University of Toronto Schools - Extracurriculars

Extracurriculars

Each student is placed in one of four Houses (Cody Cougars, Lewis Vikings, Crawford Knights, and Althouse Alligators); several competitive House events are held throughout the year. These events include the House Track Meet, Lip-Sync contests, intramural sports, and four-way soccer games. The house system is only one facet of an unusually rich extracurricular life at UTS, however, and activities range from the school newspaper and yearbook – Cuspidor and Twig (along with its offshoot, the Twig Tape which features student and alumni musical compositions) – to champion sports teams and clubs, to the Science Club and Food Appreciation Team. The school has in recent years been a two-time winner of the Reach for the Top National Trivia Championship and at the junior level won the intermediate regional championship for the first time in three years at Reach in 2009. UTS has also won the Ontario Student Classics Conference for seventeen years running as of 2012, with the first win coming in 1996. UTS students are actively involved in public speaking; the UTS Debating Society is a major club and UTS students organize the Southern Ontario Model United Nations Assembly (SOMA), the largest and oldest Model United Nations conference run entirely by High School students in North America and the second largest Model UN conference for high school students in Canada.

There are several other events during the school year such as Arts and Music Month, known prior to 2008-2009 as Arts and Music Week, Halloween Fun Week and more. Arts and Music Month is a month when UTS students display their art work and show off their music skills either in their music class, in small bands, solo, or in an extracurricular group. There were many events such as the art work displayed in the UTS gym, battle of the bands where students form into small groups and play the song of their choice on stage in the auditorium, there is also a Holiday Breakfast where the student council (informally known as StudCow) makes breakfast for the whole school while holiday music is played by some of the music students. Also there are the junior and senior music nights, during which the senior classes and the junior music classes play music, and the Senior and Junior plays, in which are both put on by the Senior drama class, the Junior Play being acted out by students in the younger grades, and the Senior Play being acted out by students in the older grades. The UTS Show is the biggest annual school production put on by the student body. It is an amalgamation of acting, modeling, cultural dancing, costume designing, set constructing and painting. All aspects of the Show are 100% student run, from the script writing to the choreographing to the directing.

The building, 371 Bloor St. West was also used as a location for significant exterior and interior shots for the 2006 film Take the Lead, but the school was only credited in the DVD director's commentary.