Leadership interview with Chad Holtum, Glenlyon Norfolk School

We really want our students to do their best, through truth and courage—that's our mission. This is all about the student experience, and we want all our students to have a fabulous time as we guide them through this process.

It's a journey of self-discovery and finding students' passions. We put opportunities in front of our students which allow them to try new things, be challenged, make mistakes, grow, learn about themselves and their unique interests and talents. Being able to see kids start in our first steps and go all the way through the school system and come out, and become alumni, and continue to connect with our school—It's fantastic. My own children go here, too, and have been going for nine years.

We have 800 students at GNS. We have just over 175 staff. It's a very safe environment for kids to try new things and they don't have to be perfect at it or they don't have to have done it before. We want kids to try things that maybe they've never done before and take that little bit of courage, because it takes courage.

At GNS, learning is fun for the students, and they're finding their passions. They feel safe, they learn, and that is a founding principle for us. Students want to collaborate with each other, in line with the IB Programme. They want to get involved in the co-curricular side.

Our faculty and staff members form bonds and very strong friendships. Once someone's been here for a few years, they often tend to stay in this environment. Every year, I give pins to different faculty and staff who have been at the school. Last year, I gave out a 40-year pin, and I gave a number of 30-year pins. It certainly is a wonderful environment for faculty and staff.

Our students are really taught to take care of each other. The culture is very much of community, and we really grow together. I see our values in a student in Grade 6 helping his friend on crutches get up one of the stairs, which happened this morning. Another student in Grade 10 who, despite being incredibly shy, stands up in front of a hall full of peers to share their NYP project, which is part of our IB Programme. In our junior school earlier this week, a Grade 3 class took the time to recognize the many individuals who contribute, often behind the scenes, to making the school experience wonderful. They were thanking our staff, who are not teachers, but are making the whole place tick. Then there are students from across the school, working with an Indigenous educator to explore the truth of our shared history. These are important parts of the work that we've been on this year.

We have a class right now in junior kindergarten that's 30% alumni children. That's fantastic! Community is the core center of GNS. We're seeing a lot of our alumni bring their kids to the school. Other alumni come back and volunteer. They're being debate coaches, coaches for rugby, they want to continue to connect with the school. We have a coach here, who's a local dentist, and has been coaching the senior boys’ basketball team. He graduated 13 years ago from the school, and now his daughter goes to the school. The connections are strong.

I can't say that there are students who wouldn't excel here, but I think kids that want to come to GNS really have to want to be here. That doesn't mean they're not nervous or maybe there's a little push to get things going. But we really want students to choose to be part of this environment, because the teachers and the staff put so much of themselves into the school, and into each child, that working with us in a partnership is absolutely critical. We always say, 'Just try,' and we'll be here to help you and see you grow.

Our school culture is supportive and it celebrates each student. Students aren't expected to fit into a mold. We had a wonderful speaker, one of our Head Prefects, who came back and spoke to our Grade 12 students. He said his favorite part of the school was that there's no mold at GNS. You can be who you want to be, and you will be empowered to take initiative, take charge of your learning, and you will be surrounded by caring teachers and staff, who will support you, guide you, and help you.

Here at GNS, we have a genuine partnership with parents, and we really rely on that so that we can work with their children. I encourage families to pick up the phone, call us, talk to us. Let's not rely only on email to do that. Let's talk to each other. We're going to do the same. We're going to reach out to you, and we want to get to know you, because we spend a lot of time with your children. Being a community-based school where 92% of our kids are from Victoria. We can pick up the phone, we can have those conversations with you. For our families that are overseas, we will arrange a Skype or a Zoom, or if they're living in different parts of Canada, we're going to do that, as well, because we want to have those conversations with our families.

Our approach to conflict resolution is based on communication and making sure that we're supporting each other and being respectful. We have counselors, of course. We have one at our junior campus, and two at the middle and high school. What we often will do is we use our core values. We actually have them out there on our walls and we sit down with the students and say, 'What's going on? Let's talk about this.' And, oftentimes, as we know in this area, it's not the thing that happened there, it's something else. And so, digging into the root and then figuring out how to move forward.

Consistent with the IB learner profile, our students strive to be inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk takers, balanced, and reflective. We've added one more to this list, which is perseverance, because it's a critical trait for the students in their development. It's not about success to just graduate and go into a university, or a postsecondary pathway. It's for life. It's giving you those skills and all those attributes to move forward in life.

We have a family boarding program, our version of what some schools call homestay. It's where our international students, including a number of students from the United States, come to Canada to attend GNS. They live with a GNS family. We have a very tight connection with those families, of course. We also have what we call Gryphon House, which is a homestyle boarding program, where we have 22 students living in a restored heritage inn, right down the road. Twenty-two students live in this beautiful building built in 1912, and they come to school every day.

We have a deep connection to the municipalities, to the neighborhood. Again, about 92% of our students are coming from Victoria. We have thousands of graduates all over the world, but a lot are still here in Victoria. We're deeply connected to that group.

Service to the community is a really important part of GNS. We have long-standing relationships all over the world, because of that service component. We have kids and staff going around the world doing service. Here in Victoria, many of our groups volunteer for things like the Royal Jubilee Hospital, Our Place, Mustard Seed, Out of the Rain, Extreme Outrage, The Foundry. These are all local Victoria community groups where our students volunteer.

I'd advise parents to pay attention to the feel you get when you come to a school, having your child come and experience what it's like to be on the inside of the school, to meet the faculty, to meet the staff, and to feel the vibe from the students and from the entire community. Our graduating class this year received over 1.6 million in scholarship offers. We have all our kids being accepted into their top-tier choices of universities, and kids going to the United States and all over the world. However, I would say when your child is here, being cared for, feeling safe, and the faculty and staff help guide them, that's when you know you've found home and you've found the right place.