Equity, Diversity, and Social Justice
The Grove values the contributions of all members of our diverse community of students, staff, parents/guardians, and other community members. We are committed to creating a school that challenges individual and systemic biases that cause inequality, including racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination.
We strive to ensure that our curriculum “accurately reflects and uses the variety of knowledge of all peoples as the basis for instruction; … it actively provides opportunities for all students to understand the factors that cause inequity in society, and to understand the similarities, differences, and the connections between different forms of discrimination; and … [our curriculum] helps students to acquire the skills and knowledge that enable them to challenge unjust practices, and to build positive human relationships among their fellow students, and among all members of the society.” (TDSB Equity Foundation Statement)
The Grove is committed to an approach to teaching and learning that seeks to raise learners’ awareness of social justice and injustice. Our goal is to enable learners to recognize connections between their individual experiences and the social contexts in which they occur. We are particularly concerned with reconfiguring those remnants of the traditional student/teacher relationship where the teacher is the ‘one who knows’, and the students are the passive recipients of the teacher’s knowledge.
The intended outcome is to support the whole community to be able to recognize and critically engage all forms of social injustice, and to learn and work together towards democratic transformation and positive social change.
The Grove is founded on the belief that the quality of children’s learning and their ability to realize their life potential is intimately related to the health and wellness of their interconnected ecological and social environments. As a result, we see sustainability and social justice education as inextricably linked.
The community-centred, experiential, and democratic nature of The School’s pedagogy is evident in our approach to environmental education. Students learn in, about, and for the environment. Environmental education at the Grove is inter and multi-disciplinary. It is about values, attitudes, ethics, and actions, rather than a separate subject or an ‘add-on’. It is a way of thinking and a way of practice. As the School develops its unique curriculum, students at The Grove increasingly will learn the principles of ecological literacy through concrete experiences and community engagement. Moreover, the curriculum will take students beyond human-centered communities and will strive to connect students and their families with the natural communities in which they are embedded.
Community Engagement & Activism
While we seek to nourish the individual needs of all students, The Grove is a community-centred school in which students, parents/guardians, teachers, and community members work and learn together in a cooperative, consensus-building way to solve real problems. We both support the needs of students enrolled in the school and endeavour to build a hub of community learning. We encourage family members to contribute to a culture of investigation, curiosity, and involvement that includes parent-led committees and working groups, events, and fundraising activities, weekly “Grove Gatherings”, soup making, after school clubs, gardening, parenting workshops, and classroom volunteer opportunities.
The Grove’s community-centered education prepares students and the broader school community to learn for deep understanding by moving them beyond memorizing facts to evaluating the social and environmental significance of what they are learning. Student learning focuses on authentic problems and solutions that encourage collaboration and cooperation, because learners experience the reality that real-life problems often are too complex for one person to solve alone.
We also seek to collaborate with the families of Alexander Muir/Gladstone (AMG) on a variety of projects, thus extending The Grove’s sense of community as we all learn from each other. For example, it is our school’s policy that, whenever feasible, any projects, field trips or educational resources of The Grove Community School will be open to AMG as well, so that all students benefit from any foundation grants, fund raising, and other resources that may accrue to us at the Grove due to the activist nature of our school.
Action projects at The Grove are designed to meet the multi-faceted needs of students and families and promote positive relationships with and in the local community. In this way, we strive to live up to our chosen designation as a ‘Community School’ and to play a vital role in the life of our neighbourhood—as a dynamic hub for social justice, culture, and community service, as well as environmentally-focused education.