Co-op Corner: At the Real Estate Office, Independent School and Accounting Firm

Greenwood students are consistently engaged in learning opportunities both in and out of the classroom, and “Creating Opportunities Through Co-op” combines both facets of learning into one course. Students choose their placements at the start of the course, attending classroom lessons every Wednesday and travelling to their placements Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings. 

The course encourages students to develop interpersonal and research skills, which they engage in naturally through their placements and the course’s integration days. A personalized placement learning plan is created during the course and allows for students to manage what experiences they get out of their placements and the goals they set for themselves throughout the course. 

For its next three issues, Life @ Greenwood will highlight 9 students in the co-op course and their experiences working at their placements. In this issue, Jack Danef ‘27, Leland Galloway ‘27 and Joshua Monson ‘27 share their thoughts on the course and what their day-to-day is like at their placements. 

Stay tuned for more Co-Op Corner stories in the coming months!

CBRE - a commercial real estate company 

I work as a contractor at a worldwide real estate company, CBRE. At this institution, we at CBRE intend to lease anything from office buildings to apartments/condos and retail buildings to big-name companies, like Reddit or even Chipotle. I work downtown Toronto at the King location.

My role at the company is to fill out mass databases with client information, which the other brokers can use to contact key members at these companies to potentially strike a deal to rent or lease out a space. I also create slideshows for different properties and listings, labelling amenities, office space/building size and more. These listings are then shown to clients to help give them a gist of what they are purchasing.

These experiences/skills mentioned above will help me in my future life, as I am lucky enough to be able to be in an office space at such a young age and see how it all works. I am also meeting people, and my supervisor has been encouraging me to get coffee with one person a week. This will set me up for good future connections and could lead to opportunities beyond school in the future.

Montcrest School, Physical Education Department

One nonnegotiable skill that’s super important is patience. I mostly work with younger grades, and patience is key when handling situations with those kids. 

This position has also helped me develop my communication skills. Explaining learning goals in a clear manner is essential, especially when working with younger students. My goal when communicating with these kids is to make it easy to understand, avoiding frustration.

SBLR LLP - an accounting firm 

I work at SBLR LLP, which is a mid-sized accounting firm at Yonge and Eglinton. They generally work with small to mid-sized businesses and do many types of accounting, from audits to taxes and much more.

For the past couple of weeks, I learned the basics of QuickBooks and also how to complete T5s, which is a statement of investment income; both of which I had no clue about before this. I’ve now been assigned a few T5s to complete and I’m sure much of what I’m doing probably sounds boring, but trust me, it’s quite interesting. 

Ultimately, all of the skills that I am developing right now will be useful in my life after Greenwood. Any work needed to be completed in university or a job will need to be submitted on time and effective prioritization will definitely be my friend in making that happen.