A school's culture encompasses the beliefs, assumptions, perceptions, attitudes, and written and unwritten rules that influence every aspect of the organization. Head of School, Struan Robertson, wants The York School to be a safe and happy place for children to learn and grow in an academically robust environment. That doesn’t just happen. A school’s culture of safety, happiness, and academic robustness needs to be reflected in its leadership, its focus on wellness, citizenship, kindness, and engagement, and what it does to find staff, students, and families that share the school's values and mission.
In this episode, host Natasha Estey speaks with Struan Robertson and Director of Admission & Advancement, Praveen Muruganandan, about building The York School culture and how everything we do from the admission process to hiring to strategic planning is in the service of positive culture-building.
Follow the #yorklearns hashtag on Twitter. You can find The York School's 20/20 Vision Strategic Plan here.
Written and produced by Natasha Estey
Audio Editing by Andrew Scott
A school's culture encompasses the beliefs, assumptions, perceptions, attitudes, and written and unwritten rules that influence every aspect of the organization. Head of School, Struan Robertson, wants The York School to be a safe and happy place for children to learn and grow in an academically robust environment. That doesn’t just happen. A school’s culture of safety, happiness, and academic robustness needs to be reflected in its leadership, its focus on wellness, citizenship, kindness, and engagement, and what it does to find staff, students, and families that share the school's values and mission.
In this episode, host Natasha Estey speaks with Struan Robertson and Director of Admission & Advancement, Praveen Muruganandan, about building The York School culture and how everything we do from the admission process to hiring to strategic planning is in the service of positive culture-building.
Follow the #yorklearns hashtag on Twitter. You can find The York School's 20/20 Vision Strategic Plan here.
Written and produced by Natasha Estey
Audio Editing by Andrew Scott
Hi there, and welcome to YORK Talks, a podcast for families wanting to learn more about The York School, Toronto's leading co-ed, independent school, delivering the IB programme from Junior Kindergarten to Grade 12. I'm your host, Natasha Estey. Join me in conversation with school leaders, teachers, students, and parents in The York School community about different aspects of the school, providing you with a more candid look... inside York.
Natasha Estey :All right, so here we are, the first episode of YORK Talks. Today, we're going to be talking about building The York School culture, and how everything we do from admissions to hiring to strategic planning is in the service of positive and progressive culture building. To dig into this topic, I'm delighted to have our Head of School, Struan Robertson, and our Director of Admission and Advancement, Praveen Muruganandan, as my inaugural guests.
Natasha Estey :Struan has been an educator for more than 20 years, launching his teaching career overseas in Thailand, and then moving into leadership roles there and back in Ontario at Lakefield College School. Struan joined The York School in 2017 as Deputy Head, Academics and Junior School Principal, becoming Head of School at the end of last year. An active guy - he has a standing desk after all - and father of three, Struan still finds time to coach both ball hockey and ice hockey and enjoy his family's cottage.
Natasha Estey :Praveen is from The Prairies and so he knows what Saskatchewan winters are like. With both an MEd and an MBA, Praveen's passion for travel has taken him to Brooklyn to teach math and to far flung places like Russia, the Ukraine, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Costa Rica to name a few, recruiting for the Schulich School of Business and on adventures with his family. Attracted to our progressive culture and diverse community. Praveen joined the York school in 2014 to oversee admissions, marketing and communications, and advancement. An avid runner, you can find Praveen knocking off kilometres around his suburban neighbourhood at the crack of dawn most mornings.
Natasha Estey :Struan, Praveen, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.
Struan Robertson :Thanks Natasha for the lovely introduction.
Praveen Muruganandan :Glad to be here, Natasha.
Natasha Estey :So Praveen, I'm curious, did you go for a run this morning?
Praveen Muruganandan :I have not gone for a run this morning. I slept in. I am going after this podcast.
Natasha Estey :And Struan, are you standing at your desk right now?
Struan Robertson :I am and I did my workout at the gym this morning. So I'm two up on Praveen!
Natasha Estey :One on me too since I still haven't gone out for my run either. Alright, so this episode is all about building a school culture. And for the purposes of our discussion today, let's think about school culture as the values and assumptions and perceptions and attitudes and the norms of behaviour that influence every aspect of the school, sort of like the personality of the school, if you will. You can get a feel for the culture of an organisation by looking at the arrangement of furniture, what members brag about, what members wear, etc. It's sort of similar to how you can get a feeling about someone's personality. So that considered Struan, how would you describe the culture of The York School today?
Struan Robertson :Thanks, Natasha. I think culture is the most important thing we do. And it starts from the moment you arrive to the moment you leave. And for different students and for different staff that's going to be different depending on why they've come to our school. I think, for me, personally, I love the international part of our school being a global IB school. We've attracted a huge number of staff who have experience like Praveen and like myself, overseas, and that really gives us a global mindset. I personally love starting off every day standing outside and welcoming our staff and our students into the building. I think it sends a huge message that that's where I spend my time. And it really allows kids to start off that day with a positive part of you know, part of their life. I think the the second part is our focus in on relationships. All of our teachers and staff know that just as I expect to lead through relationships, I expect our teachers to teach through relationships and I think that's a really important factor that establishes our culture. Getting to know our kids really, really well, not only in the classroom, but in the drama theatre, in the music room, out on the athletic fields, taking our learning outside of our building and exploring the urban areas of Toronto that are our classroom. So I'll leave it there. But I think it really depends - where do we focus our time? And how do we focus in on relationships? And I think that's a really, really important part of The York School culture.
Natasha Estey :Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's interesting, too, to think about something like The York School's strategic plan. We think about all the different pillars of that strategic plan and how our school culture is reflected in this plan. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that?
Struan Robertson :I think it starts with the mission of the school - to develop inquiring, knowledgeable, and caring young people who are engaged citizens of the world. So, you know, that's very much in tune with the IB mission. We want our kids to be well-rounded, we want them to be academically focused and successful. But I think it doesn't stop there. We want them to be engaged in the community have a global mindset, do things like community service, be active, and trying new things. So, I think all of those pieces, you have to have a culture that's nurturing. And if we want our kids to be risk-takers, they need to be in a caring and nurturing environment. And I really feel that that's the culture we've been able to build at The York School.
Natasha Estey :One of the things I really love about The York School's culture is it's so centred on the student. And even even the mission statement is looking out from the perspective of the student. So - and you've touched on this also with the comment about teaching through relationships, I think that's a really interesting and wonderful way to to look at it. How do you see the The York School's culture, as you've described it, reflected in its people - the leadership at the school, the the teaching faculty, all the staff that are part of the community - in terms of how you see people lead, and how people teach, and how things get done at the school?
Struan Robertson :We have a really varied staff. As I said earlier, a huge amount of our staff have taught, worked, or lived overseas. They're very attracted to the IB banner of the school. But I think we also are able to attract a group of staff and faculty, for two reasons. One, they just love working with kids, they totally get involved in all aspects of school life, whether it's coaching or creating a unique club, whether it's a chess club, or something totally different around robotics. I think the other thing is our teachers are really attracted to the smaller school. But you know, we're a really unique campus in the heart of the city. And we don't have a long history. We're a relatively young school and I think because of that we've been able to be incredibly progressive. Our use of IT to enhance learning is quite at the forefront. And I think, the the lens we ask our teachers to take when they're in the classrooms, their pedagogical approach combines the nurturing, caring relationship, it combines lots of best practice around IT, but it also - I mean, we really believe that experience teaches. And we encourage our teachers to get our kids out of the building and to be exploring the urban classroom that we are in the heart of being right here at Yonge and St. Clair. So I think a number of those things really bring it all back to culture and relationships. It's all about relationships, Natasha.
Natasha Estey :100%. Praveen, what do you think?
Praveen Muruganandan :I agree with what Struan said. But if there's one thing I remember from the time I walked into the school six years ago, the school feels like a start-up at times. And I think, in a very positive way, the innovation that is sort of, not to say expected, but I think our teachers, our staff are encouraged to try new things. And I think that has a real positive impact on the work we do. Sometimes it's tiring, but I think it's really cool to see what our teachers are doing and the risks they take and the commitment they have for their craft. I think that permeates even into our admission offices and just always trying to think of different ways to do things. At one point in our own history as a school, our tagline was innovation is our tradition. And maybe that's not the case today, but I know that that mentality still resonates for many of my colleagues.
Natasha Estey :I always used to like to talk about how we're always on the sharp edge of the blade as it relates to our innovation approach to education. How aligned do you see The York School in terms of what it says it values with what you're actually seeing and feeling day to day?
Struan Robertson :I think when we talk to parents and kids, Natasha, I know both Praveen and I really believe it's fit. And all of the schools in Toronto offer many wonderful things. And I think for parents and for kids, they need to come into the building, into the culture and ask themselves, do I see myself as a good fit here? And I think, sometimes it's not only a fit, but it's a feeling, a feeling that you get when you have wonderful teachers that care deeply about you and about the relationships that they have, and they want to create that intrinsic motivation for you to want to do well. Sometimes it's just coming into a building and looking around and seeing, you know, it looks very updated. It looks very sleek. It kind of looks futuristic. There's lots of technology everywhere, from 3D printers to some of our robotics, and that really triggers things for some kids. And for many, many others, it's someone they know, or it's another family that has loved York and has passed along that feeling and they want to feel that as well. So I think there's a couple of different tidbits there that I would say about that feeling or that fit.
Natasha Estey :That's actually such a great segue into a question I wanted to ask Praveen about. Because Praveen, as Director of Admission and Advancement, you work with families to find the right fit - that's a big part of your focus. And so, if I was a prospective family, and I was wanting to figure out if the school is the right fit for me - to get a sense of the school's culture - how can I go about doing that?
Praveen Muruganandan :In a normal year, or this year ahead? I think in a normal year, we always - as Struan said - we want kids to walk into our building and get a sense, walk through the spaces, sometimes sit in on a classroom, and talk to our teachers, talk to our students. The year ahead is going to be a little bit different in that students can't walk in and sort of get a sense of the physical location of our physical plant. But one of the things I'm really happy about and proud of is we've never really focused on our physical space as a strength of our school. We've always focused on our teachers. We focused on our students. And I think still giving that accessibility to prospective families is going to be extremely, extremely important as we navigate ahead. Helping students to get a sense or families to get a sense of what to expect at The York School will be shown through what goes on in the classroom, but they'll have to see it from a different perspective. They'll get to meet our teachers, they'll get to meet our students - just in a different format. So we're excited! We've got some ideas of how we're going to change things and provide more insights into the classroom without students actually being physically in the building. At the end of the day, I think - Struan mentioned this earlier - relationships are so critical. And this is a year - like every other year - but this year, in particular, we're going to be focused on the relationship with each and every family who's considering and exploring The York School for their son or daughter.
Natasha Estey :That's great. And I'm also really looking forward to seeing how we innovate around how we can approach that and do even more to give prospective families that kind of access to figure out that that fit piece. Now, if part of your mandate, Praveen, is to find students and families that share The York School's values and mission and are aligned with The York School's culture so-to-speak, when you're doing that work, what are you looking for in the students and families that you meet?
Praveen Muruganandan :When you think about just what the IB student and the traits of an IB Learner are, you're looking for kids - or students - who are curious, who are risk-takers, who can collaborate, who can communicate, who are reflective. And so these are the sorts of things we're looking for when we meet students. In the past, we would have been able to determine that just by watching how they engage with their peers when they come into the classroom with our students. When we look at this in the year ahead, we've added a few new features into our application where we have relied in the past on what we call the video essay. And the video essay is a series of questions randomly selected where students will have about 60 seconds to craft a response to a question that they've never heard. And seeing how they think on their feet tells us a lot, seeing how they communicate. And this year, we're actually introducing something called a Character Skills Snapshot which will help us get a sense of how they think about situations, how they respond to situations. It allows us to build a class with students who, we hope, demonstrate certain attributes of initiative, open-mindedness, resilience, self-control, social awareness. There's a lot of different attributes that we're looking for and these can be reflected through the Character Skills Snapshot which we're excited to try. We've never done this before, but this is an example of something new that we're bringing into our admissions process to help ensure that we can continue to bring really good kids to the school. I think kids are motivated and we can see that if they're self-sufficient and configure things out, they're going to be ready for most things. We know happy kids will learn very easily. And that's our job is to find kids who can solve problems independently and can figure things out. And, you know, we're excited! We've got different ideas of how to do things at different grade levels that are age-appropriate. But this will be a time that we rely on every single member of our staff, our teachers, to help us bring some of the best, brightest, and most reflective kids who can come into the school and adjust. And it's going to be an interesting experience for the next year.
Natasha Estey :For sure. You've been talking about the things that we are looking for in the prospective students that we might welcome into our community. Obviously, The York School community and the culture, it encompasses our leadership, our teachers, our faculty, our staff, be they administrators or our wonderful facilities folks, and it also includes the students there at the centre of everything. But it also includes the parents. Maybe you could speak a little bit to what you're doing to also get a sense of who the parents are and their potential alignment with with what we're all about.
Praveen Muruganandan :Yeah, it's a great question. Another new item that we've added this year is we're going to meet all of the parents of applicants. We've met - in the past - a lot of our students. We've gotten to know if a child is the right fit for our school. But, I think we're at a point where we're trying to find the right family for the school. And so identifying families who are going to be supportive of their children through their experiences - whether it's JK or Grade 10 or 11 - is really important to us. And so every student that will come to The York School over the next few years - and next year for sure - we want to meet with every parent. To us, that's almost more important at times, especially when children are really young, to understand how a parent works with their children and their own parenting philosophy and understanding parents and making sure that The York School is the right fit for them as well. Because there's a lot of expectations in kids, but we all know that if a parent is engaged and supportive, their children are going to do really well here out our school. I'd say the most important marketing tool or marketing tactic that we've used - or what we have always relied on - it's not digital, it's not print; it's our parents. And happy parents are the greatest influencers of everything we do in admissions. And we rely on our parents to continue to to share their experiences with incoming or prospective families. At The York School, I would say about 80% of our families come to us based on positive reviews of families they've heard from him. And today, a mom called me and she said she's been already starting her guerilla marketing campaign and she hopes that it's helpful. I laughed to her and I said, "that's called word-of-mouth marketing". But she is - and as well as many other parents are - excited as they've seen the transition this year, particularly in how our students have been treated and how they've been safe as we've started school, and people are excited to have their friends' children join the school.
Natasha Estey :So Struan, Praveen, we've been talking a lot about how a school's culture is reflected in its leadership and its focus on wellness and citizenship and kindness, on relationships, engagement, and how its staff and students and families are all part of this culture. So, just to kind of wind things down a little bit, what makes The York School's culture so great in in your point of view? Struan, maybe you can start with the answer to that one.
Struan Robertson :Yeah. I mean, look, at the end of the day, it's a school. And schools - if there's one thing we've learned in the last several months, it's just an incredibly important thing in the development of children. It doesn't matter what age they are. And we saw what happened to the wellness of kids when they didn't have school to attend, the daily routine of going to school, of seeing their friends, and of learning with the teachers that they love. And I think we've got an incredible culture. And we've seen that in the first few weeks that our kids have been back. Despite the fact that they're wearing masks, they're so happy to see their friends, they're so happy to be back at school, to be learning with their teachers. And we've also seen it with our teachers. I think they were apprehensive at first - like every adult has been in the last few months - and having the kids back in the building, it just feels normal. And I think that's a real tribute to the culture that we have here of teaching through relationships, of focusing in on the whole child. We were really careful, Natasha, about not jumping straight back into academics, but of ensuring there was time to build nurturing and supportive relationships to follow the new protocols that ensure risk mitigation and and to focus on wellness. And I think a culture that really believes in academic rigour is important, but you can't have academic rigour if kids don't feel safe. And I just think we've got our priorities in the right order, that it has to be focused on wellness and relationships first. Our teachers' job is to take care of the kids and then our job as leaders is to ensure our teachers and our staff also feel nurtured and feel empowered to be the best that they can be, despite everything that we're all living through. So I think the wellness and the teaching through relationships, that's what creates a great culture, a safe culture, a culture where people can try new things and know that if they don't get it right, that's fine. And I often say to kids, let's focus on a place where we can fail forward. And a school with a culture like ours, where failure is accepted, it's promoted - I mean the best learning in life typically comes from failure. But there's no better place to learn to fail than in a place where there are really safe relationships. You'll be caught, you'll be supported, and hopefully you'll be guided in that learning, so that you can manage through the next challenge that you face. Probably a long-winded way of just saying wellness, relationships, that's a huge part of our school culture.
Natasha Estey :And on that note, that's a wrap for our first episode of YORK Talks. Thanks again to our Head of School, Struan Robertson, and our Director of Admission and Advancement, Praveen Muruganandan, for joining me today. To see our school culture in action, search the hashtag #Yorklearns on Twitter or follow The York School on Facebook and Instagram. You can find our 20/20 Vision strategic plan on our website. Visit YORK Talks online at www.yorkschool.com/YORKTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to YORK Talks where you get your podcasts and if you found value in this episode, make sure to tell other families wanting to learn more about The York School. I'm your host, Natasha Estey. I hope you enjoyed the conversation today. Please join us again for more YORK Talks.