BY: Saada Branker

She’s the first principal of the school that made national headlines well before it even opened its doors. Thando Hyman-Aman may not be nearly as popular as Toronto’s Africentric Alternative School, but anyone in need of a lesson about the virtues of Africentric learning can start with her.

“It’s about centring learning in the history, knowledge, values and experiences of African people,” says Hyman-Aman.

When the idea of an Africentric school became the talk of Toronto in 2008, questions were raised, along with a chorus of impassioned voices in favour and those against any notion of a black-focused school. Some people ran with the misinformed idea that it was to be segregated, as a type of black-only institution. The school is open to all students, says Hyman-Aman. “It’s an alternative school because parents have a choice to place their students there.”

About 115 students and counting are enrolled in a set of split classes from junior kindergarten to grade 5, all housed in a section of Sheppard Public School. “We have the same standards for success as every other school in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB.) The students will receive the same provincial and TDSB assessments,” she says.

In Her Blood

This year makes it 16 that Hyman-Aman has been an educator with the TDSB. Before that, she was an African history instructor for three years. Simply put: she was born into a family that breeds educators, so teaching is in her blood. So is a love of children.

“I come from a long line,” says Hyman-Aman about her relatives in education, “from the preschool teacher, to the university professor to the Dean, to the principal.” She herself was the principal at General Brock Public School for one year before the TDSB appointed her, this past spring, to lead the city’s first-ever, publicly funded Africentric school. “Education has always been a high priority in our family.”

Most Canadian families share that sentiment. But what makes Hyman-Aman stand out is how she blended an Africentric perspective into education, from the time she was young right through to the work she accomplishes today. She is the closest example of an achiever raised as a learner of Africentric teaching. And now it’s officially a perspective that will be complementing the mandated curriculum of the Ministry of Education.

The Student That Could

During her teen years, Hyman-Aman attended the African Canadian Heritage Association (ACHA), a program in Toronto that celebrated its 40th anniversary in May. Having showed leadership skills, she became its first youth instructor, and soon after understood exactly what the ACHA espoused about giving back to younger learners. “That became an organic way in which I was able to hone my skills in teaching as well.”

She says she couldn’t help but notice what didn’t make the pages of the Ontario school curriculum. “When we think about positive contributions that African people and people of African descent have made to humanity, to society to civilization, I did note that that was omitted,” she says. “What I was able to do was infuse it for myself. If there were things that I needed to do with respect to science, I would use that learning opportunity to say, let me research about the scientist from another place; something that was little-known history.” Showing such initiative helped Hyman-Aman, an A-student, navigate the educational system.

Today she’s excited about her new school’s role in generating positive thinking around education. “This is about students succeeding. That’s why parents and the community have conceived and inspired what they needed in an alternative school,” says Hyman-Aman. She’s not focusing on failure or drop-out rates; instead, this principal describes what parents see in their kids: passion.

“What we want to do is harness that passion so that they can feel like I felt when I was growing up; which was ‘I can do anything, I can become anyone, there are no limits to the depth of my success or how far I can go in life.’ And if there’s any gift that I can impart on our students, it’s that.”