Leadership interview with Shumaila Khan, Fieldstone School

My professional journey started a very long time ago. I began as a teacher soon after I completed my master's. Then I got into university guidance, university counselling, and discovered a new passion. I'm originally from Pakistan, so I taught in a school there for close to 23 or 24 years as an English teacher. When I moved to Canada two years ago, I joined Fieldstone as a guidance counselor and an English teacher. A year ago, I was promoted, I suppose you can call it, to Principal.

The teachers that I admired and the mentors who shaped my views and values had one thing in common, which is this belief that students, that young people, can do anything. They're capable of extraordinary things. Having that faith in me as a student or as a teacher, whether they were my mentors, my principals, or my headmistresses, made me somehow become better as a human being. And so I realized a while back that we are really responsible as teachers and we have the ability to shape our students' lives.

I think the concept of a holistic education, an education that goes beyond achievement and grades and numbers, has evolved.

What's really interesting about Fieldstone for me is that it's a young school and the person who founded the school is still with us. And that, to me, is a fascinating thing. The fact that we are here and it's constantly evolving. It is being shaped by the very person who founded it. We're still fortunate enough to have his guidance with us.

There are a lot of very thoughtful strands in Fieldstone's philosophy and its history that I admire. But I think the one that resonates with me is the way that we take the advanced curriculum, which is the Cambridge curriculum. We help develop not only our students' intellectual and critical thinking abilities but also the way that their characters are shaped with the Cambridge learner attributes. And through their hard work and through their determination, we're also teaching them the value of grit and resilience and those character traits. So for me, that balance is interesting.

Our educational academic culture is essentially shaped by our curriculum and the need … to impart an education that makes our learners critical and deep thinkers and more involved thinkers. We teach them not what to think, but how to think. But the way we do that is actually very interesting because usually, you'll see that the dominant philosophy in elementary schools would be to have student-led or student-centred programs where the curriculum evolves from what the student is interested in learning. But for us, it's very much a teacher-led classroom because we have a prescribed curriculum, which is prescribed by Cambridge.

The student's personal journey at Fieldstone involves both academic and personal growth. Because primarily we're led by the Cambridge curriculum, the academic side of it is very important. But then we've created and evolved and shaped a program where character building is also very important. That's very interesting because that evolves out of a student's own attributes…. Our teachers will identify a student's strengths and weaknesses, their needs and wants, areas for improvement and growth, and they'll work with them in an extremely nurturing environment to chisel out the best version of themselves. 

Milestones, we have plenty. I mean, along with the traditional milestones of moving from one class to the other, game rate checkpoint tests, then we have IGCSEs and A-Levels. We also have the OSSD going forward to secondary school. Along with that, our milestones are also determined by a student's own predilections. For example, if a child comes in and he's got a fear of public speaking, or a child comes in and he or she wants to do drama but has stage fright, we encourage it.

Those personal milestones students reach are very important to us. Because that's the individual's own growth, becoming a version of themselves, which, as we say in our school, … we see not the child as the child comes to us, but who the child will become. 

We’re fortunate that in the GTA, we've got this amazingly diverse cultural diaspora. We have a lot of rich cultures, and Fieldstone embodies that. Despite the fact that we've got a small student body, we have an interesting mix of cultures.

Our parents are wonderful. What they share are common values. Common human values that remain constant, and they transcend cultural differences. What's different is essentially backgrounds, cultures, and religions. But we respect and we value those differences because that's our context. That's the separate context of each one of our students. So what we teach them is to respect those differences as well. So for example, our parents will help us celebrate Eid or Diwali or even Halloween. We've had winter showcases, and we've had Christmas markets.

The advantage of having a small community is that the opportunities for intimate engagement and personalized intimate engagement are many. Everyone gets along. All the parents know each other. The teachers know all the parents, even if you don't teach their child. It's a very close community, everyone is very comfortable with each other. They help us organize events. Some of our events this past year would not have been possible if not for our wonderful parents.

That's very important to us at Fieldstone, building a strong community. I think that's an important value because that's how relationships are formed, and ultimately, it's best for the success of the child.

If required, we will make an SSP, which is a special success plan for students who have particular academic needs or require special care. This could mean a modified curriculum based on recommendations by professionals. If those recommendations are not there, then our own teachers will work with students to make specific plans for every one of them, depending on their needs. We will share these plans with parents to ensure that students have the support that they need at home as well. 

We have tutorials after school, and these tutorials are led at times by teachers and also led by our senior students. Our younger kids will have the opportunity to interact with the older kids, and that helps the older kids also shape themselves as mentors and guides, which is important for their education and learning as well. Our homeroom teachers play a very important role in this because they provide all the pastoral care that our students need to navigate any personal challenges. 

We have the very traditional classroom setting of teaching and learning, and then we also integrate technology into it. Digital interactive activities, multimedia videos. These can provide a very intense and immersive learning experience. So we have all our classrooms equipped with projectors. We have whiteboards. But then at the same time, we go back to the old school, old-fashioned books and writing and teaching them those skills. We like to maintain a balance.

I think Fieldstone will thrive because our core philosophy centers around developing a learner's curiosity and critical thinking about knowledge. And that's going to be important in the future. So our long-term plans also include providing more challenging academic benchmarks to all our students and then providing the necessary environment where they can achieve those benchmarks, focusing on character development, focusing on giving them those skills where they can look critically at an event or look critically at a text, for example, and question it. We are introducing subjects in our curriculum and courses that will develop more specifically our learners' critical thinking abilities.

Parent involvement is essential to student success. Student success then means the school is successful. We rely on our parents, and we rely on our parents … to build strong relationships with each other, with teachers, with administrators, and with community leaders to help nurture a sense of support for the school. We expect and we encourage our parents to come to school with ideas, to address their concerns directly with us, provide updates on their child's progress, and share news with their parents' network and also invite new families into the community. 

Myself and my admin team and even teachers, we have an open-door policy, which means at any point, you can come and talk to us. No judgment, nothing at all. We are always there to listen. We encourage parents to share their concerns with us. As I mentioned before, it's been my experience that they're very open to dialogue because they want to be heard, they want an explanation, and they want to understand something which may have gone wrong or something which may not be clear. It is our job to do that. It's our job to give them clarity.

I think I would want Fieldstone to make them better humans because that's also a dire need in our very complex world today. Better humans in the sense that they should be, and that's what we're constantly trying to do, to make them more empathetic, more sensitive to the needs of others, kinder, more willing to help others, those who need help and may not even ask for it. I think that's a lesson that we teach our students.

Our school is based on … the values of kindness and caring, trust, respect, responsibility, and good citizenship. These are all values that are awarded, quite literally. They form part of our core character. I think I would want the Fieldstone student to go out into the world and just be a better person because that's how we make the world a better place.

We have a buddy day, which can be a half-buddy day or a full buddy day, where we invite the student who has applied and the family to send us their student for either a half-day or a full day to just spend a day as a Fieldstone student. That really helps because spending a day in the environment surrounded by the very people whom you will have as your teachers and your peers and your future friends becomes the best way to decide whether that place is right for you.

My advice to parents is: Do your research to find the right school. And that research should go beyond names. They go beyond titles or ranks. It should grow from your understanding of your child and what your child needs because only you know your child, and no one knows them better than you do as a parent. And your child is unique. So do your research to find a school which understands that uniqueness and is ready to nurture that uniqueness. 

When you ask questions, during admission, you should ask extensive questions. If you feel like you're not getting open, honest answers, then that in itself is an answer.