Effective Schools

A Clear and Focused Vision at Rockingstone

Principal Debbie Metherall beams with pride when she talks about Rockingstone Heights, a Primary to Grade 9 school perched on a rocky outcrop above a public housing development.

The view from her school stretches far beyond the neighbourhood the children in her school call home. At Rockingstone, Metherall and her staff have made it their mission to help students see the broad possibilities that come with education.

Together, they have found ways to improve school climate and engage children with approaches that recognize the many ways in which students learn. Indeed, when Metherall walks into a classroom it often takes her a moment to spot the teacher.

“They’re with the students and they’re always engaged, they’re not behind the desk at all,” she  says.

Three years ago, staff at the school felt a sense of urgency. Students were not achieving in the ways that their teachers and others knew they could. For Metherall and her staff the first step on the journey to change was a clear and focused vision: Do what it takes to improve learning.

“At Rockingstone, our students were falling through the cracks and we had to address this,” Metherall says, in her matter-of-fact way.

The school’s timing was fortunate. Rockingstone was identified to become part of the HRSB’s Five Schools Project through which schools that have traditionally faced challenges in the areas of literacy and mathematics receive additional supports aimed at improving student learning.

From the outset, Rockingstone staff took the position that every child could learn and their school would improve. Challenges to teaching and learning would not become excuses for low achievement.

Instead, teachers began to work together and share best practices with the recognition that all Rockingstone students were their students. Over the past three years, they have not wavered on their commitment to the children and community they serve.

The school’s vice principal schedules time for teachers to make collaboration a regular part of their work week. Students, too, reap the benefits with math teachers from the junior high grades regularly making time to co-teach elementary students.

When teachers recognized kids had largely missed the concept of subtraction, they worked together to find new ways to ensure their students understood and improved.

“The biggest impact on student learning is exemplary teaching,” Metherall says. “The teacher makes a difference.”

Teachers work with students to underscore the values of reading and writing, and they provide them with the authentic community experiences that gives their writing greater depth. It’s but one of the ways the school has worked to connect kids with the curriculum through learning experiences that take them outside the walls of their school.

Their day can find them behind the school at Kidston Lake, where students learn to canoe, where they annually come together with family members to fish for stocked trout, and where they make connections to the environment.

For Metherall, a clear and focused vision of student improvement is what propels her tightly-knit staff forward, it’s what helps form valuable connections between home and school, and it’s what makes the children at Rockingstone believe they can achieve.