Dennis Avenue Community School is located in the historic community of Mount Dennis, near Weston Road and Eglinton Avenue. Mount Dennis was founded in 1797, and the first school opened in 1891. A partnership between our school, parents and community is essential to create an environment that promotes academic growth, social development, and a positive feeling of self-worth. Our Mission Statement: We are committed to preparing all students for life-long learning, and ensuring they reach high levels of achievement by enabling them to become productive and responsible members of our global community.
Model School for Inner Cities
We are part of the Model Schools for Inner Cities program. Our vision for student success is founded on the Five Essential Components for Model Schools: Innovative Teaching and Learning; Support services to meet the social, emotional, and physical well-being of students; School as the Heart of the Community; Research review and evaluation of students and programs; and Sharing Best Practices.
Dennis Avenue Community School Early Years Centre
In partnership with Macaulay Child Development and Syme Woolner Centres, we house the Dennis Avenue CS Early Years Centre. The Centre provides a literacy-rich place for children from birth to 6 years of age to come play and learn with their parents or caregivers. The Center offers neighbourhood-based services that include: Kindergarten Readiness programs, Ongoing access to early childhood professionals, Connections to other parents or caregivers in the community, Access to speech and language or other specialists, and much more. The Center is open Tuesday and Thursday from 9 am to 11 am.
More Information about Dennis Avenue Community School
Parent Engagement
Building parent partnerships and improving our home and school communication are important goals for our school. Engaging our parents through newsletters, phone calls, conferences, our school web site, volunteering opportunities, and workshops are some ways we continue to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to ensuring a strong and supportive home and school partnership.
A Safe and Caring Learning Environment
We believe that every student must be respectful and be a respected citizen of our school. We will provide a caring, healthy, and safe learning environment to promote student success for all students. High expectations will assist students to realize their full potential and achieve lifelong goals. Our Code of Conduct also clearly supports what we stand for.
Additional Features
● Eco Club
● Nutrition Program
● Guest Performers each term
● Welcome To Kindergarten partnership
● Family Storytelling
● School-Wide Houseleague
● Community Partnerships
● Co-Curricular Activities
Student Life - Where You Belong
Specialized support and differentiated instruction are used to ensure success for all students. Through a positive discipline approach, we promote and nurture the development of our students' interpersonal skills using our character education traits (responsibility, teamwork) and restorative practices to support respect and positive interactions among and between students, teachers, parents and administration. Student engagement in the life of the school is encouraged and celebrated through small group and school-wide activities such as houseleague, co-curricular activities, ECO Club, ballroom dancing, African/Aboriginal drumming, and visual arts. The leadership team of Grade 5 students assist with school operations as morning announcers, school ambassadors, and office helpers. Monthly assemblies and various performances provide opportunities for students to celebrate their achievements. Our Morning Snack nutrition program ensures our students are eating nutritiously and will be able to concentrate on their learning.
What Sets Us Apart
Our vision for student success is founded on the Model Schools essential components, and embedding culturally relevant and authentic learning experiences into the classrooms. Books and learning materials reflect our students' experiences. Additional funding through Model Schools has helped to enhance the curriculum delivery through learning opportunities in the arts, various performances, and excursions into the greater community. Our students participate in extra curricular activities and sports (e.g., baseball, track and field, basketball, Silver Birch readers, school-wide houseleague, math club). Our students, staff, and parents are very committed to caring for our environment. We are an ECO school and we were awarded the Gold Medal last year! We focus on maximizing partnerships with the community and agencies to enhance our student success programming and learning opportunities (e.g., Arts for Children, York University, Toronto Police Services, Toronto Public Health).
Parent and Community Engagement
Partnerships:
-School Council our active council provides input into academic programming, health and safety matters, and raises funds for our nutrition program and educational excursions.
-Parent volunteers are integral to our school assisting in the Nutrition Program, supervising on excursions and with activities (e.g. Pizza Lunch)
- Mount Dennis Public Library
-Toronto Public Health
-Toronto Foundation for Student Success
-Early Years Syme-Wolner/MacCauly Centre
- Arts for Children and Youth
-Toronto Police Services
-Ryerson University
