Senior School - Reaching new heights

From Thursday, April 11 to Tuesday, April 16 Zaki Lakhani ’20 represented STS and Canada at the 31st World’s Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships held at Branksome Hall, an independent girl’s school in Toronto.

After twenty years of teaching in six different schools, I have worked with thousands of students of various ages, in various settings, and have always hoped that I'm making a positive impact in these young peoples' lives. Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School (STS) is the first school where I regularly see tangible evidence of this positive impact because it is the first place I've taught where it is the norm for student-teacher relationships to extend beyond the student's Grade 12 year; and where it is the norm for teachers and students to share life experiences. 

On Saturday, April 27, the Senior Reach for the Top team attended the 2019 Provincial Reach Tournament hosted by the Renert School in Calgary.

On Friday, April 12 the Science (Chemistry) and Art department celebrated an exciting event. 2019 is the 150th year of the Periodic Table and thanks to Mr. Hoffman’s initiative, our Art 10 class has participated in an international competition to re-design the Periodic Table

As part of our ongoing work to support our students, we had puppies visit on campus this week for our Senior School students. 

Technology-integrated learning at Strathcona-Tweedsmuir (STS) focuses on the 5 C's: collaboration, communication, critical thinking and computational thinking. The STS curriculum teaches students to be digitally-literate through the introduction of the fifth 'C', computational thinking. STS recognizes that proper technology integration and education is about the design of the learning experiences that not only help students strengthen their digital abilities, but to also help students think critically about what tool best enables their learning in different situations. 

By Ms. Jana-Lynn Caines, University Counsellor at STS

Given the extensive news coverage regarding the college admissions scandal in the United States, many are questioning ethics in the university admission process.

STS qualified as one of four Canadian teams to compete at Finals Day in Oxford this past weekend. The team of Zaki L. ’20 and Chelli S. ’19 were one of 116 teams to compete at the prestigious tournament that plays host to the best debaters in the United Kingdom (U.K.), Western Europe, Hong Kong, and the United States.

This past week we continued the work of two STS alumni, Scott Wilson ’15 and Myles Chase ’15, who created Open Arms to promote mental health awareness

It is a commonly known fact that many people fear public speaking more than death, but you will not hear STS students sharing this sentiment, due to the culture of public speaking that has evolved over our long history. 

Senior debate students Chelli Shapiro ’19 and Zaki Lakhani ’20 are one of four Canadian teams traveling to the U.K. to participate in the Oxford Finals Day at the Oxford Union.

On February 10, Stephanie P. ’20, Kirk S. ’20, Griffin E.B. ’20 and Zaki L. ’20 travelled to St. John’s Ravenscourt School in Winnipeg to compete in the Senior National Public Speaking Competition.

On Saturday, February 2, STS hosted 330 people for the Provincial Speech Tournament. This final tournament of the year qualifies students for both the junior and senior national speech tournaments. For the first time this year, Alberta is able to send 14 representatives to the National Tournament and we are pleased to announce that 9 of the 14 students attending will be from STS and in the senior division, 4 of the 7 students representing Alberta are from Strathcona-Tweedsmuir!