Interview with Prestige School - Richmond Hill Campus Alum, Liora Abrera Manoim
Liora attended the Prestige School at the Richmond Hill Campus and graduated in 2020. Thanks to her language classes, she graduated with the ability to speak a little Russian and French. She also credits Prestige for increasing her English vocabulary and improving her math skills. She also highlighted how the small class sizes at Prestige helped her to focus.
Highlights from the interview
Prestige School was exciting. There was a lot to do. The teacher always had something planned.
I managed to memorize all the lines for an entire two-hour play. I was super proud of being able to actually learn all the lines because my memory was really bad back then. I couldn't memorize anything for the life of me! And then I just started memorizing things all the time, and now my memory has improved.
It was really fun getting to see how much better I was getting at math because Prestige really motivated me. There's this math game that we used to play where we had to solve an entire sheet in one minute, and we always had to beat ourselves at it, our pastime.
I really appreciated the small class sizes because I really can't focus that well. So in the small class sizes, the teacher would get to focus on each individual student, and that really helped us progress further.
The biggest thing about Prestige School, compared to other private schools, is that I haven't really seen them teaching another language. Ours is the only one that does that as far as I'm concerned.
Prestige School is energetic because there's always a lot of things to do. We always have something planned. For every single holiday, there's always this party that we have after all the classes are done. Everyone would dress up or something. Every other Friday, we wouldn't have to wear the uniform. We could just wear whatever we wanted as long as it was within the dress code. We do a lot of fundraisers, too. So just a whole range of stuff.
The value in our education was very strong, but we also had a strong sense of community. So everyone was really friendly with each other. We called the teachers by their first names. But it was ‘Miss’ in front of it. So my English teacher, for example, would be Miss Debbie.
I was most surprised about how the different classes got along with each other because we actually got along with each other pretty well. In other schools that are really big, usually, the people tend to stay within their age group, like a year older or a year below. But with us, you don't really have much of a choice. So everyone's just friends.
There is no typical student. Everyone's very unique. You can't really put it into a stereotype.
Prestige prepared me for high school because we do a lot of work that's above our grade level. I've been doing Grade 9 work, so I guess that's what I did.
When I was seven, I was really, really upset that I had to leave my public school to go to a tiny private school and leave all my friends behind. But I realized that it was better for my education. Because when I look back on it, when I was seven, I didn't even know the abbreviation for Mr. and now my vocabulary is huge. What happened? Apparently, my English teacher happened.
Prestige has awesome field trips. We go on a field trip every month and it's awesome.
If you're struggling, being at Prestige School can really help because the teacher can really help you get further. I didn't speak any French when I was in Grade 7. Right away when I came to first year school, we started learning French. And I was like, ‘Okay, then I guess we're learning French and I guess I'm learning Russian.’
Don't be afraid to ask the teacher for help. They're always like, ‘Oh, you need help? Come here. I will help you.’ They are not a room ordnance. They are there to help you.
