Leadership interview with Fouli Tsimikalis, Toronto Prep School

Our philosophy is you keep the kids in one class. You don’t mess with the integrity of that class. But the teacher gets to help the child who is struggling and gets to help the child who is brilliant and wants to move ahead. Of course, this can only happen if you have small classes and engaged teachers. I know it sounds like a simple idea, but that’s when it happens. And we’ve had some tremendous results because of it.

My husband and I were working at another private school, and we built up years of experience: we were teachers in the classroom and we did administrative duties, and we had a big connection with the parents of the students we taught. And we raised two children of our own, who went through the education system as well. And there seemed to be this repeated need to have a school that personalized and catered a program to the kids. For us, that was easy, because that’s how we taught our classes. If you sat in my classroom, I knew you as my student, I knew your name, I knew your parents, I knew your interests, I knew your strengths, I knew your weaknesses. And, as a teacher, I could help with them. So we decided to open a school that did just that — end-to-end — because there was a need for it.

When we opened up our school, we did not say you had to have an A average to come to the school. We did not say that you had to have 1,000 community service hours to come to the school. What we asked of you is to give us an understanding of what it is that you need help with. To understand what you do well, and to help you build on that. We looked for students who were frustrated, who were spinning their wheels, who felt that they weren’t getting the attention that they needed, and for students who wanted educators who were patient, who would help them grow.

We have such a diverse student population, because of our approach to admissions. We have our straight-A students that come to us from the public system because there are 30 kids in their class. They want to get into competitive university programs. They need very high grades, and they need to know their stuff, and they need access to the teacher to get extra help. We have that group of kids, and we have a group of kids that come in who have no self confidence or self-esteem, because if they struggle with something, instead of a teacher sitting down and showing them how it works, they would get categorized as being in a different class of learner. They get sent to remedial, and that plays havoc with your personality. So we help both of these kinds of students.

When we started in 2009, we had 70 students and now we’re over 400. That’s a testament to our approach. It happened because parents appreciate the full care and time that we take with their kids.

By keeping true to our mission, keeping true to our rules — that’s how we’ve managed to grow so much while still delivering the specialized attention that we believe in. For example, we’ve always kept the classes at 16. That will not budge. We’ve had to turn away kids when we’ve been full and parents would say, ‘Oh, just one more child, that’s only 17 kids in the class, can you do that?’ And we say, ‘No, we can’t do that, because we’ve given our word to our parents’.

The way we’ve managed to grow so much, instead of squeezing more kids into each class, is by adding classes and growing our cohorts. We wanted the school to grow. We wanted the cohorts to grow — because it really enhances the sports system, it really enhances our clubs, and the charity work we do as a school — but we still wanted the intimacy of the classroom. So what we did was we just kept taking over more space whenever we could open up a class.

Out of a population of 400, we have eight international students. When they apply, I still like to meet them first. I don’t just simply have an agent bring me a crew of international students, because I think I do the kids a service. I like to meet with them just the way I meet with the Canadian kids here. I like to get to know their personality. I like to know their interests. I’d like to see if I feel they’ll fit into the school socially as well as academically. And I can’t do that if I don’t meet them. So we use the same filtering mechanism for international students as we use for Canadian kids.

We have kids who come from all different backgrounds, including different socioeconomic backgrounds. We do have our billionaires. We do have our millionaires. We do have our middle class. But we also have students here at the school whose parents are working two jobs to have them here. Or they might have their own small business and they give up a vacation to be here, or they don’t buy an extra car, or whose grandparents are helping pay tuition. But what’s lovely is that all these students become equally part of the TPS family. Once  they walk through the doors, you cannot identify who’s who, because they’re all equal. They get the equal treatment, equal service, equal attention — because they’re our kids and we take care of our kids.

We do provide two scholarships a year, but we don’t have anything else set up in terms of financial aid, or extra help with payments or anything like that. The two scholarships are awarded to two children a year, and they go from Grade 7 to Grade 12. It’s based on things like marks, economic background, interviews, and nominations from the people in the community. Usually the kids who are awarded the scholarships haven’t even applied to the school. They’re brought to our attention by people outside the school, and then we approach that student.

When applying to TPS, there is a candidate statement for the student to write. The questions are not necessarily academic. I’m not making them do an equation. I’m not making them write an essay. But we ask questions about what their favourite hobby is, what they do as extracurriculars, where would they like to travel and why? Who do they respect and why? What kind of food do they like to eat? What is your favourite memory? They are questions about personality.

I absolutely meet with every child who applies to the school, even if maybe the application itself is not so ‘desirable’. And the reason I do that, being in this industry and working with kids for as long as I have, sometimes the psych-ed report and the application don’t match the child. And things change for children. Things can change month to month. What it was the child was doing in September could be very different than in January. So I like to meet them and I’d like to go through it with the parents and the child because there might be an outside chance that I could accept that child because they benefit from our program.

I take the time and trouble to meet with every child and family that applies, because I was a parent, and — God help me — anybody who helped me raise my children became my best friend and I was forever appreciative. So it’s my way of giving back. And sometimes parents do come back to us after I couldn’t take their child in the first time. The times when they do take that chance, and I take a chance on them, it has really paid off and their child did very well.

So a big part of our program, when kids come in — whether you’re a 99% student or a 69% student — you’re going to get a learning strategies class with us and you’re going to get lessons on how to be a good, organized student with those executive functioning skills. Because I’ve had kids come in who could memorize equations, and do advanced math in their head, — but ask them to fill in their calendar and it’s a problem. So we teach them how to use their iCalendar. We teach them how to prioritize what homework they should do first, what assignment they should work on first. How to write an essay, take notes, study for an exam, answer different types of questions. These are all skills that any child can learn irrespective of what kind of marks they’re earning, and these are the skills that are often lacking when they come to us.

In terms of culture, we are like a mix of public and private. The public part is there’s no uniform, but we do have a dress code, so the kids will get to wear their regular clothes, up to a certain standard, and their knapsack. That means, if they’re walking down the street or getting ready to go to school, they’re not identifiable as a private school kid. That’s important to some of our children and some of our families.

When you come into the school, it’s a very family-oriented environment. It’s supposed to be a home away from home. Our parents have verified that that’s what it feels like. I’m a very huggy, touchy-feely kind of person. I’m like a mom at the school. Some kids call me mom. I have two offices, so that I can have one at the front of the school, near the kids. They run by me and they show me the test that they’re going to put on the fridge, or they come in because they’re not feeling well, or they come in because they’re nervous about something. I want them to feel that I’m accessible.

Our teachers, my teachers — oh my goodness, my teachers I just feel are the best. I’ve got to rave about my teachers. And I’m old enough to be their mom, so I look at them almost like they’re my students. They are great because they are people who I don’t have to motivate to teach. For them, it’s a vocation. They’ll naturally put an arm around a child who’s doing well and give them a high five, or they’ll naturally tell a child who is struggling ‘Come here, I want to help you’, even if that child doesn’t ask for extra help. These teachers will just know.

Our teachers teach the courses that they have a passion for and that they’re meant to teach. So if I have a physics teacher, that’s what they’re teaching.

I never want to have a school where there’s a child who’s afraid to approach an adult at the school. It’s just as simple as that. Do we have discipline? Yes. Do we have direction and structure? Absolutely. There’s a time to discipline a child and a time to pat a child on the back. So it’s very much like home, the way the parents would treat the kids, where you are allowed to do certain kinds of behavior and not allowed to do other kinds of behavior. And the punishment always fits the crime. And I believe when students think that you’re fair and that you’re doing your best and your hardest to improve them as students, they will respond accordingly.

Our classrooms and our desks, the kids call it very ‘college-like’. For example, we had special desks made up where two kids can sit with their books. There’s only 16 in the class, so there’s only eight desks in the class. Everybody who registers gets a MacBook Pro. There’s lockers. A lot of students tell me they feel like they’re already in college, which makes a really nice smooth transition to university.

When there’s an issue between a parent in the school for some reason, our approach is an open-door policy. The teachers and the parents speak to each other quite often. Usually it’s email, because the parents often prefer that. Phone calls are absolutely acceptable. A parent can reach out to me at any time. We always look up and investigate the issue and how we can help. We’re always looking for the next steps, how to improve. So if the parent isn’t happy about something that’s happened, we’ll look into it, and if it’s something on our end that wasn’t properly done, we’ll ‘We’re sorry, we dropped the ball on this, this is how we’re going to help’. Nobody’s perfect, but we’re always very transparent.

The whole idea — whether it’s an issue we’re investigating, or an admissions interview — it’s because we want to be inclusive and not exclusive. Some schools might come up with reasons a student can’t be admitted, can’t be included, but we ask ‘How can we include this child? This child is going to bring something to our wonderful community at this school’.

We’ve joined a group called Globe Educate. They are a global educational group. They have 52 schools in the whole world, in England, France, Spain, in Italy, Switzerland, and all over the world. We just became part of their family. And we’re very excited because I think it now puts TPS on a global level. What that allows us to do is coordinate and meet with educators all over the world, to do symposiums for our teachers in Math, Science, English. We are global citizens now at TPS, and the kids are going to have the world in their hands.

If TPS were a person, they would be a human being who is patient, nurturing, and goal-oriented, because you need all three. So you need the discipline, the direction, the structure that a high-efficiency individual would have. But you also need the kindness and the empathy to carry through.

I really believe, if you have the right teacher, they could teach out of the back of a van, and they would do a good job. Then when you give them only a certain amount of kids to teach, that can be handled and the teacher can get their hands on them, every one of those kids will get a good education.