Hi everyone!  My name is Vanessa Wade and I am very excited to be joining Cohort 21 this year.  I have been working at CIS schools for 15 years now in a variety of capacities; my current role is Coordinator of Student Leadership at Havergal College.  I also am part of the Guidance Office, facilitating and organizing wellness initiatives like Safe Space, Jack.org, GSA, Pride Committee, etc…Previous to working in this role I was a Guidance Counsellor here at Havergal and at St. Clement’s School for 9 years.

It has been a while since I’ve been in the classroom but my “teaching” philosophy, whether I am actually teaching or not, is to ensure that every student feels understood.  I spend a lot of time talking to students – about serious topics or simply shooting the breeze – and in every encounter my goal is to ensure that I am actively listening and picking up any information that I think will help me to know them better.  Who are they when they are in and outside of this building?  What is important to them? What do they want to know more about?  It is through these conversations that I feel students begin to trust me and I believe that having trust in an adult (hopefully many adults), for a teenager, is a very important relationship – one that I take very seriously.