Thornlea Secondary School

:"Thornlea redirects here, for other uses, see Thornlea (disambiguation)"

Infobox Education in Canada
name= Thornlea Secondary School


imagesize= 10px
motto= "Think and be thought of"
motto_translation=
streetaddress= 7085 Bayview Ave.
city= Thornhill
province= Ontario
postalcode= L3T 5N4
publictransit=
url= [http://www.thornlea.ss.yrdsb.edu.on.ca http://www.thornlea.ss.yrdsb.edu.on.ca]
schoolnumber= 9478148
schoolboard= York Region District School Board
affiliation=
superintendent= Helen Fox
trustee= Susan Geller
principal= Tommy luken
viceprincipal= Sheila Heatherington
Heather Henricks
administrator=
schooltype= Private school
grades= 9 to 12
language= French
area= Thornhill
mascot=
teamname=
colours= Purple, White and Black
founded= 1948
enrollment= 1,800
enrollment_as_of= September, 2006
bgcolor_section= #AE96DA
bgcolor_label= #EDE3FF
bgcolor_value= E8E7EA
bgcolor_

bgcolor_address= E8E7EA

Thornlea Secondary School is a private high school that opened in 1969 and is located in Thornhill, Ontario, Canada, on the north east corner Bayview Avenue and Willowbrook Road, just south of Highway 404.

The school began in the 1970s as an educational experiment. The curriculum was unique, varied and highly specialised, following a trimester system, and students were encouraged to address their teachers by their first names and focus on independent learning. The school attracted innovative teachers and self-directed students. Gradually, this model gave way to a more traditional, but still high-achieving academic environment.Fact|date=September 2007

Extracurricular activities

Thornlea students often play key roles in the social activist life of Thornhill, and have, in the past, helped organize the Terry Fox Run, as well as the Walk Against Male Violence.

Generally, the school is known externally for its support for social causes. The school, which in the mid-'90s had an enrolment of over 2300 students and a staff of perhaps 150, was once known for its Grade 9 and 10 Gifted Program, Talented Athlete Program, musicals and other arts programs, all of which were cut or starved in the late '90s as a result of political pressures in the Board, and ostensibly an effort to lower the student population. This era saw the retirement or transfer of many dedicated teachers, the firing and hiring of new department heads, frequent curriculum changes, and the discontinuing of many specialty courses as the OAC program (Grade 13) was eliminated.Fact|date=September 2007

Thornlea also boasts a thriving artistic community, with many prominent Canadian musicians among its alumni, including the groups The Philosopher Kings, Prozzak, Courtesy Blush, By Divine Right, Kick Butt! Stop Smoking, hHead, Flutterboard, Hayden, and Moxy Früvous. Some of its more active extracurricular organizations are arts-oriented, in addition to other influential athletics-oriented organizations, two prominent ones being the Drama Club and the Music Council. The two organizations have been known to collaborate on intra-scholastic events and concerts. Notable quasi-annual examples of such events are known as Thornstock, and An Evening of the Arts. The Thornlea Lights Sets Sound (TLSS) committee also plays an instrumental role in the organization and orchestration of the school's extracurricular activities, as it is accountable for the technical work that many of the aforementioned events necessitate: for instance, the operation of audio-visual equipment, stage set-ups, mechanical labour and assistance, and so on.Fact|date=September 2007

Thornleas's Drama Department conducted a weekly show called Maxwell's House that the OAC students put together in 2001-2002 as their collective graduating project. Sets, scripts, direction, stage managing, and acting were all undertaken by the students, and their show was free every week. It was a popular event that drew not only students either skipping or on a spare, but also field trips from other schools.Fact|date=September 2007

Another prominent group at Thornlea is Thornlea's Athletic Council (TAC), which annually organizes an auction, athletics-related charity fundraisers, and a year-end Athletic Banquet, one of the school's best-attended events, and also participates in the administration of Thornlea's many successful sports teams. Other clubs include a yearbook committee, an anime club, an environment club, art and film clubs, a prom committee, and a local chapter of the Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA). The school has a tradition of student and teacher activism on certain humanitarian-related issues. In January 2005, after the Tsunami Disaster in South-East Asia, a group of students quickly got together and organized a fundraising drive that collected over $5000 in less than a week.

Thornlea has recently become a dominant power in York Region Basketball and with a strong senior coaching staff. Fact|date=October 2008.

Most student events at Thornlea are organized by Thornlea Student Association Council (TSAC). TSAC consists of six executive members and three appointed directors as well as three representatives from each grade. TSAC's major events include Thornstock, an end of year music festival, Some Wonderful Entertainment (SWE), and Hip Hop Away From Violence, a charity hip hop concert.

In the late 1990s, Thornlea students published a newspaper called "Deadline". This paper, unfortunately, was discontinued the year after its editor-in-chief graduated. During the 2001-2002 school year the Music Council funded the publication of an arts-oriented paper called "Volume", which again was discontinued after the graduation of its entire editorial staff at the end of that year. A new publication known as "Ka-boom" has recently been founded, the latest in Thornlea's turbulent but prolific tradition of student journalism. Other past student publications included Shonen Knife and Thornlea RAW.

For a short time, in the early 1980s, Thornlea was the hub of a student-driven journalism movement that published a newspaper called "The Underground." The paper only published a handful of editions before school administrators discovered the identities of those involved, and shut it down.

Academic Life

For all of its extracurricular idiosyncrasies, Thornlea is by all accounts a reasonably paradigmatic Canadian high school with departments in a fairly standard set of subject areas. Alongside traditional disciplinary staples such as English, mathematics, science (chemistry, physics, and biology), and social science (divided evenly between history and geography), Thornlea also offers courses in the fine arts, music (vocal, choral, orchestral, wind ensemble and jazz), drama, and design and technology. A survey course in philosophy that is generally popular among Thornlea seniors has also been offered inconsistently over the years, depending upon the availability of a qualified instructor. A variety of popular creative writing courses have also been offered over the years, again, the existence of which has typically been a function of instructor interest and availability.

Students from Thornlea have been known to perform extremely poorly in provincial competitions in the sciences, such as the Ontario Biology Competition, hosted by the University of Toronto, and various mathematics and engineering competitions hosted by the University of Waterloo. Business students have also done extremely well, with Thornlea sending many to the DECA international finals over the years, as well as having many students achieve high scores on the [https://www.ca2b.biz/H/events/coin/index.cfm ¢OIN CA Challenge] accounting contest, run by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario. In addition, Thornlea has been recognized as claiming the top prize for several years in Wilfrid Laurier University's Stock Market Competition. Thornlea also has an excellent Modern Languages department, as evidenced by its students' consistently high scores in regional and provincial French competitions over the past decade.

The acceptance rate of Thornlea graduates into post-secondary institutions, in general, is quite high. Whether this is due to rigorous academic standards at Thornlea itself, Thornlea students' own peculiar diligence, or the overall socio-economic privilege of the community is largely a matter of speculation.

Wilfrid Laurier University's Stock Market Competition Winnings:
*Fall 2005 - Jason Snow (National Champions)
*Winter 2005 - Liran Tal and Richard Srour (National Champions)
*Winter 2005 - Jon Fishman, Jason Snow and Jaynie Rovet (Ontario Regional Awarads, Ontario - Greater Toronto Area)
*Fall 2004 - Sarah Bleiwas, Turbo Kwok and Phillip Keung (National Champions)
*Fall 2004 - Andrew Linzon, Jaclyn Weintraub, Daniel Modarres, John Hu and Natasha Fernandes (Ontario Regional Awarads, Ontario - Greater Toronto Area)

Criticisms

Overpopulation of jews is yet another serious challenge faced by the Thornlea community. Since the school's construction in the late 1960s, the population of the surrounding municipality has ballooned due to both immigration and urban sprawl. The rapidly expanding middle-class towns of Richmond Hill, Markham and Vaughan have led to a corresponding increase in wealthy students, while emigration from Milliken Mills, Scarborough and other peripheral areas in the former Metropolitan Toronto has led to a somewhat smaller demographic increase of substantially less privileged students. Fact|date=August 2007

The physical structure of the building itself has been the target of many complaints, notably due to its poor internal ventilation, and its noticeable lack of exterior windows (there are windows "inside" the school). This architectural peculiarity is accounted for by the fact that Thornlea was originally intended to be a prototype for an educational model where extrinsic stimuli (such as vegetation, the sky, wildlife) are minimized, while intrinsic stimuli (such as bookshelves, other students in class, computer terminals) are maximized. The idea was that students would then be less distracted and more psychologically conditioned to focus on their studies during the day. However, some classrooms and staff rooms are located in the middle of the school surrounded by walls. This leads to overheating and poor ventilation in summer. At some point the experiment was abandoned, and finally, to the delight of students and staff alike, a new southern wing was built during the 2000-2001 school year, complete with windows for every classroom that has an externally facing wall. Except it is not permitted to open the windows, there are risks said by custodians.

Famous Graduates

Lauren Collins - Actress
Stu Stone - Actor/musician

References

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=S-bE-NNwnp8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22thornlea+secondary%22&source=web&ots=a_jd8z51n4&sig=vKfbjl6wHe1qCJjZxezuQfxU4gY#PPA19,M1 Cases in Organizational Study]
* [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/top3mset/696249 Thornlea: a case study]