A school where kids get to be kids.
The Galt Academy is opening in Durham Region for Kindergarten through Grade 6. Strong academics, plus the real-world skills and knowledge traditional schools leave out. Taught both outdoors and indoors. Adult politics stays outside the classroom.
- Kindergarten to Grade 6
- Durham Region
- Small classes
The core subjects, and other important life skills
Reading, writing and mathematics, taught to a high standard, with every student on their own path. Part of the job is working out what each child is good at, and then giving them room to get better at it. Around that sit seven things a person needs.
Character
Choices and what comes of them. Taking responsibility for your own work. Doing hard things because they're worth doing. Finishing what you start. Getting something wrong, or losing, and going again. Doing the work when nobody's watching.
Health and fitness
Physical activity every day, and learning how to look after your body. Real food and nutrition, and why it matters. First aid, CPR, and what to do in an emergency.
Thinking and problem solving
How to break a problem down and work it out instead of memorising an answer. How to form a hypothesis, test it, and change your mind if you were wrong. Working from first principles: what you know to be true, rather than what you've been told.
Communication and working with people
How to listen, how to understand where someone else is coming from, and how to get your own ideas across. Making a case and defending it, speaking in front of a group, and taking a question you weren't expecting. How to work as a team to get something big done.
Money and business
How money works: earning it, saving it, what interest is, what things cost and why. Entrepreneurship and self-reliance. How to start and run a small business.
How things work
Engineering, learned by doing it. Taking things apart, putting them back together, building from scratch. Hand tools, simple repairs, woodworking, growing food. How a computer works and how to write simple code.
Outdoors
Time outside in every season. Finding your way, reading the weather, fire and shelter, plants and animals, and where food comes from before the store.
Kids being kids while getting a great education
One flag
One flag flies here, and it's the Canadian one.
No land acknowledgements
We don't open the day with one.
Some subjects belong to families
Gender and sexuality are subjects for parents, not teachers. If it ever comes up, a student is directed to talk it over with their parents.
Politics stays out of lessons
When a question has two sides, students learn to make the case for both, which teaches them how to think instead of what to think.
The curriculum is open
Parents read every unit before it's taught. It stays open all year to any family in the school.
Everyone can apply
Any family who wants this for their child is welcome to apply.
Where the school will be
We're evaluating sites across Durham Region. We're looking for one that lets a class move between indoors and outdoors through the day.
Join the founding families list
The Academy opens when enough families have committed. The list is free to join, and you can come off it whenever you like. You'll hear first as we choose a site and open enrolment.