Durham Christian High School offers a unique Summit Program as an integral part of its Leadership course (GPP30), primarily for grade 11 students who are accepted through an application and interview process.

During these Leadership Summits, students engage leaders in a variety of spheres of influence including law enforcement, news media, sports/entertainment, politics, education, and business. During these hour long summits, leaders share their thoughts on leadership and students are given the opportunity to discuss with them topics such as important leadership qualities, balancing work and family, both the joys and challenges of leadership, fair compensation, personal failures and successes as a leader, etc. The intimate “round table” format encourages equal standing with the leaders who consistently express both an appreciation for the ways our students have challenged them through their probing and relevant questions and a desire to continue to partner with us in subsequent years. Some of the Summits occur at our school but several take us out to other locations to the places in which the leaders lead.

Recently, we have been hosted by Anne-Marie Mediwake at CBC News Toronto, who reinforced many of the things other leaders have emphasized in previous Summits and that we teach here at Durham – honesty/integrity, passion, listening, treating others as they would want to treated, kindness, self-discipline, finding a mentor, etc.