Brain Power student Ana Stefania Mocanu (pictured left) recently won a Bronze Medal for her essay in The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition, an international essay writing competition for youth aged 18 and under! In 2018, there were 12,000 entries from across the Commonwealth! This is amazing news! For more about the competition, check out this link: https://thercs.org/youth-and-education/the-queens-commonwealth-essay-competition/ We are so proud of you, Ana! 
Congratulations!

We are very proud of our alumnus of the month, David Firer (pictured left), who was awarded the Governor General’s Academic Medal for 2017-2018. “The Bronze Medal is awarded for academic excellence to the student who achieves the highest average upon graduating from a secondary school.” About winning the award, David says: “I definitely wouldn’t have been able to win the Governor General’s Academic Medal without the help that I  received from everyone at Brain Power! Once again, thank you so much. Without the support from...

In late spring, we announced that Brain Power student Ally Zhao was selected as 1 of only 120 high school students to take part in the prestigious Arctic Expedition 2018. In addition to this remarkable achievement, Ally also won a $5000 scholarship from the organization to support her attendance. Brain Power is proud to have supported Ally’s application and her GoFundMe campaign. Ally has just returned from this incredible experience and she blogged throughout her journey about Brain Power and Brain Power’s Founder and Director, Dr. Karine Rashkovsky. Here’s...

Brain Power is thrilled to share some university entrance success stories from students who attended our University Preparation workshop this past fall! David Firer was accepted to Western (Medical Sciences – $10,000 scholarship), the University of Toronto (Life Sciences – $7,500), Queen’s (BSc), and McGill (Biological, Biomedical, and Life Sciences – $3,000 scholarship, renewable for 4 years). David will be attending McGill for Biological, Biomedical, and Life Sciences. Andrew Zhao was accepted to the University of Toronto (Computer Engineering; Computer Science –...

If we had to, would humans actually be able to talk to aliens? Backed by science, Brain Power tackles this fascinating linguistics puzzle—and more—at our fall book club, hosted by Dr. Karine Rashkovsky and our resident linguist, Dr. Cassandra Chapman! See the details below!

Orphaned Mary Lennox is a spoiled, selfish, and unpleasant child whose parents died of a cholera epidemic in India. Transported to a distant family estate in Britain, Mary  dislikes it and the people at first – until she discovers they key to a  long-abandoned secret garden hidden on the property. Along with the maid’s younger brother, Dickon, Mary begins to cultivate the garden. This leads her to find her reclusive cousin Colin, a boy  confined to a wheelchair, whose father –always...

On June 21st, Brain Power’s Public Speaking students were visited by award-winning poet, youth educator, and workshop facilitator, Patrick de Belen! For the past seven years, Patrick has visited about 100 schools, holding spoken word poetry workshops for the students. In 2012 he became the youngest spoken-word poet to hold the National Championship title at the Canadian Festival of the Spoken Word. In 2016 Patrick was selected as the Youth Poet of Honour of Canada.

On February 8th, Jay Heinrichs, New York Times bestselling author of “Thank You for Arguing” joined our Public Speaking class by teleconference to share his vast knowledge on the art of persuasion! Having spent 25 years in journalism and publishing, Jay Heinrichs is now a highly sought-after speaker on the subject of rhetoric and persuasion. He has spoken before major corporations, prestigious universities, and this is his second time speaking to us at Brain Power!

On November 15th, Brain Power’s Public Speaking students went on a field trip to the Speaker Box Poetry Slam competition! This year’s event was the last for this amazing competition, which has been running since 2012. This was a valuable opportunity for our students to learn, first-hand, how the theory of public speaking becomes practice. While all students learned a lot simply from being there, two of our students (see pictures below) competed in the event! Cora Usurelu Tian Shi Yuan Brain Power enjoys an...

Brain Power’s Public Speaking class went on their annual visit to a recording studio! Our students got a chance to record their self-made speeches and podcasts, putting much of the theory they learned in class into practice. They also received valuable feedback from a professional voice coach, and they got to see “behind the scenes” at a professional recording studio!

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