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 basics, taught properly. Then everything else.
Reading, writing and mathematics, taught to a high standard. Every student gets their own learning path, so they get the attention and direction they need. Around that core sit seven things a person needs and most schools never get to.
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. Building an argument 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.
Where we stand
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
In debate, students argue both sides of the question, 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
Somewhere in Durham Region, on a site that lets a class move between indoors and outdoors through the day. The exact location is being chosen now, and families on the list help decide it: the form asks where you live and how far you'd drive.
Join the founding families list
The Academy opens when the founding cohort is full. Families on the list get first places, help set the first year's calendar, and keep the founding rate for as long as their child is enrolled.