It’s not often you get an email from a student, and in particular, a high school student, regarding how great their teacher is for them, and their school.
But that happened when Kate Rantala, Grade 12 student at Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School, sent Sudbury.com a message about her teacher, Daniel Monti, using words like “inspiring” and “motivating.”
“Since 2012, Mr. Monti has been motivating students, teachers, and mentors to be better in all aspects of their lives,” she wrote.
She said that in 2018, Monti took initiative to renovate a decommissioned drama room at Lo-Ellen Park into an EDIT (Engineering, Design and Innovative Technology) Lab and developed a new EDIT curriculum.
“Since then, he has developed four FIRST-centric ministry approved courses (FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology), competed in 12 FRC (First Robotics Challenge) seasons, built 23 FTC (First Tech Challenge) robots, organized 3 FTC tournaments and passed 600 students through EDIT classes,” she said in her email.
With a background in mechanical engineering, Monti began teaching math at Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School in 2007, and started working with students in robotics in 2012.
“Engineering was my background, so I always kind of had a keen interest in robotics,” he said. “But funnily enough, it was actually two students who approached me and said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in starting a team?’”
Monti said he didn’t really know what that team might look like, adding “it was student driven from the start,” but the program has really taken off since.
At the moment, Monti is teaching a group of around 10 students who are all working on different projects. “It's organized chaos,” he said with a laugh.
With some students working towards a future in trades-based fields, others on computer programming and others on design, there is a combination of keyboard clicks and hammers hammering in the classroom.
For Rantala, her interest in medicine led her to an interest in the biomedical field. Under Monti’s tutelage, she has been able to create assistive devices for communication. Not only that, but Monti said she excels at outreach and promotion, helping with the business side of their projects as well, including recruiting sponsors.
It’s these other skills, usually considered “soft skills,” that Monti is also teaching.
He said that as a teacher and as a one-time teenager, it's important to go through “some failure and adversity.”
“We really push the students to meet deadlines, to learn how to communicate with others, and work together as part of this,” said Monti. “We have almost 100 students on our different teams. So having them have a valuable role, being heard, but also being able to work together is really, really important.”
And while he said there are different moments every year that make the time commitment worth it — almost a full-time job on top of his full-time job — he told Sudbury.com that it comes down to seeing student growth.
“Seeing them realize their potential is why I got into teaching,” he said. “It’s more than just building robots, it's actually seeing the growth and the engagement.”
He said it’s about seeing that “lightbulb” moment. “They're struggling, facing adversity and all of a sudden, it works, and they’re over the moon. Just seeing that process of problem solving and learning, those are always the moments that I remember.”
Jenny Lamothe is a reporter with Sudbury.com. Success is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.
