Students and staff at St. Mary Catholic Elementary School in Welland were surprised by former National Hockey League and Canadian Olympian Pat Flatley, who dropped by Tuesday to honour the school’s outstanding math students.
Flatley, who played the bulk of his 14-year career with the New York Islanders, has partnered with Knowledgehook, an Ontario-built education technology company working with schools, school boards, and ministries to strengthen math outcomes for students.
KnowledgeHook Mathalon is a recognition program celebrating students who have engaged with math practice through steady effort over time. The program produced strong results — after two decades of declining math scores in Ontario, Niagara students posted an eight-point increase.
Flatley, a 62-year-old Toronto native, fell in love with the program.
“I met them through a mutual friend, and when they explained to me about it, I just immediately thought of kids that would not have an opportunity to play sports for any number of reasons, but the fact that they introduced the team concept to math, I just thought was the most wonderful thing I’d ever heard of about education,” he said. “The only reason I wanted my children to play sports is to focus on those intangibles that I talked about. And so now, through math, they can develop these intangibles without having to even play a team sport if they’re not so inclined.”
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