighbourhood? How do we appreciate loved ones? How do we comfort ourselves in tough times? The answer to so many of our questions about how to be human is, of course, food.

Whatever the culture or era, humans gather, cook and share food as a foundational act of being. It is one of the few forces in life that touches nearly ever aspect of our wellness. Its warmth and smell and taste and touch move our emotions while its nutrients fuel our bodies and minds. It is social connection. It is cultural sharing. It is nature engagement. It is artistic inspiration. We gather around platters, tables and fires to be together, wherever and whoever we are.

So why don’t we teach our children more about food? And how can we do better in the future?

This episode’s guest has some answers for us.

Chef Shai Mandel is a Toronto-born chef, Ontario certified teacher and entrepreneur. Building on services provided since 2015, Chef Shai founded the Culinary Education company Rooks to Cooks in 2017, and has been developing its educational programming to meet the evolving needs of schools and students ever since.

The fun, inviting and intensive programs offered by Rooks to Cooks began with in-home private lessons and have now expanded to include children’s cooking day camps in the summer, in-home private classes, after school programs, and school workshops. We’re excited to learn from Chef Shai about her experiences as an education entrepreneur, and especially about how culinary education can impact student health, motivation and success outcomes in later life .

If you’d like to learn more about some of the specific ideas discussed in this episode, you can use the links below as a starting point:

Rooks2Cooks

Ikigai

16personalities.com

Canada Food Guide

UWaterloo Study: School Food Programs

Flow Theory

Kyushoku: Japanese school lunches

Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table

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It’s been hard to go anywhere in early 2023 without encountering some reference to Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT, the new AI-backed technology set to change the way we work, communicate, research, and think, and to challenge most of our assumptions about how humans can and should interact with the world around them.

But if you’re going to try to understand something as ground-breaking as ChatGPT, you’d better find an expert to help you, and we found the perfect guide for this episode!

Dr. Kevin Bryan is an associate professor in the University of Toronto’s Strategic Management Area. His work primarily consists of applied theoretical and empirical analyses of innovation and entrepreneurship. Among other questions, he has investigated how startups find early employees and decide where to locate, when and why acquisitions of high-growth startups may be worrying for antitrust, what types of science are most useful for inventors in industry, and how artificial intelligence can be profitably used alongside human workers.

As you’ll shortly discover, Dr. Bryan is a natural teacher, bringing passion, creativity, charisma and clarity to our conversation about what ChatGPT is, how it may change our cultural landscape, and what it implies about the increasingly blurry distinction between “human” and “machine”. Whether you’re a lifelong techy, or a born luddite, you’re sure to find this conversation by turns unsettling, inspiring, and illuminating.

If you’d like to learn more about some of the specific ideas discussed in this episode, you can use the links below as a starting point:

ChatGPT

“The College Essay is Dead” – Stephen Marche

GPTZero

Nick Bostrom

Marvin Minsky

Jeff Hinton and “Deep Learning”

Deep Blue vs Kasparov

Marshall McLuhan

Homo Deus – Yuval Noah Harari

The Gutenberg Press

The «Paradox of Knowledge»

Game Theory

Advanced Analytics in Sports

Robert Pirsig and the Metaphysics of “Quality”

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In this episode we spoke with Sam HP, the President of Model United Nations – York University (MUNY). Since taking over the university’s MUN program, Sam has sought to create a more robust and unified approach to the organization and operation of the simulation conferences that were a real highlight in the lives of so many Toronto-based highschoolers before the pandemic broke.

During our conversation, he helped us understand what goes on behind the scenes of a Model UN conference, how students might prepare for, and benefit from this type of event, and how the global political disruptions and fractures of the past several years may indicate a need to return to the core values and lessons taught by organizations such as MUNY.

If you’re interested in Global Issues, Governance, Legislation, Debate and/or the United Nations itself, you’re sure to find some material to chew on here. We especially recommend this episode for any students or parents who are considering the Model United Nations as a part of the student’s education. Enjoy!

And if you’d like to learn more about some of the specific ideas discussed in this episode, you can use the links below as your starting point:

Model United Nations
York University MUN
Ethics Bowls
United Nations actions in:
- Xinjiang Province, China
- Iran
- War in Ukraine
- COVID
Kevin McCarthy, House Speaker vote
George Santos

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Kate Mossop, Long Pham and Martha Nguyen – Community

Episode Guests:

Kate Mossop: Director, Community Programming
Long Pham: Recreation Supervisor
Martha Nguyen: Children’s Program Coordinator

One of the things most educators learn early in their careers is that the school is not an island. It is a nexus that connects the families, organizations, natural environment, values and history that comprise the culture in which it resides. If the stability or health of one of these suffers, the whole network suffers, and must martial resources to support the flagging member.

Different communities have different nexuses; locations where their various subjects, interests and expressions meet. Sometimes these forces conflict. Sometimes they combine. At our best, we find compromise and coordination between them. But the interaction often relies on the quality of the space provided for it. These spaces come readily to mind: parks, town halls, pubs, sites of worship, and the afore-mentioned schools that most of us grew up in. In the early 20th century, the value of spaces like these was made explicit when Community Centres began to appear in the north-eastern U.S. (and maybe it’s not so coincidental that the first of these were hosted in school buildings). Since then, the presence of Community Centres in even small towns and villages has become nearly ubiquitous.

It’s a real joy, and a lesson in humanity, to speak with the folks who give their time, energy and care to the operation of these centres. Listening to people like Kate, Long and Martha talk about the truly dizzying range of services, resources and spaces they offer our community is both humbling and inspiring.

In this episode, we discuss how the University Settlement Community Centre in downtown Toronto strives to meet and adapt to the needs of our unique neighbourhood. The proportion of our neighbours who are newcomers and/or English-Second-Language (ESL) is larger than in most places, and the challenges they face are wide-ranging. Kate, Long and Martha spend their lives providing for these people, offering them routes to participation, contribution, recognition and, ultimately, belonging in our shared home.

Anyone interested in community-building, whether in an educational context or otherwise, will find some actionable ideas and general wisdom in this episode to help them move their community in the direction of health, interconnectedness, openness and reciprocal care.

And if you’d like to learn more about some of the specific ideas discussed in this episode, you can use the links below as your starting point:

University Settlement Community Centre
Toronto Neighbourhood Profiles
Maslow’s Hierarchy
Dr. Susie Wise – Design For Belonging
“Design for Community”

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Dina Mahafza and MarieJo Abdul-Hay – Old Problems, Young Answers

This episode focusses on the work being done by UofT UNICEF’s Student Engagement arm, summarizing Dina and MarieJo’s approach and experiences working with children and teenagers over the years, educating them about their rights and responsibilities as global citizens.

It was fascinating to learn how the framing of Children’s Rights has changed since the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of Children, and to see how young people are taking increased responsibility in addressing pressing global issues such as Climate Change and Resource Distribution in their own communities. Dina and MarieJo also emphasized the inclusion of mental-emotional care and information as a critical component of UNICEF’s current approach to the situation of children worldwide, and we enjoyed sharing ideas about how best to bring these priorities into today’s classroom settings.

If you’d like to learn more about some of the specific ideas discussed in this episode, you can use the links below as your starting point:

UNICEF’s Right to Childhood Campaign

Co-Construction of Success Criteria

Kolb’s Learning Cycle

The Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)

UNICEF “Voices of Youth” initiative

Effective Altruism and “Longtermism”

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Dr. Diana Brecher – North of Neutral

Dr. Diana Brecher is a clinical psychologist who has been working in the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Centre for Student Development and Counselling (CSDC) since 1991. Diana’s long-standing interest and certification in Positive Psychology led to a shift in her role in 2016, whereby she started the ThriveTMU (formerly ThriveRU) initiative and co-founded the Thriving in Action program. She is adjunct faculty in the Psychology dept. and in the MBA program.

In this episode Dr. Brecher helped us to cover a range of topics that fall under the umbrella of Wellness theory, many of which are framed within the context of the recent global pandemic. Among these, we talked about the nature of Positive Psychology vs. Pathology-Oriented Psychology, the concepts of Languishing vs. Flourishing, the PERMA-V framework for wellness, Dr. Brecher’s Five-Factor model of Resilience, willpower strategies to help overcome procrastination, and how one might distill an awareness of one’s strengths using the example of previous challenges.

Other topics and figures referenced in the episode can be found below, linked to resources for further exploration:

Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Founders of Positive Psychology)
Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis
Emilia Zhivotovskaya – The Flourishing Centre
Tim Pychyl – Procrastination
Kristin Neff’s work on Self-Compassion
Angela Duckworth’s concept of Grit
Christine Padesky’s “Personal Model of Resilience” from Mind over Mood
Dan and Chip Heath – The Switch
Anti-Procrastination device: Assignment Calculators

Delving into the psychology of wellness, learning and personal growth can be daunting, but we’re lucky to have experts like Dr. Brecher to help guide us through the wealth of materials that are proliferating in these fields. The BLSA podcast is committed to providing as many conversations in this area as possible, and we look forward to much useful learning to come!

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Miss Rebecca Bitton is an entrepreneur, educator, and mental health speaker. She has been the panelist speaker and former President of the MDAO (Mood Disorders Association of Ontario). She’s also been a panelist speaker at the OPSEU (Ontario Public Service Employees Union) Work Life Balance Conference, Sunnybrook Hospital and many others.

Rebecca addresses student and client needs by leveraging their strengths, building confidence, curing overwhelm and preventing burnout.

In this episode, Rebecca unpacks the concepts of overwhelm and burnout, two expressions of what is increasingly understood as Chronic Stress. The conversation focusses on definitions, causes, symptoms, consequences, and a variety of solutions available to help anyone heal from these conditions.

Especially as our students head into assessment periods, it is crucial that we know how to identify the indicators of inordinate, toxic stress in their lives, and to be able to intervene effectively. It could mean all the difference for an aspiring student in an increasingly complex world. We hope you find this episode useful in your ongoing efforts to care for your students and create positive change in their lives!

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Nike, Lucy, and Moritz – Deutsche Education

It’s always enlightening to be around people with a different cultural background than oneself, getting a daily sense of how your attitudes, values, expressions, assumptions and identities compare with theirs. One of the countries that Braemar regularly welcomes students from is Deutschland, known to many of us as Germany. And this year we’ve been lucky to be able to compare our Toronto culture with those of our German students Nike, Lucy and Moritz.

Each of these young people brings an energy and a maturity to their academic lives which can impress and even intimidate those of us who work with them. They are remarkably outgoing, well-spoken, enthusiastic, healthy and motivated. We sat down with them for a podcast conversation to dive deeper into their previous experiences growing up and going to school in Germany, and comparing their academic system with our own here in Canada.

As always with folks like these, the conversation was lively, informed and helpful, especially for those of us looking for indications of what we might learn and borrow from the system that produced such admirable students. If you’re interested in what growing up in Germany is like, you’re sure to enjoy this episode!

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Jason Fonger – A (Plant-Based) Recipe for Success

Meet Jason Fonger, a competitive triathlete who has raced all over the world, and has been able to succeed in his sport while maintaining a 100% plant-based diet. Jason also has a background in teaching and educational resource development. When he’s not training for competition, he connects his love of teaching with his love of racing by educating young people about the athletic, environmental, psychological and physiological benefits of adopting plant-based eating habits.

In the first half of the episode, you’ll hear Jason talk about how racing became a part of his life, the challenges and triumphs associated with elite athletic training, and the benefits that young people can experience from this type of competition, especially when it comes to finding purpose and community.

From there, the conversation evolves to focus on Jason’s other great passion, plant-based eating. He talks about how he came to adopt this eating lifestyle, dispels some popular myths about meat- and plant-eating, weighs in on the negative externalities associated with meat farming and consumption, and gives some insights he’s gleaned from his public speaking work with youth.

You don’t need to be a nutritionist or an elite athlete to appreciate Jason’s message. His experiences speak to the availability of health and purpose to anyone willing to take a fresh look at how they eat, compete and relate to the world around them.

If you’d like to learn more about some of the specific ideas discussed in this episode, you can use the links below as your starting point:

Haruki Murakami – What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Jan Frodeno – Champion Triathlete

Sebastian Junger – Tribe

“Nation Rising” – Agriculture Advocacy

Our World In Data

Michael Pollan – esp. The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food

www.Nutritionfacts.org

James Wilkes

The Game Changers

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Matilde Vieira and Amir Mousavinejad – Learning through Activity

One of the most important contexts in which young people develop a sense of self and a social behaviour-set is the world of games and sport. This is often the first situation where they are able to have a say in the making (and sometimes the breaking) of rules, in the selection of groups, and in the consequences of their activities. Studies demonstrating the crucial importance of unsupervised play in early life continue to proliferate in Education scholarship, but you don’t need to be a social scientist to grasp their conclusions. Play is our first practice for autonomous socializing, community-building, and competing in public, and should be regarded with the same seriousness that we treat the other academic disciplines with.

This fact becomes clear as soon as you start talking to young athletes like Matilde and Amir. These two teenagers, one from Portugal and the other from Iran, came to Toronto alone and immediately found themselves surrounded by unfamiliar people and ideas. But where others may have succumbed to the forces of Culture Shock and suffered the alienation and torpor that go with it, these two have used sport as an avenue to identity, health, community and confidence. Today, they are recognized as caring friends, successful students and influential leaders in our school.

Check out this episode to learn more about how games and sport can transcend the barriers that divide us and inform a purpose-driven life no matter what level we play at!

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Mr. James Olsen is an experienced educator in the fields of business and health studies. In the years he’s spent guiding students at Braemar, his leadership in these areas, both in and outside the classroom, has led to the development of some of our most dynamic programming.

Among his many initiatives, James has spear-headed the creation of a student Entrepreneur’s Society which assists students in the development of personal business and product ideas, and a Fitness Club that helps students develop their physical fitness in an informed, collaborative space.

This episode features discussion of a range of topics related to personal development and the role that school plays in helping teenagers find health, identity and purpose. Whether you’re an educator, administrator, parent or student, you’re sure to find something to build on here!

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The education experience at Braemar is made vibrant and impactful by its teachers, its community, and especially by its culturally diverse student body. Each year, students from dozens of countries come together in our downtown Toronto location to encounter one another in a space that encourages discovery and an appreciation of differences.

This episode’s guests exemplify this experience perfectly: two young gentlemen with vastly different backgrounds who have nonetheless discovered common ground beyond the coincidence of their shared nickname, Sacha. Their discussion sheds light on the cultural dynamics at play every day in our school and in our city, and on how young people can adapt and benefit from new settings and challenges regardless of where they come from.

We’re proud to introduce students like these, and to highlight their insights and expressions as representing the best of Braemar’s values and purpose. And we look forward to featuring more interviews with our wonderful students in the future!

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In this episode we meet Miss Nicole Booyse, an experienced educator who moved from South Africa to Canada and became the Artistic Director of Braemar College. Nicole is a visual artist, musician and teacher who has transformed the art program at Braemar into a vibrant, passionate space where students can find the freedom and care necessary to explore and express their personal identities.

In our conversation, we focused on the concept and theory of “Creativity”: what it is, what is does for us, why it’s necessary, and how schools can be a place where it is encouraged and nurtured. We also discovered a mutual source of inspiration in the work of Ken Robinson, discussing his legacy as an education reformer, and the implications of his work showing how creativity is often destroyed and lost in our adolescent years.

Nicole’s approach to her students and her insistence on the sovereignty of the creative, artistic space will be an inspiration to all who listen. Enjoy!

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Rebecca addresses student and client needs by leveraging their strengths, building confidence, curing overwhelm and preventing burnout.

Amirah Gilani is an outstanding Braemar student who has participated as a Student Leader in numerous programs dedicated to student wellness. She is also the founder of SoulSparks, an interactive course for kids and teens that uses Positive Psychology techniques to encourage authenticity and self-esteem.

In our conversation with these two wellness advocates, we discussed a range of perspectives on how Mental Health may be preserved and improved. We touched on a number of related concepts, including “work/life balance”, stress management, toxic productivity, and the connection between personal interests and altruistic efforts.

Whether teen or adult, student or teacher, we all need help keeping ourselves well. Give your wellness efforts a boost.

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Mr. Dov Shapiro is a long-time educator, camp director, and is the founding CEO of ConnectU*, a digital Social-Emotional Learning platform that provides educators with the tools to nurture and assess Growth Mindsets, Self-Awareness, Empathy and Metacognition in their students.

Our conversation digs deeper into topics like the nature of Social-Emotional learning, the “EdTech” (Education Technology) industry, Fixed vs. Growth Mindset, and how schools can become more integrated into their local communities, all in service of addressing one of BLSA’s primary questions: why are today’s teenagers so much more likely to suffer from poor mental health, and what can we do about it?

*ConnectU is currently being used at Braemar College to assist and track new students as they seek to establish their identities within our vibrant and diverse student culture.

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Jess Paul – Bringing Braemar to Life

Miss Jessica Paul is one of the longest serving teachers at Braemar College, and one of the most dynamic! A lover of theatre, fashion, language, travel and cooking, she brings her passion and talents to everything she does. Over the years, she has been responsible for designing and coordinating a truly massive range of events, trips and student clubs, and has helped untold numbers of students to discover new routes to wellbeing and personal fulfillment.

In our conversation, Miss Paul helps to outline the types of extra-curricular programs offered to students at Braemar, and the developmental theories that underpin them. She shows us how what looks like simple fun on the outside can be transformative on the inside, for students and teachers alike.

Check out this episode if you’re interested in finding inspiration for your next project with your children, students or friends!

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Check out this episode if you’re interested in finding inspiration for your next project with your children, students or friends!

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*ConnectU is currently being used at Braemar College to assist and track new students as they seek to establish their identities within our vibrant and diverse student culture.

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An Introduction to the Braemar Life Skills Academy Podcast

The Braemar Life Skills Academy Podcast: Recent Episodes

Braemar College