Roundtable Q&A Discussion About Lynn-Rose School (2024)
Lynn-Rose School alumni, current students, and parents shared their insights on the school’s culture, values, strengths, and weaknesses. Hear what Amber Gill, Seema Gill had to say about the school.
Highlights from the Q&A discussion
Amber Gill — alum
An alumna of Lynn-Rose School, Amber highlights the school’s tight-knit community as a defining aspect of her experience and talks about how the school fostered leadership, effective communication, and a supportive environment that allowed her to voice her thoughts and bring ideas to life. She shares her thoughts on how the teachers and her peers were always encouraging, making her feel heard and empowered.
One of the things that I think is worth mentioning is the tight-knit community, which I believe was something that I found very wonderful going to Lynn-Rose in my time and where I believe every individual is encouraged to showcase their leadership skills in a way and even communicate effectively with their peers and teachers. I also think it's a place that I was able to voice my matters, and they were heard, and if it was something that we could take action for, we were able to as a community. I also found that it was a very supporting and empowering environment always, whether it was with teachers or my peers.
I always had that support system, which I think is truly the highlight of my time at Lynn-Rose, because I found I was always able to bring across an idea, and it would never be shut down.
I think that balancing educational rigour and play and exploration was a core aspect in the school's approach. Because when I was studying there through hands-on learning experiences and interactive projects and creative activities, there was always an essence of a lesson behind each thing.
One of the key memories that I have from just being in the classroom was the fact that I was able to sit down and do my work and have that element of discipline and just reinforcing that. Teachers would reinforce the fact that you should study and focus on your own work and give you that individual learning experience, but also being able to work with groups and talk to other peers around me and complete projects with them together.
Leaving the options open for university is definitely something I noticed … I definitely did appreciate coming down and going into university. What if children don't choose to go to university. And I think leaving those options and leaving those different learning ways for students to just figure out what they like is something that I think is really important as well.
The students all eventually come together and you start to accept differences or learn differences about other people.
I think that these decisions for a smaller class size were made for teachers to be able to personalize their attention and cater to each student in a very personal and closer level than a lot of schools that I've been to in the past. If that means deviating from traditional academic and school structures, I feel like that is something I would put over all of that, because at the end of the day, I was able to really get the support I needed.
Seema Gill — current parent
Seema is a parent of an alumna and a current student at Lynn-Rose School. Here she shares her perspective on the importance of balancing education with mental health support, sharing her positive experience with how the school nurtures children through both academic and personal challenges.
Any time I had a question and needed to reach out, my concerns were responded to with a great degree of proactivity.
It was really important for me to know that the attention from the teachers wouldn't deteriorate in any way and that the child was still being noticed. Not just for their good work, but anything that they were not perhaps good at and really bring that to the parents' attention so that work could be done where needed. So that, I felt, is a very good thing about the school that I would highly recommend to parents.
Right from the moment that you step into the school, the warmth that you get with the front desk … Just that vibrance, the smiles, that is very good.
Every year when the school basically has an event that tells parents about the school, you can see it's not orchestrated. It's just [naturally] flowing well. And you can tell them everything sits well and everything is shared transparently.
The teachers ... give the right amount of support. They give her the confidence to be able to do well.
Lynn-Rose School really infuses the sense of the bigger picture into the child's mind. It's not just about attending school, getting your grades, and getting on with a job in your life, and just thinking about yourself and the money that you're going to make, the broader picture.
The school does offer a variety of those thought processes, encouraging the child to do better and better and pick up newer opportunities.
