Nurturing Environment

Sunnybrook is known for its nurturing environment – a “home away from home” feeling. Students are supported by every teacher in the school. All staff at SBS ensure that students feel like they belong not only in their classroom studio but in the entire school. From the first day of school, teachers connect with their students and start a positive relationship.

Sunnybrook is a close knit community and we take pride to ensure our families and students are happy while they learn. Unfortunately, at times families go through hardships of divorce, losing a family member or dealing with sickness of a loved one. Sunnybrook helps students cope with these hardships by establishing positive communication with the families, lending an ear if needed and working with professionals to support the child and family.

Social Emotional Learning

Over the past several years, and especially since the beginning of the pandemic, it is important to address the social and emotional needs of the children. Teachers have consciously built SEL (Social Emotional Learning) directly into the curriculum and we give the students tools to recognize their feelings, manage their emotions and solve problems. Since the students have been in remote learning and learning socially distanced in the studio, we are taking the time to reestablish relationships in the classroom and how to work collaboratively with others.

Community Circles

In the studio, teachers facilitate “Community Circles” proactively to allow the students to communicate and express how they are feeling . If students are having difficulty, staff members take the time to establish the root of the problem and work together with the student and parents to solve the issue. Teachers model and offer a variety of strategies to solve problems and establish healthy relationships with others.

Transitions

Sunnybrook is mindful that transitioning from kindergarten to Grade One is significant to our youngest students. The entry into the Junior School is supported by staff who recognize and acknowledge how many “firsts” these young students will experience throughout the journey of their Grade One year. Grade One is a time of new discoveries, a growing sense of the world around them and also of themselves in the larger school community. Ensuring that they adapt, not only to the academic expectations, but also fostering the social and emotional skills they will be developing, is paramount for our staff. The foundation they will receive during their Grade One year is essential for their future success.

Similarly, Sunnybrook takes an active role in helping parents with the search for a new school and with their transition after Sunnybrook. Our team of staff meets with parents to establish the goals for the children after graduating from Grade 6 .This assistance consists of meetings with parents, as well as interview and test preparation for students. We assist families with individualized guidance every step of the way. We care where the students are placed in Grade 7 and want to ensure where our grads go is the best fit. We take pride in helping the families and over the past years we have had extreme success placing students that have been at SBS for 8 years in the school of their choice.

International Students

As an international school, we often have children arrive in Canada from a new country. We welcome international families and work with them to make them feel comfortable. Many children are learning English as an additional language while attending Sunnybrook and as a staff we create goals for the children to work towards while they are learning a new language. We take the care to establish these goals for the students to help them be bilingual before leaving Sunnybrook. We have a speech pathologist that works weekly with children that qualify.