Report Cards, Newsletter, Garden Help

JICS Office
Jun 12
9 min read

JICS at a Glance

We've condensed the important highlights for your convenience:

Join us tomorrow (Friday, June 13) at 11:50 for the Grade 6 "Clap Out"
To access your child/ren's report cards, make sure you are registered for our new Parent Portals on MySchool - look out for your registration email!
Please check out the Lost and Found - any unclaimed clothing with be donated on the last day of school
Check out the Spring Term Newsletter
Sign up here to water the JICS garden over the summer weeks

Topics covered in this post:

(Click to navigate straight to a section)

Last Day and Graduate "Clap Out" - Friday, June 13
2024-25 Report Cards & 2025-2026 Questionnaires
Goodbye, Graduates!
Spring Term Newsletter
Fundraising Announcement
Our Public Purpose
Dissemination: Serving Our Public Purpose
JICS Garden
Performances Inspire Inclusivity and Acceptance at JICS: Support Our Arts Fundraising Goal
4 Seasons of Indigenous Learning
Photos from the Week
Upcoming June Events

We wish all JICS families a joyful and refreshing summer and look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, September 2!

1. Last Day and Graduate "Clap Out"

Friday, June 13

We will start the day with a final school assembly of the year. The school day ends at noon, and the Daycare is open 12-6pm. JK to Grade 5 children will gather in the playground of 45 Walmer Road at 11:50 to “clap out” our Grade 6 Graduates – please join us if you can! Daycare children will proceed to Daycare. There is no hot lunch program on Friday.

2. 2024-25 Report Cards & 2025-2026 Questionnaires

Report cards will soon be available to download from your Parent Portal. You will receive a separate email when they are ready to be accessed and downloaded through your Parent Portal. See last week’s post for details about our new parent portals.

If you have not yet done so, please complete your Questionnaires for next year, also available on your Parent Portal. Please complete all Questionnaires by June 30, 2025, so that Shama can share the important information with your child’s teacher.

If you have any questions or suggestions for us regarding the new Parent Portals, please do not hesitate to reach out to Shama in the School Office.

3. Goodbye, Graduates!

The graduation ceremony today was a perfect celebration of our amazing Grade 6 graduates! Thank you, Sarah, Nadia, Nick, Judith, Krista, and Charlotte for all your work preparing the students. It was such a special day, with our students poised between their elementary school days and the next huge chapters of their lives they will continue to live so beautifully. A lovely and lively reception followed the ceremony. Thanks to an incredible planning committee of Grade 6 parents and the help of many Grade 5 parent volunteers!

Grade 6 Parents, we are grateful for your trust in us and the nourishment and encouragement you have given these amazing graduates. You chose JICS all those years ago, or maybe you arrived just this year, and we thank you all. It has been a privilege to watch your child grow and flourish.

It is our pleasure to announce the Grade 6 legacy gift. The Grade 6 parents thoughtfully chose to donate to the JICS Endowment Fund to maintain and enhance the economic diversity at the Lab School, understanding that learning among individuals with diverse life stories is invaluable to true education. Thank you!

We want to say a special goodbye and thank you to those families who have completed their Lab School journey and with this graduation, have finished their years here. Thank you for your support and remember, you are always a part of the JICS family!

We invite all families to enjoy the profiles of our graduates in the June issue of the School Sway Newsletter.

4. Spring Term Newsletter

The JICS Second Term Newsletter was viewed 300 times and now we are delighted to announce that the JICS Third Term Newsletter is ready for you to download. We invite you to read it with your child. This is an opportunity to “peak into” the school and learn about the Spring Term experiences that you may not know about. Use the password provided in the Weekly Info Email to access the newsletter. A huge thank you to Krista for editing and publishing the Newsletter and to all the student contributors and teachers for your help.

Spring Term Newsletter

5. Fundraiser Announcement

As you know, the students in the Kids Who Care Club were fundraising at Hot Dog Night. We had a fundraising craft table with a donation jar, an online fundraiser, and a children’s rights Bingo station with prizes! Online we raised…. $275! From Bingo, our fundraising table, and donation jar, we raised…. $107.55! Minus our expenses, in total we raised…. $366!! We want to give a special thanks to everyone who donated to this important fundraiser and who played Bingo with us to learn about the rights in the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child. All of the proceeds are going to UNICEF Canada to help kids who don’t have their rights realized.

Thank you,

from the Kids Who Care Club 2024-2025

6. Our Public Purpose: A Visit from Adam Seldon - Around the World in 80 Schools

Throughout the year, we host hundreds of visitors from the world of education: teachers, policy-makers, researchers.

We were recently visited by Adam Seldon, a teacher and writer from the UK who is travelling the world for his book project, Around the World in 80 Schools. Adam is on a mission to explore what makes a great school and a meaningful education by learning from institutions in diverse cultural and educational contexts.

So far, his journey has taken him to around 50 schools across Asia, Australasia, and Africa.

When Adam reached out to us, we were initially hesitant—it was the final, very full weeks of our school year. But we are so glad we welcomed him for two days at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study Laboratory School.

He was especially interested in how our school embeds a research- and evidence-informed approach into every layer of our practice. Shortly after his visit, we received this thoughtful message from Adam, which offered a beautiful reminder of the value in what we do each day.

The phrase “Fish are the last to discover water” is a powerful idiom about how we often overlook the richness of what we are immersed in. His words helped us pause and reflect on our own work with fresh eyes. Here’s what Adam shared with us:

Hi Chriss and Richard,

Thank you so much for letting me come to your wonderful school—and for two days, no less. I know it’s a very busy time of year, so I’m especially grateful that you created such a rich schedule and gave me so much of your time.

It was a truly inspiring experience, and I’m so glad I spent two full days with you. Many schools talk about “respecting young people” or “putting students first,” but too often these phrases are reduced to slogans or metrics—substitutes for deeper, more thoughtful engagement. At your school, I saw these values lived out in real, tangible ways. Whether it was Zoe typing up every student response, Walker and Mike demonstrating authentic interest in what students had to say, or the care and thought you and Carol put into every aspect of school life—from curriculum design to parental support—it was clear that intellectual curiosity and compassion drive your work.

One of the things that stood out most was how you create space for genuine intellectual inquiry, not just for students, but for staff and families too. That culture of reflection and curiosity seems so crucial to nurturing meaningful development across the whole community.

Too often, private schools can feel transactional—focused on competitive metrics that ultimately reinforce inequality. But at your school, I sensed a much broader and more purposeful vision of education: one that aims to serve not only your own students, but also to contribute positively to the wider public system, both locally and globally. That mission is truly inspiring.

Thank you as well for your interest in my own project. I deeply valued our rich conversations. This journey is a privilege, but it can also feel solitary at times, so your affirmation meant a great deal to me.

All the best, and I hope we stay in touch,

Adam

7. Dissemination: Serving Our Public Purpose

JICS is at the forefront of shaping elementary education and advancing teacher training worldwide. Our commitment to sharing knowledge and fostering innovation continues through various initiatives.

Recent Highlights:

On June 5, Vice Principal Chriss Bogert, and Principal Emerita Elizabeth Morley joined an international seminar to present on Relevance Research and Risk: The Laboratory School and the Future of Education. The seminar was sponsored by the Paris École Des Hautes Études de Sciences Sociales (EHESS), who are part of the European Network of Laboratory Schools. Research and analyst Nóra Révai from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) also presented on Bridging Education Research and Practice: The International Landscape. Richard Messina participated in this discussion as part of an ongoing partnership with the OECD this year.

From June 9th-12th, Grade One teacher, Jessica Haber attended various virtual sessions of the Knowledge Building Summer Institute (KBSI) entitled Building for Sustainable Futures in the Age of Generative AI. This year the KBSI is being held in Helsinki, Finland in tandem with the International Society of Learning Sciences (ISLS) Annual Meeting. This year the ISLS conference is intended to recognize global, environmental and social crises, but also emphasize an optimistic view for envisioning new solutions. The selected papers aim to honour teachers, students, citizens, and researchers as active transformative agents or world-makers of the future. Jessica is presenting a paper at ISLS alongside Dr. Lydia Cao, an associate professor at OISE and Pere Boluda, a secondary school teacher in Tarragona, Spain. They will share their research on Cross-community Knowledge Building as an approach to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).

On June 10, Chriss Bogert chaired the IALS (International Association of Laboratory Schools) Research Collaboration meeting, and met with 20 colleagues from Lab Schools across four continents to discuss how to engage effectively in collaborative research and to generate ideas and possibilities for a new shared research focus across Lab Schools.

On June 20 and 21, Chriss Bogert will attend the Summer Board of Directors Meeting for IALS. Chriss is completing her year as President of IALS and will stay on the Board as Past President.

8. JICS Garden

The JICS community would like to extend our thanks to the Parent Association for the brand new, cedar planters in our container garden in the laneway off Spadina Ave. The Grade One class worked hard this Spring to plant many seedlings indoors. They have now been transplanted outside in our new containers and older milk crates.

Currently we are growing peas, beans, kale, nasturtiums ,black krim tomatoes, pumpkins (with our seeds from Halloween!), cuke-a-melons, raspberries, purple carrots, bell peppers, lettuce, celery, chamomile, basil, parsley, oregano, anise, dill and thyme.

We are also growing Asemaa. This plant is not edible but ceremonial in nature. Asemaa, or tobacco, is used in Anishinaabe culture to communicate with the spirit world, strengthen relationships, show respect, and provide an offering. We are hoping that the asemaa we grow can be given to Indigenous educators and performers that visit our school as a sign of respect, as we give to them before taking from these learning experiences.

We are thrilled that the summer camp will be able to care for our veggies during July and hopefully the students will be able to return in September to harvest many more. We are looking for interested JICS families for help to water this garden in the weeks that camp is not running.

If you and your children are interested in a week of summer watering, please sign up here.

Of course, you are also welcome to harvest the veggies during the summer and enjoy eating from our garden. After signing-up, we will contact you with instructions. Thank you for helping our plants thrive this summer!

9. Performances Inspire Inclusivity and Acceptance at JICS: Support Our Arts Fundraising Goal

The children in JK to Grade 6 enjoyed the Queer Songbook Orchestra (QSO) performance this week. Weaving together story and song, the performance was an interactive exploration of identity and acceptance, nurturing understanding and inspiring inclusivity, love, and acceptance.

The QSO is one of the many enriching learning experiences supported by the JICS Patrick Harvie Arts Fund, established to enhance arts education at JICS by involving professional artists from our community. More information about the history of the fund and how to donate can be found here.

10. 4 Seasons of Indigenous Learning

Early bird registration is now open for the 4 Seasons of Indigenous Learning 2025-2026 Course , featuring an incredible group of Indigenous presenters.