Interview with Kingsway College School PARENT, Giselle Goncalves
- Name
Giselle Goncalves - Child 1
Gr. 9 (Male, Current Day Student)
Giselle, a parent of a teenage boy at Kingsway College School, talked about the school’s focus on fostering personal growth alongside academic achievement, and its supportive community. She emphasizes how the school’s commitment to understanding each student's individuality and potential has allowed her son to thrive both academically and personally, particularly during his transition from public to private education.
Highlights from the interview
The most important part was really the philosophy of the school… a whole child approach that was focused in as much on developing the person than any ideas of success as measured by exclusively grades or what schools you go to.
We went in with an expectation that it would be a good fit. As we finish Grade 9, it has not only met our expectations, but it's actually exceeded them. We have a 14-year-old boy who wakes up happy to go to school.
We wanted him to go to KCS so that he could understand who he was, maximize his contribution to the world.
When you have this community of people who care about you, it's easy to reciprocate that and grow in that environment. They see my child for who he is and they want to help him unlock his potential, they're not trying to make him be somebody who he's not, they just want him to grow into himself.
I was actually surprised how many extracurricular activities they were able to give their students access to, and many of them are actually student-led… Even if you have one child or two children who are interested, there's always a faculty member who's there to support them. That aspect of the school is growing faster, and they're able to fill needs faster than I had really anticipated they'd be able to.
[The teacher] set a high expectation for him. She said, 'I know you can do this.' She wasn't going to keep pushing on it, but she pushed enough to know this is something you should try. And opened his mind to something entirely new that he wouldn't necessarily have tried before that he saw success in.
The communication with the school is excellent. It's a Goldilocks situation, right? It's not too much, it's not too little. You feel informed... There's expectation on the child to be in charge of what's going on at school. But there's enough information that lets you know what's generally happening at the school.
I fundamentally believe that KCS … is an environment where you don't just survive. You don't have to survive high school. You can thrive in high school. You can make these big strides in figuring out who you are. And KCS is the place that is going to really help, I believe, most kids thrive through those tumultuous teenage years.
It's a community that everybody will be seen. It's a large enough community that you can grow and evolve and have enough social interaction, but it's a small enough community to help you figure out who you want to be through those years.
It's really about your child, not about your child and the fit with the school. Because if you have a great fit between your child and the school, then I think that you're going to be so much happier.
