New leadership role with Waterloo Catholic District School Board excites Tyrone Dowling
September 28, 2022
Though very familiar with the Waterloo Catholic District School Board (WCDSB), it took a while for Tyrone Dowling to decide whether he should apply for the Director of Education position.
When Loretta Notten announced her retirement last May after seven years with the Board, some in the longtime educator close circle encouraged him to throw his hat in the ring.
“They were saying, ‘I think it is your time and you should think about it’,” Dowling said.
He did and, after careful consideration, acquiesced and was successful.
The new Director of Education and Secretary of the Board has 29 years’ experience as a Catholic educator, including 21 years administrative experience with the WCDSB.
“As a highly respected administrator in our Board for many years, Tyrone inspired and led through his wisdom and faith,” noted Jean Gravelle who is the Chair of the Board of Trustees. “Welcoming him back now as our Director of Education is an honour and a privilege. I know I speak for my fellow Trustees when I say we are confident that he is the Director we need to lead Waterloo Catholic on the path of a brighter future of quality and inclusive faith-based education.”
Dowling revealed the thought process that factored into the decision.
“I had to think about where I am at in my career and where my family is,” he said. “Is this for me? Do I have the skill set? Do I have what it takes to serve the students and families in this community? It took a lot of time. It is a significant job with a lot of demand on your time. I wanted to make sure that coming off a job in which I began during the pandemic that I was making the judgement in an informed space. It took me a bit to get here, but ultimately, I did arrive.”
Excited to be back after two years as a Superintendent with the Wellington Catholic District School Board, Dowling hit the road running with a team of Catholic educators whose work is amplified through their faith, commitment to equity and student success.
“Our Board has a history of academic excellence and my job is to maintain that,” he said. “I need to do it in such a way that it is informed. I am not looking at things from the aspect of changes. My first ask is let’s review what we are doing, how we are doing it and what our results are showing us. The school board has a history of collecting some data. We are going to be taking a look at that and asking ourselves some evaluative questions based on it, identifying some areas of need and then seeking to address them.”
The WCDSB five secondary schools offer high-calibre co-operative education credit courses in Canada that are available to international visa students.
In addition, it has a formal relationship with several post-secondary institutions, including Waterloo, St. Jerome and Wilfrid Laurier universities and Conestoga College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning,
Where did Dowling’s interest in teaching come from?
“From a home with educators in it,” is his quick response. “I didn’t believe when I was finishing my undergraduate degree that I was going into teaching. I said I was not going into the family business. I had an opportunity to become an unqualified supply teacher and I just could not believe the impact the students had on me and I on them.”
Dowling’s love of teaching extends to sports.
He has been the KW Predators Volleyball Club Head Coach for the last 12 years.
“I love the opportunity to work with young people and to see their skills improve just like it is in an education setting,” Dowling noted. “Being able to coach, guide and facilitate for students who have a passion for learning fed my passion for learning. To be able to sit in the seat as the lead learner for a school board makes me feel flattered, humbled and blessed.”
The positive interaction with young people in the classroom and in the sports arena prompted him to stay with teaching after considering attending law school.
“I was pretty close to sending off that application,” Dowling, whose parents migrated from Bermuda, disclosed.
Arriving in 1963, Michael Dowling taught for 32 years before retiring at age 55 and becoming a glass engraver. Faith Dowling, who was a WCDSB support worker, passed away in 2014.
“Because of them, education in my household was not presumed,” the older of two siblings who came to Canada at age five said. “It was expected that we would do our best and give our best in school because education was seen as that thing that would level the playing field and open doors for us as immigrants. Post-secondary education was never an option. Having said that, had we not shown the aptitude, our parents would still have guided us wherever we needed to go. It was, ‘You are going to work hard, you are going to do your job in the classroom and you are going to do the best you can’. That was it. Whatever support I needed, I got.”
Always cognizant of the support he has received as he climbed the professional ladder, Dowling sat with his wife and made a list of the people he needed to reach out to to thank soon after his appointment.
“I stand on the shoulders of many who have taken a chance on me at different points in my educational career,” he pointed out. “Many have modelled for me what hard work looks like, what it is like just to persevere when things don’t go your way and how to conduct yourself. I am so blessed to have had those people around me. I think of some of my parents’ friends, racialized and non-racialized, who were educators when I was young.
“They were part of that village who believed in us and expected positive things. I think about those people like the first Principal who hired me as an unqualified Supply Teacher and the first Superintendent who hired me as a Principal. These are people who took a chance and, who to this day if they are still with us, I am able to reach out to. It is great that I have this job. I owe so much to them and I hope I am able to show them in my work that I am so very grateful for every chance, belief and hope they put in me.”
With the appointment, both the Catholic and public school boards in the southwestern Ontario city have racialized Directors of Education.
jeewan chanicka was installed a year ago.
“Now that we have a second person of colour as Director of Education, a Black man, more students in the region will have the opportunity to see themselves in leadership,” chanicka said. “This, however, can only lead to meaningful results if we are able to change our systems to ensure student achievement and well-being for all students, especially those who have been most marginalized since the inception of public education.”
Dowling and his wife, Lori Loft, have been married for 27 years. She has been teaching for over three decades.
They have never taught in the same school Board.
“She is an absolute fabulous teacher,” he said. “If I ever needed to talk to someone about education, she is the first one that I go to. I have learned so much about how students learn, how to teach and how to work with people just by having conversations with her.”
The couple has three children, Sierra and twins Marley and Quinton.
Outside the work environment, Dowling enjoys reading, coaching, golfing, spending quality time with his family and walking their two Portuguese Water Dogs.
He is the seventh racialized Director of Education to be appointed in the province since October 2018.
In addition to chanicka, the others are Camille Williams-Taylor in Ottawa-Carleton, Curtis Ennis in Halton, Rashmi Swarup in Peel, Colleen Russell-Rawlins who was the Permanent Interim Director in Peel for a year before returning to Toronto to lead Canada’s largest school Board and Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini in Hamilton-Wentworth.
