Last week, Grade 5 students had the opportunity to visit Crawford Lake and learn about the life of the First Nations peoples and the property itself which is connected to their unit studied in Social Studies.

It was a fun and educational trip filled with exploring longhouses and artifacts, playing lacrosse, grinding corn, learning about the "three sisters", getting to know some facts about the geography of the area and hiking through the grounds.

The students were also able to participate in a ceremony by tieing a red ribbon around a tree on the grounds to commemorate the survivors and victims of the residential school system, followed by a moment of silence. A truly inspiring and educational trip.

This morning in French class, Grade 2 students learned that computers will always do what you tell them to do, but not necessarily what you want them to do. By working with Bee-Bots (robots that introduce children to coding and computational thinking), the students practiced newly-learned vocabulary while coding! French teacher Mme Wertman would call out where the Bee Bot should go next. The students would find the corresponding picture and then take turns coding Bee Bot to get him to the correct image.

On Saturday, members of the High School Athletic Association raked leaves at 15 houses in the school community! The event was an effort to raise money for the Woodland Cultural Centre's Save the Evidence campaign - which "raises awareness and support for the restoration of the former Mohawk Institute Residential School, and to develop the building into an Interpreted Historic Site and Educational Resource." 

In addition to raising awareness of how a simple action of raking leaves can support Truth and Reconciliation, the students also raised $380. By keeping the memories alive of the harmful impact that residential schools had on many Indigenous children, we are hopeful that the same mistakes will never be made again.

Special thanks to our friends at Back Road Coffee Roasters - who donated free hot chocolate for the event!

With yesterday's field trip to the Toronto Zoo still fresh in their memories, students in Mrs. Leung's Grade 1 class worked on their journal entries this morning. The children took this opportunity to reflect on their first field trip of the year as they continued with their unit on "African Animals".

Intermediate Division student council elections were held this week. We are pleased to announce the winners! 

2021/2022 Intermediate Division Student Council:

Prime Ministers: Luke Hogan & Nayha Gill
Deputy Prime Minister: Michael Kis
Grade 6 Ministers: Taiga Bartram & Andrew Gornall
Grade 5 Ministers: Ronav Sharma & Ezaan Jessani

Congratulations winners! Thank you to everyone who took part!

Pictured (from left): Ronav, Ezaan, Luke, Michael, Nayha, Taiga, Andrew

The Mentor College High School Senior Tie Award recognizes the outstanding students who strive for academic excellence, take part in many of the extracurricular opportunities, lead by example, and exemplify life as a student in our school community.

The recipients of this award are students who have attended Mentor College for Grades 9 through 11 and who have normally earned 100 points. Points must be earned in each of the four categories: Academic Honours, Cultural Involvement, Volunteer/Leadership, and Athletics. The students pictured above were presented with the prestigious school tie November 1st, and are permitted to wear this distinction throughout the year in lieu of the standard Black Watch tie.

As Mr. Whyte always says about this tie award, “the students who win this prestigious award are those who you will see earn top scholarships and admissions to outstanding universities. Those universities are forever searching for aspiring academics who show well-roundedness in contributions to the school, arts, athletics and community”.

Pictured (from left): Yulu Jiang, Sarah Rabie, Simrit Sekhon, Vikesh Mistry, Julia King, Jessie Yang, Livia Whynott, Romina Sedighy, Michael Antoniadis, Ayana Nathakumar, Yeraz Tahtadjian, Andrew Feng, Sydney Gutelius, (absent: Chloe Attard)

Congratulations to the Tie Award Winners of 2021!

For the past two weeks, Grade 11 Healthy Active Living students have been learning about the sport of wheelchair basketball. In addition to the upper-body training, students have also gained a deeper respect for the daily experience of those who use a wheelchair every day. 

To help introduce the subject, Mr. Miller invited ONPARA athlete ambassador Shawn Courchesne to speak to the classes. Mr. Courchesne taught the students the rules of wheelchair basketball and shared his story about a snowmobile accident that broke his back when he was 17 years old. He now plays/coaches with Team Ontario and is involved in other wheelchair sports such as tennis.

Classes continue their wheelchair basketball practice this week.

Many of us started projects at the beginning of the pandemic and didn't stick with it but Class of 2016 grads Emily Crowe, Marissa Parker, and Tracy Wu have kept a wonderful project alive. "Sending You Sunshine" is a project that sends handwritten cards of support to seniors in care homes. These amazing grads were featured on CityTV this morning!

We are so pleased to see our students on the rink! This morning, Mr. Sweeney had the boys in his PPL2O class on the ice - with several of the students on skates for the first time! Well done! Scheduled class skates continue through the week. 

We are celebrating our 40th anniversary this year by sharing memories and telling our story. We are proud to share with you the first instalment in this series of videos that looks back on Mentor College & TEAM School.

Watch the first instalment of the video!

With the return of extracurriculars, the high school Junior Band was able to assemble for a full band practice Thursday after school. Mr. D'Aguilar impressed upon the band members what a privelege it was that they were finally able to get back to playing music together before the band broke right into "Star Wars", followed by "Frogs"! 

Congratulations alpine skiers for a clean sweep!

The team brought home four trophies and seven medals after competing at the 2022 ROPSSAA Championships. The athletes are skilled, the team has bonded perfectly, and the results are fantastic. The Mentor Level 1 Girls', Level 1 Boys', Level 1 Combined, and Level 2 Boys' teams won first place in their respective categories.

Individual performances were outstanding with three gold medal finishes from Ashley Gillis, Daniel Merkley, and Sohan Rasul. There were also two silver medal finishes from Alexander Hamblin and Elliot Botelho, and two bronze medals from Steven Wang and Avery Palleschi.

The team had an extraordinary season. Beyond the trophies and medals, the coaches are extremely proud of the sportsmanship and positive attitude shown by every athlete; they all helped, cheered, and supported each other.

Well done, skiers!

We are celebrating our 40th anniversary this year by sharing memories and telling our story. We are happy to share episode 2 with you! In this instalment, we hear about the connections formed between staff and students and the beginning of a school community!

Watch the video!

We love the creativity and spirit our High School students and staff have shown today for Anything But A Backpack Day!

Almost 70 students attended archery practices this spring and Mr. Whyte was desperately seeking assistance. With the help of Mr. Starkey, a post was made in the Alumni Facebook group and 10 past archers offered to help at Saturday morning practices.

This past Saturday our team was coached by past Mentor archers, some of which were ROPSSAA and OFSAA Champions!

Mr. Whyte and the current team are very grateful to this group of alumni who are "giving back" to a sport they love.

Pictured left to right: Mr. Whyte, Ashley Whyte (2016), Alex Dow (2013), Carsen Cormier (2019), Azim Naqvi (2021), and Kaitlin McDowell (2018)

We leave you this week with a video recap of last Friday's Relay For Life event. We are so proud of our Grade 11 Leadership students for organizing this event - which surpassed all expectations by raising over $50,000 for cancer research. Great job, Ms. Young and students! Thank you to all students who participated! Lastly, thank you to all of the sponsors for their generous support! Video editor: Mr. Brewster, Cinematography: Andrew Feng, Aisha Biabani, Hilary Wong, and Mr. Brewster

We wish you an enjoyable and restful long weekend!

Watch the Relay For Life video!

Grade 4s took a trip across the field this morning to visit the Main Campus. The Grade 5 tour guides welcomed the Grade 4s and showed them around the school - introducing them to the people and places that will be part of their daily life next year in Grade 5!

Grade 11 Leadership classes are heading north for the weekend! The students and their teachers will be spending the weekend at the Outdoor Education Centre in Gravenhurst - where they will have the opportunity to apply the skills they have been learning in class. We wish them a successful trip!

The junior boys' badminton team dominated in their ROPSSAA Finals game Friday, ending a perfect winning season with a 7-0 victory against Harold Brathwaite Secondary School. The team clinched ROPSSAA badminton gold for the first time in Mentor history!

The boys improved steadily over the course of the year and were dedicated to their craft, waking up early for 7:00 am training sessions at least twice per week. Special shout out goes to David Ding, who went a perfect 15-0 in his matches this season. Coaches Simpson and Robbins are proud of the squad and wish them all the best next season!

Top Row (left to right): Mr. Simpson, Oliver Cormier, Dilan Patel, Eric Christiansen, William Zhao, Jeffrey Liu, Herman Saini

Bottom Row (left to right): Kibo Nagasaki, Shiven Taneja, David Ding, Zeu Kim, Andy Chen, Matthew Guo

We are proud to announce that Grade 10 student Raad Khan placed 7th in Ontario at the HOSA Spring Leadership Conference. HOSA (Future Health Professionals, formerly Health Occupations Students of America) is a global student-led organization, whose mission is to promote career opportunities in the health industry.

Raad competed in the sports medicine event - which involved both a written component and a practical component. This was his second year as a member of our HOSA group and are excited to see what next year will bring.