00:00:00.000class is in session hey everybody and welcome to unlearn 16 you know the answer classes in session
00:00:10.000today you just get me just little old me and little old me and saving metro prep now i'm gonna
00:00:21.920do a little backstory for everybody to understand what's going on what we've gone through and where
00:00:27.920we are right now in order to catch all of you guys up if you haven't been paying attention.
00:00:32.880If you haven't been paying attention, where have you been at? I don't understand. I've
00:00:36.660done TikToks. I've done podcasts. I don't understand. Okay, so I'm going to give you
00:00:41.600the synopsis, the overview. I'm going to tell you where we are. I'm going to tell you where
00:00:48.620you can help. I'm going to tell you where we're going to go. Are you ready? Here we
00:00:54.760go. So the story starts, well, I've been at Metro Prep Academy going on 22 years. So technically
00:01:03.680the story starts 22 years ago. I sit down with Wayne McKelvey. He interviews me. We fight for
00:01:10.060an hour about unions and I leave his office thinking I'm never going to hear from him again.
00:01:15.360And what do I do? I get hired and I've been working there for 22 years fighting with him
00:01:19.460pretty much every single day. This year, in the last few years, Metro has gone through a lot.
00:01:28.560So we were renovated from where we were at. We were forced to move very, very quickly.
00:01:34.020We managed to get a place. That was a whole thing in and of itself. I remember looking at Wayne
00:01:38.500going, do you want to do this or do you want to be done? Like, do you want to be done here? Like,
00:01:42.200it is what it is. Maybe it's time to retire. Maybe it's time to be done. We can't find a
00:01:46.780new building. He looked at me and said, I'm not done. So with Ryan and me and his sister and Sue,
00:01:54.780and we found another place and we found this other place. And within two months,
00:01:58.660we got this place. And I don't know how I did those balloons. That's ridiculous. And within,
00:02:05.900for those who are just listening, balloons just went up the entire video. I have no idea.
00:02:10.340Although I guess it was well-timed. Within two months, we found a new location. And as we found a new location, we moved in and we renovated this entire, it was going to be 25,000 square feet.
00:02:26.720We renovated the entire building in two months, decorated it, had it ready to go for September.
00:02:34.440Kids walked in, we saved it, new building, we have X amount of students, we go into the first
00:02:41.120semester, and we round the corner, and what hits us? COVID, right in the kissa. So we shut down.
00:02:49.700And we shut down and we go online. Now, that's not really the hardest part, because we handled
00:02:55.240the online actually fairly well. The hard part was we had a pretty significant student population
00:03:03.100that came from outside of Canada. So we had these international students that as soon as COVID
00:03:07.960happened, the following year couldn't get visas to come back in. Everybody was terrified.
00:03:14.900Everything shut down. So we went down from about 200 kids to about, well, just under that,
00:03:24.140to about 60. Now, when we went down to 60, you got to know, we didn't, I mean, 60 students in
00:03:32.360this brand new renovated building was not enough to pay the bills. We never, Wayne never fired a
00:03:39.120teacher. He never cut back anybody's salary. What did this man do? Well, he figured out ways for him
00:03:47.700to cover the loss. And as the years progressed, you guys know coming out of COVID was hard. A lot
00:03:53.980of people didn't have money. A lot of people couldn't send their kids to private. There's
00:03:56.760lots of things. And we were gradually ratcheting it up, but not very quickly, you know? And we
00:04:06.320maybe weren't expanding marketing department the way we should have been. And we knew we were
00:04:12.640doing a beautiful thing and we were supported by this beautiful guy and a vision, but a vision
00:04:19.760that wasn't coming to fruition because without the students, we can't implement the vision.
00:04:23.980and that went on for about, well, until this year, and this year, and over the last few years,
00:04:30.720actually, Wayne's health started to deteriorate, he had a stroke, he came back, he had diabetes,
00:04:37.600he, you know, got healthy, you know, and he went up and down, but, you know, my mom is a bit younger
00:04:45.040than him, that's what happens, you go up and down, you get something, you fight it, you come back,
00:04:50.360And then this year, he got sick, but once again, ended up in the hospital.
00:04:57.620But I thought, he goes in, he gets better, he comes out.
00:05:02.580And I went and sat with him after I found out that he had cancer.
00:05:09.260And I went one night, and I sat with him for about an hour, and he was just waiting, laughing and joking
00:05:17.640and, you know, talking about who the best students were,
00:05:23.520who's causing trouble, asking for the gossip,
00:06:12.380And when I left, even though he was in great spirits and he seemed okay and healthy, I felt in that moment that was his way of A, saying goodbye, and B, saying, don't you dare waste it.
00:06:32.520We walked out, you know, still thought there'd be a comeback special going on here.
00:06:39.760We walked out, and about a week later, he passed.
00:06:47.020He just, I think his body and his mind had equally called it a day.
00:06:55.040And so we were met with this in just during March break.
00:07:03.080and we were, you know, devastated. And we came back and I thought, and a lot of the kids were
00:07:15.160very nervous about what is the school, what's going to happen to the school. And I thought,
00:07:19.940listen, we'll rally, we'll rally. People will take up different monikers. I will not let
00:07:25.500this school, go anywhere, all of these kinds of things. And then within about a month,
00:07:34.680so what does that put us in? April? The end of April? Not even the end of April. I'm trying
00:07:41.780to remember the dates here. We were told that the school was going to close, that the economic
00:07:49.700weight of COVID and everything that Wayne had tried to do to support it was too much to bear
00:07:55.840and it couldn't be shouldered. And that was it. We were given termination letters. We were told
00:08:02.960it was going to close. It went up on the website, like instantaneously. And I remember Ryan and I
00:08:09.340looking at each other going, no, you know, no, the answer is no, it's not going to close.
00:08:19.060So we instantaneously and kind of fortuitous, like serendipitously made some connections
00:08:27.240with different individuals. One individual who had been an agent at our school who I very much
00:08:33.380connected to. We connected with him and tried to brainstorm ideas of how to save Metro. What was
00:08:41.260that going to look like? Could we save it in that space? Do we have to move? Can we get investors?
00:08:46.960What can we possibly do? And we sat there for three hours and tried to come up with all of
00:08:51.420these ideas. And any idea was welcome. And as we sat there, he said, I think I might have an
00:08:59.640investor. They have a building. They can do this, this, and this. Maybe they'll be interested. How
00:09:04.540about we invite them to Metro, talk to you and Ryan, see what they think. And they came down and
00:09:10.420you know, we talked to them. Lovely, absolutely lovely people. And understanding that at this
00:09:16.540point, we were terrified that we were going to lose kids, right? We were terrified that it all
00:09:24.800it happened so quickly and I couldn't possibly, we couldn't have a plan quick enough and kids
00:09:30.400were just going to go. And whether we could save it or not, it was going to slip through our
00:09:34.480fingers because we weren't fast enough. We didn't know ahead of time. We didn't have any time to
00:09:39.820plan. And we talked to this individual and we came up with this instantaneous plan. He had a
00:09:47.360building. He'll renovate it. We went there. We saw the building. We felt the building. We could see
00:09:52.280how it could be renovated quicker so it could be ready for September. And then we had to have a
00:09:57.740town hall meeting where we invited all of these families and told them who Rhino Eye were and who
00:10:03.740the staff was and who everybody was. And they knew. They all knew. And they sat there in front
00:10:08.700of us and we said, this is the plan. We just need you to be with us. And it was a beautiful moment,
00:10:16.400actually in that, in that time where I don't know how many parents were in that room. It felt like
00:10:23.320a hundred and we, and we all just sat there and they were so supportive and so amazing. Um, still
00:10:29.900trying to figure out, you know, a lot of them wanted to figure out how to stay in that building,
00:10:33.140but understanding if we had an investor that had a building, it just made sense. And
00:10:37.620the next day by the next day we had a phone call from a secondary investor said i don't want this
00:10:48.280school to die either maybe we can figure out a way to stay here it's like a team on one side
00:10:55.840a team on the other now it was pretty beautiful as stressful as all that was it was pretty
00:11:02.900beautiful that I had two groups of people that didn't know us very much, knew of us,
00:11:11.100one a little bit more so than the other, knew of us, and yet believed in us enough,
00:11:17.060believed in what we were going to say enough and how we were going to teach and all of those things.
00:11:23.220and they understood that we that that investing in what we'd created there was going to be a
00:11:33.740beautiful thing so by the second parents night we had a possible second option
00:11:40.420that second option had just sort of jumped in the game and and needed time to figure things out
00:11:47.280And we kind of broke off communication there. We didn't have any conversations back and forth. And while that was there, we had to direct ourselves to go down this other road. So we were like, okay, well, we have to, you know, we developed plans and we talked to everybody.
00:12:04.500And as that's all progressing, we all of a sudden got another call.
00:12:14.500And this other call, as I almost had, I don't know, well, 40 students and then some wanting to go will follow us.
00:12:24.780Literally, they said, well, you can teach us in a tent.
00:17:31.840And I think the idea that the emotional tie that kids had to that building and that place and that name and that history, pieces of Wayne and pieces of what we'd done, and they screened with such joy, what I realized in that moment is they weren't 100% sure to follow us.
00:17:55.620they weren't even like you know 70 they were nervous but they never for a moment
00:18:06.980made me feel and ryan feel anything but supported and anything like more you know anything less than
00:18:15.620a family we were all going down that road together and we were going to go full steam and we were
00:18:24.560going to go locked in step, and we were going to go hand in hand to accomplish what we needed to
00:18:30.680do next. And when we found out that we saved the school in its entirety, those screams didn't just
00:18:41.020tell me how much Metro and that building and what we created meant to them. It told me that we met
00:18:49.340so much to them that they were willing to put aside, set aside all of their fears and trepidations
00:18:59.500because they believed more in the people we were and the ethos we created and the school
00:19:09.860environment we knew we could recreate. They believed more in that than the comfort and
00:19:15.320the stability and the, and the memory of the school that they were already in.
00:19:24.480I had kids saying, I knew you'd do it.
00:22:06.200You know, part of me, part of me, and this is weird, is thankful for the fire that we
00:22:18.300walked through together because it fused us.
00:22:23.120It made me understand what I do and why I do it.
00:22:27.960It made me believe that the good and the way that our teachers teach and Wayne's heart led that school is the foundation of everything that is good and that is powerful.
00:23:45.240and how it took kids that maybe didn't fit in every other single place,
00:23:52.040that maybe struggled with different learning abilities or maybe, you know, lived with different
00:24:02.180levels, like on the autism spectrum, maybe, or they lived with any kind of, you know,
00:24:12.580neurodivergence that you could possibly think of. And when you throw them in a class of 30 kids
00:24:17.980in private or public school, they get ignored. They evaporate. They fall into, they merge into
00:24:27.080the background and nobody sees the beauty and the potential and the amazing parts of who they are.
00:24:37.320And the stories that they would hear about Metro and Metro alumni and what that school did
00:24:44.540and the testimonials that they read or that they saw reminded them.
00:24:56.180They have a family member, sibling's child who is autistic
00:25:01.600and was systematically sort of excluded and banished from the public system
00:25:08.320and they tried to put them in the private system
00:25:10.220and it didn't work there and it didn't work here.
00:25:12.300They actually thought of moving to where Metro was in order, because they'd heard such beautiful things about what our school has been able to do and how we've been able to do it.
00:25:28.460And luckily for them, they didn't need to move.
00:25:30.960They found a school that was amazing for their child.
00:25:34.820But when they heard about what we do, this person knew that they didn't want Metro to go anywhere.
00:25:43.800Not only did they not want Metro to go anywhere.
00:25:46.180It's not just like, oh, I don't want it to go anywhere because it's good school.
00:26:24.940we still need to do all these things. But to them, that wasn't the point. That's a marketing issue.
00:26:30.920That's a publicity issue. But what we've done in that school for the last 42 years and me for the
00:26:45.160Class 22, what Ryan has done, and what our staff has done, has created this space where
00:26:53.480not every, look, it's not Shangri-La, but it is a space where we ensure a few things,
00:27:02.040or we try to. We keep our class sizes small enough so that nobody can fade into the background.
00:27:10.340And we keep our minds open enough to understand that every single person, that every single student has untapped, unrealized potential.
00:27:24.260And if we can only make them feel safe and secure and special enough, it will fall out, it will be built up, and they will be able to do great things.
00:28:21.200If I can do that, if I can, and my school can do that with students,
00:28:29.840it is the best possible educational platform you will ever create.
00:28:36.100If you can teach the student and not the curriculum, you will create magic.
00:28:43.500And the magic will allow those kids to grow up in a world with a level of confidence and self-esteem and empowerment that will overcome all of the obstacles life can throw in their way.