Leadership interview with Marc Ayotte, Hillfield Strathallan College

Hillfield Strathallan College (HSC) is unique. We strive for excellence in academics, arts, and athletics. But there's also a deeply rooted humility to HSC. I think that's part of being from Hamilton, which is a very hardworking town, but also underrated in terms of its medical and research base, and having great universities and amazing hospitals. There's this sense of purpose within the community, but it's deeply rooted in humility. We have amazing students and faculty here doing exceptional things, and it's all grounded in community, humility, and gratitude. 

Our mission is to learn with joy and live with purpose. We're a school that starts with kids as young as 18 months all the way up to 18 years, so we wanted a mission that resonates and changes and adapts as kids make their journey through the school. I have a lot of faith in our students to become leaders and become the people who will solve some of the world's biggest problems. But it should be with a full heart that they take on these serious tasks because they should really enjoy what they’re doing, whether it's studying or working, or volunteering.

I really believe that having fun in school is essential, whether you're a student, a teacher, or a headmaster. There are so many opportunities in schools to be grateful and to find joy. Even on your worst day here, it’s still an amazing day, because you get to work with students and staff. We're doing serious work here — but if you're not having a belly laugh every day in a job like this, or if a student doesn’t make you smile on a dreary, rainy day, then you're missing something.

We are blessed to have many different opportunities for students to grow and to have very purposeful transitions that are based on their age and stage academically, and also in terms of their lives and the support that they need. We have two amazing early education schools—a Montessori and a junior school. They funnel into a very unique middle school, grades five through eight. There’s a bit more freedom, more choices, more responsibility for the students, but still amazing adults guiding that journey. Then, students begin transitioning to high school with new challenges and opportunities. Being able to stay on the campus but having unique experiences within that campus, it feels like you're in a different school at those different stages, but it's also deeply rooted in that college-wide culture.

We push students academically, but we have in mind that they need support to go along with that challenge—especially as they’re growing, learning, and making mistakes—is at the heart of what we do. When we survey parents about what they want from us, the results are very consistent. A high academic standard is always number one, followed by individual attention for their child, then a safe, caring, and nurturing environment for all. The fourth thing they really care deeply about is leadership development. And everything we do is rooted in those four principles, because we know they’re what matter most to parents.

We want students to grow within a very safe environment, knowing that they're going to have their stumbles and that they'll learn as much from their stumbles as they will from anything else. Last year, we worked with students to craft a college commitment, and part of it was that it's natural to make mistakes in an educational journey. It’s how you react to those mistakes that defines you as a person, not the mistake itself. That's what we're after.

The addition of the new high school and athletic complex in the last 10 years has really allowed us to expand our approach to how our students learn and how teachers teach. Having the additional spaces for arts, design, and collaboration, we've come to realize that when students are deeply engaged in their learning, they just learn better. They're energized, they're focused. What we've learned is that students are having more and more authentic and experiential opportunities, and it’s what generates their passion for learning, and also opens their eyes to what they might want as a career.

A big focus of ours over the last year has been figuring out how we're going to address AI in a meaningful way. We've got a task force working on it that includes students, and there’s a lot of professional development coming up in that area. We introduce technology in a gradual way with the younger students, and we’re really focused on its appropriate use. We've done a lot of work in the last year just on helping students navigate the new world of social media and cell phones, and really tried to help them understand when and how it’s appropriate to use these tools.

Our students are going to have to tackle some of the complex problems in the history of the planet, and they need skills to do that. It's really about elevating the discourse and about elevating the skills that students are going to need and starting that at an early level. To me, getting kids off campus to see the real world and to have opportunities to work and volunteer is critically important as well. So, in the future, we will be continuing on the path that we're on with really authentic learning, but also looking at ways to integrate ideas from across traditional curricula, whether it's project-based learning or more inquiry.

I think it's unique to Hillfield Strathallan College how amazing our parents are in terms of the support for the school and just how open they are to us making changes and trusting us to make changes from a curricular perspective that we, as educational experts, deem to be the path forward.

When it comes to resolving conflicts, there's no substitute, in my opinion, for a face-to-face conversation. At Hillfield Strathallan College, we've used some restorative justice practices sometimes to work with students through some very emotionally charged issues at times. Conflicts are almost always about hopes and about fears. When you get to the core of those things and you can have an honest conversation, almost every time it can be resolved.

For parents who are searching for a school, I think it's really important to physically come to the school. I know you can do a lot of research online, but on campus, you can talk to students, see students in action, talk to faculty, and see classrooms. There’s also talking to current parents, because in addition to an academic fit for students, the school also has to be a community fit for families. I think one of the amazing benefits of a school like ours is that parents develop friendships with other parents that last well beyond their kids graduating.