A Different School of Thought: Introducing Greenwood’s 2026-2027 Academic Focuses

As Greenwood's Academics Team, we are keen to share our 2026-2027 Areas of Academic Focus. These focuses are rooted in Greenwood’s mission, vision and new 10-year strategic plan, A Different School of Thought, which Principal Heather Thomas launched at last month’s Curriculum Night and addressed in her “From the Principal's Office” message. They are also informed by current educational research and best practices, evolving societal trends and valuable feedback from our community. At the heart of each focus is our enduring commitment to personalized learning, which anchors our academic program, ensures classroom activities provide appropriate choice, challenge and support, enables strong community development and develops competency, capacity and confidence in our students. We have already begun actively working on moving these focuses forward and are confident they will positively impact student learning and skill development.

This year’s Five Areas of Academic Focus are: 

1. Redesigning Evaluations with AI in Mind
   1. Teachers are reworking and improving assessment and evaluation strategies to ensure that evaluated work is directly supervised and provides accurate feedback on student achievement of the curriculum and evaluated skills. This focus acknowledges the impact of AI on evaluation and helps to preserve the incentive for students to learn deeply while still supporting appropriate technology use and skill development.
2. Supporting, Challenging and Causing Students to Develop Durable Skills
   1. Teachers and Advisers are focusing on intentionally building the skills of resilience, collaboration and communication in students as they navigate a future of potentially rapid change and uncertainty. With the right structures, feedback and intentionality, critical skills can be developed through the study of curriculum. 
3. Building a Classroom Culture of High Expectations
   1. We strive to provide appropriate curricular rigour through task complexity, depth of thinking, breadth and depth of reading and by setting high expectations for communication skill development. These high expectations for students also extend to the development of their learning skills, the management of their behaviour and the progressive accountability they take for their own learning. Each student should be appropriately challenged and supported in a personalized way.
4. Fostering and Modeling Intellectual Character
   1. Intellectual character development builds curiosity, reflection, truth-seeking, humility and a love for learning. Classroom activities intentionally built around high-impact thinking routines (like considering different viewpoints or reasoning with evidence) allow students to develop these skills alongside the acquisition of  curricular knowledge. Importantly, these intellectual character skills are transferable across subjects and domains and support a lifetime of intellectual exploration.
5. Considering and Reflecting on Lesson Effectiveness
   1. Continuous reflection by educators on the effectiveness of their lessons drives teacher growth and best supports student learning and skill development. Teachers are encouraged to reflect on lesson elements including student engagement, degree of personalization, effectiveness of assessment tools and ability of students to demonstrate lesson objectives.

At Greenwood, ongoing professional growth has always been fundamental to our culture. To support staff in moving these Areas of Academic Focus forward, we've launched a professional development program called Academic Focus Target Time (AFTT). Here, teachers meet in subject teams on eight Wednesday mornings throughout the year to delve deeply into an area of focus that most profoundly speaks to their department’s priorities. Teams are led by our Subject Team Leaders and provide opportunities for teachers to collaborate on best practices, measure the impact of their work and provide vision-rooted feedback to each other. What is discussed and developed during AFTT will further Greenwood’s work as leaders in personalized learning, encourage a continuous growth mindset in our teachers, and help us effectively adapt to external factors impacting education.

Starting with November’s issue of Life @ Greenwood, the Academics Team will highlight stories from around the school in which students and staff are engaging with each of the Academic Focuses.

The Academics Team is: Elanna Robson, Vice-Principal, Student Learning; Ryan Vachon, Director, Academics and Pluralism; and Sarah Cooper, Research Chair, Teaching & Personalized Learning | Coordinator, Academics.