Torch - Fall 2013

INSTITUTE AT HAVERGAL

Students From Ideas to Action

What?

Students Act Now enables each student to apply her learning to develop her view of the world, and to experience her impact in shaping her environment.

Why? How?

We shape innovative minds to enable Havergal students to be effective problem solvers anywhere, anytime with anyone.

When students enter the Forum for Change in the Upper School, or the Learning Hub in the Junior School on Thursdays at lunch, they share their ideas.

We work with them using Ready, Set, Dream: Thinking Your Ideas to Action to get at the heart of their ideas, to understand their strengths and their values and to help them build a team to take their ideas and put them in to action. As students travel

their journeys with us, their ideas evolve and become more complex. Students can track the evolution of their journeys by setting up eportfolios on www.mindmeister.com.

Evolving Ideas

Girls Helping Girls Last year’s recipient of the Student Innovation Award, Susanna Manziaris, has teamed up with her sister Linda’s jewelry- making business, Body Bijou (www.bodybijou.com), to help raise more support for girls’ scholarships in Kenya, Jamaica and South Africa. This is social entrepreneurship at its best— focusing on the power of young women to bring change to the world. Visit www.girlshelpinggirls.ca for more information. Dance for Life When Alessandra (Ali) Scaini could not dance due to injury, she decided to take her love of dance into the community. After spending last spring exploring many possibilities and limitations, she decided to start an after-school dance club at our partner school, Grenoble Public School. Starting this fall, Ali and a group of students will teach dance while other Havergal students participate in the long-standing homework club. Ali transformed her love of dance—and her belief in its power—from a personal loss to a collective gain.

Syrian Child Refugees Children are suffering in refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey. This situation disturbed Grade 4 students Jennipher, Elayna and Abby. In conversations with the Institute, the students turned their worries into a compelling story to which their schoolmates could relate. They shared their story in Junior School Prayers and persuaded fellow students to dedicate the proceeds of a pizza lunch to UNICEF’s work to build a school in the Zataari camp in Jordan.

TEDxHavergalCollege

A student group organized this event, Life as Don’t Know It —featuring unique individuals with inspiring ideas to change the world—which was held in the Legacy Theatre on November 16.

Want to follow these ideas as they evolve? We will be following up with these students in an upcoming issue of The Torch to share the evolution and progress of their stories and ideas.

FALL 2013  THE TORCH 11