Roundtable Q&A Discussion About Hudson College (2022)

For us, Hudson College was one of those things where you hear about something once and then all of a sudden you start hearing about it all the time. Hudson has been just a great experience for our family, for our daughter, and it's a wonderful school. We liked that it was a small school. We liked that it was a private school. We liked that it was a coed school and the experience kind of rolled along from there.

Within the structure of the semester system, the fact that the day is built to accommodate a study period every day is really smart, because it means that there's time to do homework and assignments. But there's also time to collaborate with your peers and to go and get help from a teacher if that's something that you need.

Because Hudson is the size that it is, what I've seen is a slow and steady and ongoing building of my daughter’s self confidence over the last four years. My daughter is talented and smart, but she also is someone who could potentially have gotten a little bit lost among a large school environment. But, you know, it's not an accident that this has happened. It's because the school knows exactly what's going on with every single kid. They know who might be having a tough time. The teachers are incredibly involved. The teachers are there to support. They'll do extra help if they need to, whatever it is that is necessary to make sure the child or the student has every possible chance to succeed. That's what Hudson stands for.

That whole process of trying to figure out where you're going to go to university or what to apply for can be incredibly intimidating and scary and just discouraging. We've already been in touch with the wonderful guidance staff at Hudson and talked about what that might look like next year and she helped begin the course selection process for Grade 12 and open up what those courses could lead to as far as undergrad and what schools might be best. And I don't think that dialogue is readily available in other schools. I know for a fact, talking to other parents in larger public schools, that access to guidance counselors is hard to get and so there isn't that sort of rudder to help you navigate through the process.

Going to Hudson is a holistic opportunity to help the whole person figure out where they belong, what they're best at, and where they're going to excel in the future. Hudson allows them to tap into those strengths while still helping them along with the not-so-strong parts. It's a really well-rounded experience and if you're good at something, you can be the best at Hudson.

I really feel like Hudson is a wonderful community. Community is the foundation. There's a great parent involvement community, there's a great student body. The house system, I think, helps the students look at the smaller communities within the school and how they can contribute to those. It really has something for everybody.

One of the things that I appreciated within the school is how easy it was to be notified about different clubs and different events. Stepping away from school and having a year in a university, I don't get as many notifications of clubs or different things. To get involved with the students and get involved with the community, that's not nearly as much broadcasted to the general population of university students. Whereas within Hudson College, it was very much everyone would know that a certain event was going on and if anyone was interested, you'd be able to join and you would feel welcome in that regard.

Everyone within Hudson College was very friendly, very approachable. I felt that a lot of the people within the school were getting involved in things that were held outside of the school, too. I feel the majority of people, if not all the people who have graduated from Hudson, have done something or have pursued education that they're very passionate about. I don't really see that a lot in comparison to other schools.

The semester system that Hudson has is one that is very different to other schools. At Hudson it's basically exactly how it would be in university. While other schools might have a semester system, it's broken up in ways that don't really follow the university education. At university the first semester is all of the fall, where it goes until winter break, and then after winter break it goes until April, which was the same as Hudson. And then the final semester within Hudson would replicate like summer semesters that would be held within the university.

What I would say families would find most surprising about Hudson is the amount of choice that the students are given when they're going into high school. Starting from Grade 9 all the way through Grade 12, you got to pursue what you wanted to do and weren't necessarily forced to do anything that you didn't really want to do other than certain required courses during certain years. After a little while, it was all up to you.

The whole house system was very fun and getting involved in doing certain stuff. It was cool to meet new people within the same grade that you might not have a class with. The house system is basically all of Grades 8 and above who are divided into four ‘teams,’ all named after different parts within Canada. It was a cool system that I don't see too many other schools doing.

I first learned about Hudson College because we had some kids coming to the same congregation as ours. I admired their leadership, their spirit of service, how they were leading with a sense of humility in the church and the things that they did. I watched them from when they were very young. One day their mom just sat me down and said, ‘Hey, you have very good kids. I really want them to go to this school and I'll tell you all about it.’ I wanted that for my kids, whatever they shared.

What she said really moved me because she said the school took care of the kids, she didn't have to worry about them. And that has been my experience. I'm a single parent, I'm a working mother. I have to look after everything. As a single parent, I was a bit scared that I would be able to send them to a private school.

I'm very present, and yet I have the freedom and the space to be able to do my work in order to live and be able to support them. I don't have to worry about my kids at all. It doesn't mean that I'm oblivious of what they're doing. So I'm very grateful for having the school to help me raise these kids in a beautiful way. That's been my experience.

Hudson College as a person is a leader of leaders causing leadership in others. Hudson is hardcore. Hudson is not focused on teaching subjects. It's student centric. It's focused on educating children on the child as opposed to the subject. That's my experience of Hudson and the community.

Hudson College prepares the child for whatever the child wants to create for himself or herself in the future. From my experience and my understanding as a mother and as a teacher, the public system is set up for making a person literate, like functional. But Hudson College is very committed to what's next for them.

My children love Hudson College. They have created a great relationship with the teachers. They are inspired by them. Well, we moved next door. They could literally live here. I think what's really magical is that they also have a relationship with the people in the office. The people working with non-teaching staff also know the kids. So it's not like the non-teaching staff don't know the students at all.

The kids just hold each other up to their greatest possibilities so that's the environment. The kids are very excited about Hudson. I mean, there's nothing else they talk about. They created some great friendships. They work out, they have study groups, they study together. And they are thriving. I would say they're happy about being in school. They love school and they wouldn't want to miss it.

The value system of Hudson is based on being a contribution to each other. It's kind of symbiotic. Together we are raising kids, growing leaders, cultivating human beings into these dynamic individuals and setting them up for excellence, whatever that means to them, giving them that space to discover that for themselves.