Leadership interview with Teralee Brunn, Sunnybrook School

We are okay with children making mistakes. We’re okay with them going off on tangents so that their learning becomes broader and bigger and deeper.

Because Sunnybrook offers the International Baccalaureate program, our school and our classrooms are very lively and active. So when you walk into a classroom, the teacher isn’t just at the front of the classroom, teaching in a ‘textbook’ traditional way. The kids are very involved in their learning and they have real agency and ownership to their learning.

We really found that the ages of JK to Grade 6, that’s the foundation of schooling. They learn all their reading skills and their math skills, and it really sets out the foundation for them to move on to the big schools in Grade 7. Parents often ask us ‘Will you please expand to Grades 7 and 8?’ And we have made a conscious decision to stop at Grade 6 for that reason, so that we are experts in those eight younger grades. We don’t spread ourselves too thin. Being a small school, we can really concentrate all of our efforts into those eight grades.

The IB program is a very rigorous program. It is academic, but at the same time it creates a love for learning. And so even if they’re shy and not as confident at the beginning of their time with us, they’re leaving as confident people when they graduate. Everyone is a musician, everyone’s an athlete, everyone’s an actor, everyone is an academic, so to speak. So everyone is everything, and they’re expected to be part of everything. And that makes for a very well-rounded child.

We will have a graduating class of between 16 to 20 students, and for example, this year, they are going off to ten different schools. So they don’t typically always just go the IB path or just go to a single-gender school. They really are getting into their first-choice schools, and they get into the top eight schools around Toronto.

I think our students love coming to school. We have really happy kids. You walk around the school and you’re hearing laughter and chatter. They’ll start their day with a morning circle, a greeting, a community circle where they get to really share their ideas and thoughts. They’ll have some Math and some Language and some Inquiry. They have French every single day, Phys Ed three times a week, Music twice a week. And so they really get to explore all different capacities of school life.

Most children would definitely excel at Sunnybrook, but if your child would really need a lot of structure, a very ‘quiet zone’, very rigorous structure, they might not do as well at Sunnybrook. That’s because with us they get engaged in their learning, and sometimes that can get noisy.

In the kindergarten years, we start their day outside for one full hour. It’s a chance for them to get all their ‘wiggles’ out, they get to play on the bikes and play in the sandbox, and then they’ll come in just before 10 a.m., and then that’s when they can start their day. We definitely take into account that they are children, and while we have a very academic program, at the same time, play-based learning is a part of that as well. Exploring through play.

A lot of our parents really like that we are a small school. They like starting their child off into something a little bit more caring and nurturing and within a smaller community, with a wonderful community culture. And then they are ready to move on after Grade 6. And that change is good — that’s something we believe in at Sunnybrook.

We also believe that co-ed is wonderful — being in a co-ed environment and getting that foundation. Then they are ready to move on to those bigger schools after us.

Our staff stay. They really do tend to stay. Most of our staff have been here for over 10 years, easily. We do have some new staff that have recently come on, because we’ve had some teachers retire in the last couple of years. Having young teachers is really refreshing to the staff — bringing in new ideas.

Sunnybrook loves professional development. We have a lot of professional development days, but we tend to do them before the school year starts, and at the end of the school year. We bring in professionals to train the staff to make sure that we’re all really up to date. We also send our teachers out to get professionally developed. And because we’re an IB school, we have to also keep up with the training for the IB as well. If someone wants more professional development, then definitely we’ll send them out and learn, and then they will come back and train all of us too, so that we spread the wealth.

We really encourage parents to help out around Sunnybrook. But at the same time, we do cater to the working parent: we open up at 7:45 a.m. and we close at 6 p.m. So a lot of our parents are working, and we understand that sometimes it is hard to volunteer, but they can volunteer in different ways even remotely. For those parents that can offer volunteering and helping out, they’re more than welcome to come in and help with an art project or be a library helper. They can help out with the musical, or field trips, and really get involved. We also have a parents association where every parent is welcome to come out to meetings, and those are usually after hours so that all the parents can get involved.

I think most parents would be really impressed to know that every teacher knows every single child’s name. Every teacher teaches every student in the school and treats them just like they were their own student, so that everyone has the same respect. Everybody knows everybody and it’s very welcoming. I think it’s a very open community where the parents feel like they can come and express any concerns or even feedback or suggestions.

If Sunnybrook were a person, I think they would be confident. I think they would be excited and have a thirst for knowledge. I think that they would be responsible and knowledgeable and be a true inquirer — they would want to explore.

Sunnybrook has a one-to-one iPad program. We really are at the forefront of technology. Every single child, even for JK all the way to Grade 6, each one of them has an iPad, and it’s managed by the school, and it’s age-appropriate as to how much they are on the iPad. We definitely do use it as a tool in education. I think it really adds to their education because it’s the world that they’re living in. They have to be prepared for it.