PRIVATE SCHOOL I FEATURE
St. John’s-Kilmarnock is passionate about social responsibility, about its international studies – and about the students’ graduation plunge into Chalmers’ Pond
St. John’s-Kilmarnock is proud of international ties.
IT’S A WARM FRIDAY afternoon in June and the chapel is standing-room only.
Early afternoon sunlight pours through the blue and purple panes of stained glass, its beams stretching from the high slanted ceiling to the blond hardwood floor. Hundreds of smiling faces line the wooden pews. The men are dressed in light summer suits, the women in skirts and long flowing sundresses.
Suddenly, just after 1 p.m., the bellow of an organ cuts the humid air and all heads turn toward the front door. Pair by pair, the 2013 graduating class of St. John’s-Kilmarnock School stride down the aisle and take their seats at the front of the chapel.
For the next hour, the students are showered in rounds of applause, winning awards, accepting diplomas, taking their place in the storied 40-year history of this prominent independent school.
But for the students, donning long black robes and shiny black shoes, the ceremony is bittersweet. It is the beginning of a new chapter, the first day of the rest of their lives. They are on the cusp of great change, confident their time at St. John’s-Kilmarnock has prepared them for the road ahead.
But it is also goodbye. Goodbye to fellow classmates and old friends, goodbye to teachers, mentors and advisors. Goodbye to the school that has become their home away from home. Five of them, known around campus as “lifers,” have spent their entire academic careers here.
After the final award has been handed out, the final diploma accepted, the ceremony ends with hundreds of voices filling the chapel with Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken, the school hymn. The students then file out of the chapel to a chorus of cheers and tears and cross the gauntlet of photo ops, smiling and posing with fellow grads and family members.
Finally, it is time to celebrate their rite of passage, and the students stampede across the campus to the old wooden dock at the edge of Chalmers’ Pond. The spectators have already positioned themselves along the banks, cameras and tablets at the ready.
Dressed in their school uniforms, the graduates approach the edge of the teetering dock. One group at a time, they launch themselves into the blue-green water. Minutes later, 33 soaking students stand on the dock, hair dripping and shirts sticking, hugging and laughing and high-fiving.
“It was surreal to think that as I stepped off the dock, that would be my last time in Chalmers’ Pond,” says Todd Brecher, 18, who has been attending the school since Grade 7.
“Taking the plunge was like crossing a finish line that we had all seen waiting for us at the end of high school. It gave us a really great sense of achievement to have finally earned the right to jump into the pond wearing our uniform.”
While Brecher was the first of his family to make the commemorative leap, he won’t be the last.
Chelsea, his 15-year-old sister, is entering Grade 10 at St. John’s-Kilmarnock and is already looking forward to this very moment three years down the road.
“I can’t wait for the day that I jump in the pond,” says Chelsea, who was the first to embrace her brother when he emerged sodden from his dip in Chalmers’ Pond.
“I can’t wait to be a part of that tradition.”
St. John’s-Kilmarnock traces its roots to a Sunday afternoon in November 1971, when a group of people met in St. John’s Church in Elora to discuss opening a Christian school for boys.
The following fall, St. John’s School opened its doors for the first time.
In 1983, the school changed its name to St. John’s-Kilmarnock to reflect the school’s history and the Scottish ancestry of its founding headmaster. Two years later, it amalgamated with St. Margaret’s School for girls.
By the late 1980s, the school was operating on several campuses throughout the region and purchased 36 acres of gutted quarry between Maryhill and Breslau; classes on the new site began in January 1990 and the campus officially opened in May 1995.
Today, the school is home to about 350 students from junior kindergarten through Grade 12.
The tranquil tree-lined campus seems as if it’s been plucked from a movie, an educa-
tional playground with endless possibilities. The long winding driveway cuts through the sprawling green countryside, bordered by lush sports fields on one side and the glinting canvas of Chalmers’ Pond on the other. On the edge of the water sits the school’s latest addition – the boathouse. Essentially a classroom on the water, it provides a serene and natural setting for students to study biology and conduct science experiments as well as doing yoga and pilates.
Tucked away in the back corner, behind the colonial chapel, are the classrooms, housed in modern brick and stone buildings with slanted roofs.
Looking at the expansive landscape of St. John’s-Kilmarnock, its humble beginnings in an old brick house in Elora seem a mere shadow of the distant past. But the school’s evolution goes well beyond the expansion of its campus.
While traces of its denominational >> Norman Southward, head of St. John’s-Kilmarnock, believes the school offers a complete experience that focuses not just on academic success but also on personal growth and social responsibility. Southward, who came to the school in 2009, was formerly head of a junior college in Switzerland.
>> influence still linger, the school has slowly shifted its philosophy toward a broader approach to religion, spirituality and culture.
It’s a shift, says head of school Norman Southward, that fosters in students a more balanced understanding of the global community and instils a well-rounded core of values.
“Our overall mission focuses on academic success, personal growth and social responsibility,” says Southward, who came to the school in 2009 after working as head of a junior college in Switzerland. “At the end of the day, we want to sufficiently prepare our students for university and beyond.”
In keeping with this objective, one of Southward’s first moves was to implement the International Baccalaureate diploma program throughout all levels of the school and earn designation as an IB World School – a feat he accomplished in less than five years at the helm.
The International Baccalaureate program is an internationally recognized certification above and beyond the provincial high school diploma, which earns students several university credits and gives them advanced standing in certain post-secondary programs.
St. John’s-Kilmarnock was the second school in the region to institute the diploma program — Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute has offered the option for 10 years. École secondaire catholique Père-René-deGalinée was accredited in April 2008 to offer the IB Middle Years Program, and in April of this year, Glenview Park Secondary School in Cambridge also became an IB World School.
However, St. John’s-Kilmarnock is the first to offer it as a mandatory program from junior kindergarten through Grade 12.
“The IB follows something called the learner profile, which consists of certain attributes of a learner that we aspire to foster in our students,” Southward says. “Things like being knowledgeable, being caring, being empathetic, being critical thinkers,
being risk-takers.” By offering the program all the way through, Southward says, students will develop strong academic habits and a solid core of principles from a young age. Ron Brecher, Todd and Chelsea’s father, obtained his PhD at the age of 26 and knows firsthand the value of a good education.
“In terms of preparation for university, they do a pretty good job of giving the students a very broad education so they’re not pigeon-holed too soon. But when the time comes to choose, they’re really helped to focus and to get all the proper paperwork and applications done.” Another way St. John’s-Kilmarnock maximizes its students’ learning potential is by limiting its class sizes and providing more individualized attention. The average graduating class size is about 40, while lower grade classes can be as small as a dozen and never exceed 22. In addition to more one-on-one attention from teachers – who are all specialists in their given subject areas – students in Grade 9 and up have their own personal advisor, whom they meet with every four weeks to discuss their progress. “We want to create a small, intimate, family kind of community,” Southward says. “I think there’s strength in the intimacy of a smaller school.” Todd Brecher, who attended June Avenue Public School in Guelph before switching to St. John’s-Kilmarnock, says the smaller class sizes allowed him to actively engage with peers and interact more closely with his teachers.
“I think the biggest difference between public school and SJK is in the relationships you forge with your teachers and peers,” says Brecher, who will begin the honours toxicology program at the University of Guelph in September. James Cako has been teaching and coaching at St. John’s-Kilmarnock for 15 years. He says the more intimate classroom setting benefits teachers as well.
“It’s really nice to have that one-on-one time and that mentorship aspect for the personal growth of the students.”
According to Nancy Pitman, director of admissions, the personal attention given to students begins before they ever set foot in a classroom. Based on an in-depth admission process – which includes testing and face-to-face interviews – the school and parents will decide whether or not to move forward.
“It’s not like you can just leave a cheque at the door,” she says. “We have to ensure the children are a good fit – both for the school and for themselves.”
Part of what allows the school to be so selective, Southward says, is that unlike the majority of private schools, St. John’sKilmarnock isn’t driven by revenue.
“Private schools tend to be for-profit but we’re an independent, non-profit school. More enrolment doesn’t mean somebody’s making more money.”
Moving forward, Southward says he hopes to continue building more partnerships with the community – both local and global – like the ones the school already has with the Stratford Festival, the Communitech hub in downtown Kitchener and several schools across the world.
He also plans to make a St. John’s-Kilmarnock education more affordable. While many students are able to reduce costs with scholarships and bursaries, a year of tuition runs about $20,000.
“The current fee structure is pretty significant and it bars access to the experience for a lot of families,” he says. “We want to develop a decent endowment that creates meaningful scholarships and bursaries to allow more students, who wouldn’t otherwise be able to, to come to the school.
“A valuable education like we offer at SJK shouldn’t be so limited by financial means.”
Chelsea Brecher, who made the move to St. John’s-Kilmarnock in Grade 6, says >>
>> she felt at home in her new surroundings from day one.
“It’s very welcoming,” she says. “All of the teachers are enthusiastic and everybody at the school is pretty open to new people. If you’re a new student coming in, you come for a visit day where you’ll tour the campus and meet everyone.”
“It’s a very supportive environment,” adds Chelsea’s father, Ron. “Even as a parent, I find it’s very easy to have a good rapport with the teachers and with the headmaster.”
Gail Cornwell, Todd and Chelsea’s mother, says she noticed a difference in her children almost immediately after they started at St. John’s-Kilmarnock.
While at public school, “they would drag their backpacks up the driveway and kick them through the door when they came home,” she says. “Here (at SJK), they’re engaged.” Based on everything the school offers its students – and demands of them – it’s hard not to be.
In addition to a full schedule of classes – in most cases more than their public school counterparts take – they are expected to participate in at least one arts program and one sport, though many commit to more.
In addition to offering dramatic arts, visual arts, music (both choir and instrumental) and sports (ranging from badminton to wrestling), the school promotes volunteerism. In addition to completing 120 volunteer hours for their IB certification, students in both the upper and lower grades select a local, a national and an international charity to support throughout the year.
“If you compare it to the public sector, what we have at SJK is a very balanced program,” Southward says. “Learning doesn’t stop at the classroom door. We have terrific teaching going on, but then the expectation is that the student will go beyond the academic experience to be involved in all kinds of extracurricular activities.”
A big part of that extracurricular component is the school’s focus on travel and global citizenship.
“I was at a very travel-focused school (in Switzerland) and there was a strong experiential learning component to SJK,” Southward says, “so we kind of consolidated those two things into a program called the Five Worlds program.”
The Five Worlds program is an international partnership with schools across the globe and combines elements of travel adventure and outreach projects with history lessons and experiential learning. Past trips have seen students travel to Nepal, Kenya and the Galapagos Islands. The school also hosts about 25 international students at any given time.
Chelsea Brecher, who visited France and Belgium for a First World War memorial trip in Grade 7 and Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic for a Second World War trip last year, says travelling has taught her things textbooks never could.
“It’s given me a different perspective,” she says. “I got to go to Auschwitz, I got to go into the gas chambers and the crematoriums. Every time we’d do something like that we’d go back to the hotel and we’d talk about it and reflect on it.”
There was no plunge in Chalmers’ Pond for David Hornsby’s graduation in 1999. He and his classmates simply gathered on the front lawn beneath a tent and the baking June sun with friends and family.
Still, like today’s graduates, Hornsby experienced mixed emotions.
“We were all excited for the future, but terribly nervous as well,” recalls Hornsby, who attended the 2013 graduation ceremony, which coincided with the retirement announcement of his father, Ian Hornsby, after 30 years of service at the school.
“It was the end of 11 years of my life, the beginning of a new chapter and exciting new opportunities. But it was bizarre to think of not being at SJK anymore.”
After graduating from SJK, which he attended from Grades 3 to 13, Hornsby studied at the University of Guelph before obtaining his master’s in the United States and his PhD in the United Kingdom. Today, he is a tenured professor at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Looking back, Hornsby attributes both his professional and personal success to his time at St. John’s-Kilmarnock.
“Am I anything like I was when I graduated from SJK?” he says from a picnic table on the campus he roamed as a child. “Probably not.
“But I still hold the same principles and the same values, that desire for lifelong learning and giving back.”
To Hornsby, it was always more than just a school.
“St. John’s has always been at the core of our family. My first memories are of going to see my father at St. Margaret’s in Elora, walking inappropriately into his classroom as he was trying to teach to say, ‘Hi,’ ” he recalls.
“I remember that quite distinctly, and I look back very fondly on my time at SJK.”
Somewhere down the road, perhaps after completing his PhD in toxicology or transitioning into law or medicine, Todd Brecher figures he’ll feel the same.
“I think the school has really set me off on my best foot, but I don’t think I’ll fully understand how far it put me ahead until I arrive,” he says. “I think one day I’ll have a newfound, and different, appreciation for private education.
“And hopefully by then I’ll be considering putting my own kids in a school like SJK.”