"Design Thinking & Peaceful Communities”

"The teacher should become intimately acquainted with the conditions of the local community, physical, historical, economic, occupational, etc. - in order to utilize them as educational resources."  (John Dewey)

We are entering our third week of school - the third week Eric Harvie School has even existed! It has been a busy but exhilarating two weeks as staff have begun to discover who their teaching partners and collaborative teams are and, most importantly, begun to sketch in the stories of the amazing students they are building relationships.

We have invoked the Finnish approach to a slow-starting of school as we opened EHS - "Learning is supported by a peaceful and friendly working atmosphere and a calm, peaceful mood." (Finnish National Board of Education).  To enact a slow-start in our school means we have been spending our days exploring the land in and around the community of Tuscany, playing games both inside and outside - some Math or language based, others purely about outdoor exercise, reading and writing gently about our experiences, sharing stories, laughter and songs. Knowing about each other has been more important in every way than knowing facts, figures or key information. Teachers have been learning all the important information about their students - confidence levels, attitudes toward learning, use of oral language in explaining thinking, monitoring and self-correcting, what strategies are they using to solve problems in mathematical tasks, for reading, for writing- and so many other huge understandings that will clearly impact learning as our new school year unfolds. We have solved puzzles and asked questions and fostered great empathy for each other in the process.

The Beakerhead Challenge got us nicely started on the design thinking elements we want to use in every way at EHS.  Students were exploring the landscape to listen to sounds, identifying, shaping and creating soundscapes together from various places and generating grand designs and strategies for using materials that included empty paint cans, ping pong balls, elastics, bubble wrap (and boy! do we have a lot of bubble wrap!!) and a variety of other unusual components to create sounds. Together they used the design thinking skills of discovery/building empathy, defining problems, trying ideas, building prototypes, testing and evolving new notions as they created musical instruments, video, choreography, diagrams and stories to support their soundscape creations. Soft starts do not mean easy, no-challenging thinking, take-it-easy kind of days but rather engaging, thought-provoking, collaborative activities that stretch thinking all the time. The Beakerhead Challenge invited us to bring design thinking to life with our young students!

This week brings International Peace Day - a huge celebration in the life of a peace-based school!  On Wednesday, September 21 both EHS and Tuscany Schools will celebrate 'Pinwheels for Peace' - a world-wide venture that celebrates connection, care, tolerance and kindness across the world. While participation in "Pinwheels" is a highly visible part of our peace education adventure, it is not the whole story.  We will also begin participation in the annual Terry Fox Run this week - another vital component of Peace Education as we strive to support and champion the people in our community who are coping with, and surviving, cancer. Helping to make the world a better place is always our primary goal of peace education and supporting the Terry Fox Run is a vitally important branch of peace education in our community.

Soft launches these first few weeks - of teaching, students, design thinking, peace education. In fact, if you didn't know what you were looking for, you might not find them at all as our classes settle into routines and build familiarity with each other and their teachers. They are, however, there - weaving strong connections and common experiences onto the landscape that will endure as our school begins to take shape, build identity and embrace the learners in our community.

This is exciting work and a most exciting time! We look forward to welcoming families to our Open House this week - together we will build an amazing school on the principles of peace education and design thinking - just watch us go!

Lorraine Kinsman
Principal

A HOPEFUL STORY: Framing a Vision for Our School

"The key to the future of the world is finding the hopeful stories and letting them be known."

Pete Seeger

There is much hope and energy present in the opening of a new school - it's a new slate, a new opportunity, a blank page - every metaphor possible for something yet to be determined!  There exists also the promise of the future with no baggage to tie what happens here to the past - positively no one can say 'But we've always done it this way...!" And ever present is the hopefulness of innovation - the opportunity to think a bit differently, embrace new research, try new approaches.  It is truly exciting and invigorating - and probably why I think I might be a 'new school junkie'!

For me, the most important thing about schools - new, old or in-between - are the stories told and re-told about the learning, the adventures, the relationships and the experiences that happen under the umbrella of 'school'.  When I was growing up in Nova Scotia, I recall those stories being very teacher-focused - I knew before I even began attending Kindergarten which teachers were 'nice', which ones were 'strict', which ones read stories aloud and which ones gave the most homework.  I knew my school was known as a 'good school' because students who graduated from our elementary/junior high went on to experience academic success, for the most part, in the regional high school that half the county attended. When I meet up with old friends who attended school with me, we exchange many stories full of laughter and sometimes tears about our school experiences. Most of us do not remember these times as hopeful but rather anxiety-filled and rule-laden. Collectively I think it is safe to say we left school with the marks that determined our next steps in life rather than believing life was an adventure we were prepared to sometimes navigate, sometimes lead.

As the staff, parents and students stand on the threshold of opening Eric Harvie School, we have a daunting and most exciting task we need to accomplish quite quickly - to frame a vision for our school that is hopeful, flexible enough to support every student who enters our doors and with enough room to embrace the future while honouring educational research and experiences of the past. Throughout the  month of September, we will be gathering in various places and groups - classrooms, our 'Peace Room' temporary staff room, on the school grounds of Tuscany, as a School Council - to reflect on our wishes, hopes and dreams for our new school.

We will begin with the end in mind (Wiggins). What skills, attitudes, knowledge, responsibilities do we want our Grade 4 graduates to have when they exit our doors? What experiences do we value the most? How will we hear and honour student voices? parent voices? teacher voices? Where will we focus our energies? How will we communicate with each other? Ask questions? Pose puzzles? Solve problems? Where will the hope live on the landscape of our new school? How will we know?

Always, of course, our decisions will be informed by the guidelines determined by Alberta Education and the Calgary Board of Education, but we have great room within these parameters to best meet the learning, social, emotional, physical and digital needs of our students as determined through the careful reflection and framing of a vision that is full of hope, energy, innovative thinking and deep care for children as human beings and learners.

The centre of our vision will be the child - each child - every child. Enveloping all our work with children will be peace education. It is the layers in between these two elements of our work that will be determined in the coming weeks through consultation, discussion, brainstorming, sharing of ideas, questions and research with our teachers, staff and our families.  Exciting work to be sure - and vitally important as we begin to create, write and share our hopeful story of Eric Harvie School.

Lorraine Kinsman
Principal

What to expect in our new school....

"A good recipe: be stubborn on the vision and strategy and flexible on the details and tactics." Jeff Bezos

We get to have two start-ups this school year!!

Two first days of school. Two times the fun!

The first thing to expect in our new school is that we aren't going to be in our building until probably early January, 2017. We have a very strong plan for operating as a school-within-a-school in our 'sister' school, Tuscany, remembering that sisters have many common characteristics and just as many differences :) Many families have already visited us, prior to our first official school day of September 6/16, and have seen our beautiful, shared classrooms and know all about our plan to use the outdoors - particularly the ravines of the Tuscany community - as places of learning almost as much as our classrooms.  We are sharing the gymnasium and the Music rooms, with the EHS students accessing these spaces every afternoon.  We also have a Peace Room and a Conference Room to support our 360 learners and 29 staff members!

I guess that means the second thing to expect is that December/January are going to be very busy months as we pack up our belongings, visit our new spaces, visualize, plan and execute a whole-school move about a kilometre up the road! When we get there we will find a beautiful, light-filled enormous space and a whole swack of new furniture, supplies, technology and resources to situate and distribute - a whole new environment to love and embrace and fill with children's laughter, energy, curiosity and adventure.

I think that's a pretty cool thing - two first days of school!  Always my most favourite day of the school year - full of promise and joy and a little anxiety but not enough to make you not love seeing all the new faces and smiles :)

Our new school requires thinking about learning from the perspective of children. We like getting to know the students as humans and as learners - what do they love? are curious about? want to try? are afraid of or nervous about? what can they do that they are most proud of? what would they like to learn to do? who are their favourite people? why? what does friendship mean to them? what do they know about their community? their family? the land on which they live? what do they know about nature? and grown ups? and schools? what's the most exciting thing that's ever happened to them? what would they love to do if they could do anything in the world?  what do they love to read? to listen to? to write? to build? to draw?

It's not so much about lesson plans and curriculum as it is about the children and that is the key difference. How can we best support their learning in literacy, mathematics, science, social studies, art, music, physical education, drama - and help our students become the best possible citizens and learners? How can we do this holistically - through questions, adventures, explorations - without breaking the world into such small bits and pieces of learning that it's hard to make sense of the whole world? How can laughter, joy, empathy, caring and fun be part of every minute of every day while still honouring the injustices, imbalances and imperfections of the world?

Our students can be expected to develop deep understandings of 'place' - the world in which they live - their community, the land, the province, the country, the world - as well as the legacies each human, each institution, each living creature, each decision has the potential to leave behind.  Our students can be expected to see themselves as explorers of the world - adventurers and questioners, scientists and philosophers who want to know everything and have strategies to find out!  Through these lenses of living and learning we will celebrate as our students build great strengths in reading, writing, mathematical thinking and problem solving in all areas.

The vision and the strategies are strong - the flexibility comes in adapting the learning to meet the needs of all our students.  And that's why the first day of school is always so exciting - we get our first inklings of what adventures may lie ahead! 

And that's why it is absolutely the best news ever that this school year Eric Harvie School gets to have TWO first days of school :)

Lorraine Kinsman

Principal