Business school goes to Lawrence Heights
January 24, 2011
Louise Brown
EDUCATION REPORTER
It’s billed as the first formal partnership between public schools and an MBA program — yet both sides say the point is not to churn out mini-moguls.
The U of T’s lofty Rotman School of Management will start teaching an MBA-style leadership course in February at hardscrabble Sir Sandford Fleming Academy near Lawrence Heights, in a bid to help students learn the creative approach to solving problems — assume less, listen more, then build your own hybrid solution — that has become the business school’s trademark.
It’s a joint venture the Toronto District School Board says it wants to expand to several other high schools and even some elementary schools, as early as Grade 1.
“It’s not our desire to go in and teach business or corporate finance; this is about an approach to solving problems,” said Jennifer Riel, director of content and communications for Rotman, whose dean, Roger Martin, preaches the value of what he calls “integrative thinking.”
While Riel admits the old-style business approach “almost destroyed the world’s economy two years ago,” this new way of brainstorming complex problems is meant to encourage each person to be less cocky, recognize their bias and be open to drafting more original solutions.
And the principal also hopes the Rotman brand will draw new students to his under-enrolled school.
“It’s really experiential learning; it teaches a whole new concept of thinking, and we hope it will be a draw to the new school,” said Principal Arnold Witt, who has just read Martin’s book The Opposable Mind; How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking, and is having five of his teachers trained in the system this term.
Nearly 100 Fleming students will learn the “integrative thinking” concept this year; 20 will take the leadership course this semester as a Grade 12 business credit; 40 more will study some elements of it later this spring at Rotman to earn a certificate for a special program in justice and community studies. A further 20 will take it during the summer, and special education teachers are expected to apply some of the philosophy, noted superintendent John Chasty.
Fleming will close this summer and move its students to the refurbished Bathurst Heights Secondary School nearby, which will be renamed John Polanyi Collegiate Institute after the Nobel prize-winning Toronto chemist.
Rotman graduate Ellie Avishai already runs the “I-Think Initiative” in seven private schools and will team-teach the course at Fleming, along with a member of the teaching staff.
The program will have only minimal costs to the board, noted superintendent Manon Gardner.
So what’s in it for Rotman?
“Our dean is very passionate about this way of thinking,” noted Riel, so by giving to schools the concepts we usually charge companies a lot of money for, we believe we’re giving back to the community.”