"From Worst to First" The story of Maple Leaf

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=12 BGCOLOR="#666699" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="04900840erlcjm.gif"> <bR> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=149 BGCOLOR="#000099" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="04311c00erkqpg.gif"> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id49.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="About Maple Leaf Public School"><U><B><IMG SRC="3906a1f0.jpg" border=0 width="106" height="31" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id48.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="News and Events "><U><B><IMG SRC="3926c1e0.jpg" border=0 width="108" height="30" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id47.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Us "><U><B><IMG SRC="0fc69220.gif" border=0 width="105" height="34" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A></div> <div> <B> <a href="HTMLobj-719/Mov00071.mpg" target="_blank"><img src="HTMLobj-719/acebutton4.jpg" alt="CLICK HERE " height="77" width="110"></a>  </B></div> <div> <B>click on the picture</B></div> <div> <B>to view video clip</B></div> <div> <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#9999FF" FACE="Arial" ><B>   </B></FONT><B>                                          </B><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#3333CC" FACE="Arial" ><B>    </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#9999FF" FACE="Comic Sans MS" ><B> </B></FONT><B> </B><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#3333CC" FACE="Arial" ><B> </B></FONT></div> </td> <td valign="top" height=468 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <IMG SRC="2a85f1c0.jpg" border=0 width="351" height="28" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">     </div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id52.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Morning Assembly/Ace Program"><U>Morning Assembly/Ace Program</U></A>   <A HREF="id41.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Look of Success"><U>The Look of Success</U></A><A HREF="id41.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Look of Success"><U> </U></A>  <A HREF="id42.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="We Celebrate All Cultures"><U>We Celebrate all Cultures</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id35.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Synopsis"><U><B><IMG SRC="10c6b1c0.jpg" border=0 width="107" height="28" ALT="Sysnopsis" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><B> </B><A HREF="id43.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="What We Provide "><U><B><IMG SRC="10d6b1c0.jpg" border=0 width="107" height="28" ALT="What we Provide " ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><B> </B><A HREF="id44.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Open Court in Detail "><U><B><IMG SRC="10e6b1c0.jpg" border=0 width="107" height="28" ALT="Open Court in Detail " ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><B> </B><A HREF="id45.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Tour of Maple Leaf Public School"><U><B><IMG SRC="10f6b1c0.jpg" border=0 width="107" height="28" ALT="School Tour " ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><B> </B><A HREF="id51.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="About Principals"><U><B><IMG SRC="215821c0.jpg" border=0 width="130" height="28" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><A HREF="id46.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="School Wide Approach"><U><B><IMG SRC="110ca1c0.jpg" border=0 width="202" height="28" ALT="Scholl Wide Approach" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><B><IMG SRC="10b680f0.jpg" border=0 width="360" height="15" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><IMG SRC="2daa61c0.jpg" border=0 width="166" height="28" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">                                              </B></div> <div> <B> <IMG SRC="0e90c0c0.gif" border=0 width="12" height="12" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"> </B><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Comic Sans MS" ><B>"From Worst to First" The story of Maple Leaf</B></FONT></div> <div> <B>    </B></div> <div> <B>    The Globe & Mail DEC/9/2000</B></div> <bR> <div>      At  8:30 every morning, the kids start pouring into Toronto's Maple Leaf Public School. Nearly all of them live in Fallstafff apartments, a cheerless Ontario Housing project in northwestern Toronto. Their families are at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap. Most<IMG SRC="35acc410.jpg" border=0 width="204" height="321" ALIGN="RIGHT" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"> are mother-led and the average household income is $21,000. Ninety per cent of the school's 491 kids are nonwhite. Their parents are from Jamaica, Ghana, Somalia, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and El Salvador, and parental literacy rates are low.</div> <div>    By every external measure, these kids should be failing. Instead their academic performance is among the very best in the province. These deprived children read and write far better then kids in the city's most privileged upper-middle-class neighborhoods.</div> <bR> <div>    How did it happen? I went there to find out. <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="id51.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="About Principals"><U>Maple Leaf's Principal is Elizabeth Sinclair </U></A></FONT>Artwell, an exceptional leader with a broad small and a cherry red headband. She told me what the school was back in the early `90s.</div> <div>    “ It had a terrible reputation,” she says. “ Teachers didn't want to come here. The kids fought all the time. Parents were so irate, they tried to pull their kids out. Of all the schools in North York we tested last -89 out of 89. The school was so bad, they wanted to close it.”</div> <div>     Liz Artwell was part of the turnaround team. She was vice principal then. She and the principal, who has since moved on, adopted a two- part approach. The first part was to create a positive learning environment. The second part was to make sure the kids learned how to read.</div> <bR> <div>    School starts everyday with a big assembly in the gym. It is designed to settle down the kids and deliver a heavy dose of positive reinforcement. “We are focused, self-disciplined and ready to learn!” the kids chant. On the wall is a large portrait of a black Canadian hockey player named Herb Carnegie, who was shut out of the NHL because of his color and went on to develop a motivational program aimed at minority kids. It's called ACES (attitude, Cooperation, Example, Sportsmanship). There are ACE chants and songs and ACE cheers, which are interwoven into every aspect of school life. “ Herb's our school mascot,” says Ms. Artwell. “ It's very simple. Who wouldn't want to be an ACE?”</div> <bR> <div>    At Maple Leaf, every kid learns the link between learning and success. They learn that every book they read and every story they write is money in there future bank account.  Ms. Artwell's second challenge was to teach the kids to read and write.” Many of our kids in grade five were reading at a Grade two level,” she remembers. She did some homework and discovered a phonics-based reading program called Open Court, which she saw in use at a small-town Ontario Catholic school. “The school was all white, but it was also poor.” The program is popular in the United States but has made a few inroads in Ontario, where most school boards have a deep-seated allergy to phonics.</div> <bR> <div>     “ We brought it for one kindergarten and one Grade 1 class as a pilot project,” she recalls. “ We started on October. By February, the parents demanded a meeting. They asked, “How come my kid in Grade 1 is reading better than my kid in Grade 4?' “</div> <bR> <div>    Today, the whole school is on the program. I asked about the war over phonics versus whole-language instruction.Reading is reading,” she says. “ I believe in whatever works.”</div> <bR> <div>      At Maple Leaf, the kindergartens have reading instructions fours days a week. The school is print-rich, with words and word lists on the blackboards, the walls, the halls, words everywhere. Ninety per cent of the kids read at grade level, and many read a grade or two above their level. “ It's criminal if they leave us, and they can't  read, Ms Artwell says.</div> <bR> <div>     This week, all the Toronto schools' Grade 3 test results were published. Maple leaf scored 75 in reading and 82 in writing, which means that 75 per cent and 82 per cent of the kids scored at the top two out of four levels.</div> <bR> <div>     Here are the scores for several well-off schools in rich parts of town, where the average family income is four or five times what it is in the Fallstaff housing project: 45 and 57: 73 and 69: 71 and 68; 50 and 42.</div> <bR> <div>   A big part of Maple Leaf's success is it's gifted leader. Born in St. Kitt's Artwell grew up in the slums of Leeds. She never thought she could be anything until, at 19 she went back to the island for a few months and saw black people on positions of responsibility. She decided to become a teacher and, in 1980,, applied to come to Canada. We didn't want teachers then. So she omitted her teaching qualifications and got in as a cook.</div> <bR> <div>    Ms Artwell hires teachers for their nurturing skills and their commitment to helping kids learn. If they've got that she can teach them to teach. Today, teachers ask to be placed in her school.</div> <bR> <div>    Ontario's public school system is a battlefield, filled with poisonous labour relations, stressed- out teachers, angry parents, and failing kids. Maple Leaf School has somehow risen above all that, and is giving kids an education that parents in much better neighborhoods ought to envy. They should also start to ask some hard questions about their school systems.</div> <bR> <div>   “If you miss a year or two of reading,” says Ms. Artwell, “you never get it back.” It's a festive season at Maple Leaf.</div> <bR> <div>      You name it, they celebrate it: <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="id42.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="We Celebrate All Cultures"><U>Chanukah, Posada, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Ramadan.</U></A></FONT></div> <div>  The school staff are rounding up 491 toys, one for each kid to take home the last day before vacation. For some of them, it's the only toy they'll get.</div> <div>  “What kind of day are you going to have today?' Ms. Artwell asks a little boy heading of to class with a knapsack on his back.</div> <div>   “Excellent!” he replies.  </div> <div> <B>hool</B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" > Margaret </FONT><B>From worst to first: T</B></div> <div> <IMG SRC="2cc5b150.gif" border=0 width="603" height="21" ALT="Adobe Photoshop Image" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="2ca5b150.gif" border=0 width="603" height="21" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>