Lessons From Our Year of 'Traditional' Learning

"In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few." 

- Shunryu Suzuki (Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind)

"For so long school has been a place where we would take our kids as parents and show up to work as educators. 

The schedule kept us all in place and moved us from class to class so we could make sure to cover and essentially learn all that was required of us in our given class, or semester, or year. 

It was a system that was predictable and that allowed for us to feel safe going through the motions. 

The tests tell us that the majority of students are learning and therefore they were on track as they moved from grade level to grade level. 

We rarely question this process, because the structures have existed for so long and have allowed us to keep the systems in place that look very similar and function as they have for over 100 years." 

- Katie L. Martin  

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It has been an interesting year on so many levels - the grinding, never-ending fear of 'what will happen to my family? Myself? My friends and acquaintances?' underlying multiple levels of 'different' as we have cycled through numerous iterations of social and business closures, rising case numbers, the arrival of variant viruses in our community, and long periods of separation from everyone and everything we once held dear in our lives. Covering these losses and incalculable changes has been the enduring wearing of masks (multiple layers!) and shields, repetitive and incessant hand-washing and the never-ending reminders to stay 2m apart at all times. Just writing it all down seems overwhelmingly numbing and interruptive to everything we ever considered to be 'daily living'.

In response, humanity has persevered - investing billions of dollars, endless time and energy, creativity and imagination - and even political cooperation - into prioritizing human survival in the face of odds we once only gave credence to in movie scripts and apocalyptic novels. 

On a whole world scale, the virus continues to wage a battle that out-scales anything previously anticipated on the medical front and gives new meaning to the phrase 'public health emergency'. While the end to this whole mess does seem to be in view as countries invoke enormous vaccination strategies around the world, a return to some semblance of 'normal' seems to be becoming increasingly inevitable as well. Humanity will tame the virus and wrestle it into submission. The human toll will be huge - it already is and we really have no 'end' date in sight - yet it will be considerably less than if we had not had an international public health response at all. Human ingenuity will win in the end and we will all count ourselves, fortunate, I expect and hope, to be alive in a time in history where we are able to witness such a triumph over nature. 

Schools have been a low-level, less visible element of the world effort to sustain some semblance of normalcy through these days of great uncertainty. To keep schools available as places of learning for children resulted in a wide variety of approaches deployed across the globe - from in-person to virtual learning and every possible permutation in between. Much has been written about the impact of the pandemic on students overall, in a general sense, regarding the levels of stress and academic implications children have been experiencing over the past year. 

At Eric Harvie School, we have learned some lessons, too, from our pandemic year.

It has been a most challenging year - absolutely the most challenging I have experienced in over 30 years - for so many, many reasons. The pandemic itself, of course, has created high levels of anxiety for everyone - sometimes the worries ebbed a bit, but they always seemed to manifest again and again.  Other challenges emerged as a result of the pandemic that shaped our school year, and we have learned some lessons as a result.

This school year has caused our school to change all the strategies we typically use to guide learning  - including building independence, making real-life connections, fostering numerous opportunities to apply problem solving and critical thinking skills, encourage innovative and design thinking and  opportunities to practice and nurture building peaceful communities together. Most of the learning occasions we typically foster in our school have been set aside this year in favour of safety and security of our students and staff. We have become, overall, much more traditional in our approaches to teaching and learning than any of us ever imagined as we championed innovation through our first four years.

This year, our learners have been confined to one classroom with the same teacher and classmates for every portion of the school day - from entry through to the end of the day, they have been at their table spots and teachers have taught primarily to the whole class rather than the small groups we typically prefer. When we have been able to offer learning support, it has been one-to-one or with one or two children from the same classroom who need similar support.  Teachers have been able to teach directly with children for much of every day, offering learning in much different formats than we previously would have, including a greater focus on written work, reading, math algorithms with fewer manipulatives, videos, and small hands-on creative projects that may be completed within the classroom or, preferably, at the table where children are located for the day. Except for two music classes per week and daily Physical Education in the gym, children have attended school much like I did as a child - in the same room, with the same children and the same teacher.  Much more traditional, definitely, than we are accustomed to at EHS!

There have been some advantages to this approach - the first being that we have been quite successful, overall, in keeping children and staff safe from the virus with only 3 known cases over the course of the year and limited impact on student learning (although having all the grade 3/4 classes pivot to online learning for 6 days was certainly an impact!).  That was our goal and we will continue to focus on cohorts of children with their teacher, handwashing, masking, distancing and enhanced cleaning until the COVID threats have subsided.

Teachers report they feel they know their students very well as a result of being with them all the time, every day, for learning. They have been able to build strong relationships with all the children in their classes, as well as with the families. Teachers are able to identify specific areas where students are struggling and offer ideas and strategies to support students in strengthening their knowledge and skills. They have been able to target strategies identified in IPPs (Individual Program Plans) for children with identified complex learning needs with greater frequency and attention. 

We have learned some interesting other lessons from our more traditional approaches to teaching and learning as well.

 Classroom management, student interactions outside the classroom (eg. playground) and fostering appropriate peaceful behaviours amongst the students have all definitely become interactions that require a much higher level of administrative/teacher intervention on a daily basis. Students benefit socially and emotionally from interacting with a wider expanse of other children on a daily basis - they like seeing other friends to play with during recesses and lunch times, Peace Assemblies, field trips, moving about the school to engage in activities in the Maker Space, the Hub or Learning Commons with small groups of peers. The loss of this change of pace and variety of learning interactions has certainly elevated the number of small conflicts and disagreements in the school, necessitating significantly more administrative interventions than we have ever seen before. When we meet with students to work through these situations, they are very much still aware of what is expected of them and what appropriate interactions look and sound like - they are simply not as patient or accepting of each other as they used to be when their interactions were more varied and diverse.  

Interestingly, although teachers have reported knowing their students better and being able to identify specific areas of learning need, student achievement has stayed about the same.  For some students, achievement has improved a bit; for others it has declined somewhat. Overall, there has been a levelling of achievement - students are doing the work they are asked and engaging in learning but improvements in skill or knowledge development are not evident in their daily work such as one might expect, given the time and attention teachers have focused on students in the classroom every day. 

This finding reflects, from my perspective, the reduced attention on a key part of learning - the social construction of knowledge. When children are able to work in small groups and discuss/explore/question learning of new concepts together, each of them brings their own background experiences and understandings to the table. Together, they share what they already know with each other, greatly expanding their realm of knowledge and pushing each other to try out new thinking and ideas as they engage in their work. Working independently more often leaves each of us relying on our own insights and understandings and reduces the opportunities to hear about and share in others' perceptions of the same concepts. 

Humanity relies on social interactions to survive, thrive, improve and be innovative. It is through these opportunities for socially constructing new understandings that children are often able to access a new way to understand or approach a problem they might otherwise have missed on their own. Research shows, clearly, that children who have opportunities to engage with others while learning new things are more apt to advance in their thinking and skill development. And it is quite possible that the limited opportunities we have been able to provide this school year for socially constructing knowledge together is being reflected in the levelling of student achievement across the grades. There are certainly pockets of improvement - as well as pockets of learners who are struggling. Overall, however, we are seeing a steadying of student achievement as students build greater strengths in the skills they are already good at without the boost of socially constructing knowledge available to help improve achievement in other areas of learning.  

"Students who engage in authentic learning do as well as others

on standardized tests, and do much better on real assessments

and real tasks of critical thinking and problem solving."

                                        - Linda-Darling Hammond

Along with the pandemic, we have had to contend with the metres and metres of orange fencing surrounding all the usual playing areas of the school yard, hemming the children into the compound or a small area of the playground. Between that, and the winter weather, the lesson about being outdoors is much better for children than being inside has been triply reinforced for us this year!  Our learners are often outside, in the community, in the Coulee, in the school yard, during a typical school year. This year we have had to assign them to particular areas of confinement for breaks and recesses to ensure there are no cross-cohort contacts, and those confined areas have been particularly small due to all the fenced off areas where we are not allowed to go until the construction project is deemed complete - hopefully by summer.  

We have always encouraged our learners to take their curiosities, their investigative skills, their creativity and innovative thinking outside the school walls. Through field trip experiences, as well, we have been able to provoke their inquisitiveness, encouraged their questions and asked them to apply their critical thinking skills to novel situations. Lesson emphasized for us:  get the children outside learning as much as possible - it is good for their physical activity, social activity and, as well, for their brain activity!

A challenge for us this year has been the interrupted learning some of our children have experienced - whether through required periods of isolation or times where parents kept them at home out of worries about exposure to COVID-19, or illnesses of their own, many students have experienced interruptions to daily learning and routines that would usually help them organize their thoughts, their work and their learning. When we return to school in the fall of 2021-22, we anticipate we will have learners with a wide variety of skill and knowledge experiences behind them - much more so than we would usually expect. Recognizing this as a lesson of the pandemic will also help us better prepare for learning that will meet student needs as we move further away from pandemic-controlled teaching and learning. 

"For so long school has been a place where we would take 

our kids as parents and show up to work as educators.

 The schedule kept us all

 in place and moved us from class to class so we could make 

sure to cover and essentially learn all that was required of us in

 our given class, or semester, or year. 

It was a system that was predictable and that allowed for us 

to feel safe going through the motions. 

The tests tell us that the majority of students are learning 

and therefore they were on track as they 

moved from grade level to grade level. 

We rarely question this process, because the structures

 have existed for so long have allowed us to keep the system 

in place that look very similar and function 

as they have for over 100 years." 

                                           - Katie L. Martin

We have invested so much energy and focus into a year of more traditional learning, striving to keep our students safe and attend to their learning needs at the same time. We have adjusted our teaching styles and approaches to accommodate these demands and, upon reflection, have learned many things from this experience that we will take forward to inform our next year practices and school set up. Time for teachers to get to know their students, of course. Also moving to provide multiple learning opportunities that engage students in socially constructed learning experiences that stretch and expand their understandings, social interactions and capacities to solve problems and think critically. Maximize outdoor learning opportunities as well, to keep our children physically, socially and neurally healthy and active. 

"Specifically in education, this collective experience has 

challenged educators, administrators, policy makers, families, 

and communities to reimagine how we educate young people."

- Katie L. Martin 

Traditional learning practices were not designed to amplify the thinking of learners; they were designed to measure the content learners had acquired. Acquiring content does not prepare our children to engage in the world in a reflective, inquisitive, engaged way that will allow them to approach life as having the potential for change, growth and adventure that the 21st century offers. Rather than holding them in place as markers of a population who attended Eric Harvie School, we will seek to offer learning experiences that encourage learners to think more deeply, question more fully; to try out new ideas and see what happens without being intimidated by failure or short term inconvenience; to believe they can truly make a difference in the world in which they are going to grow, thrive and change over a lifetime. We have learned many lessons from our very traditional year of learning - including a verification of our need to elevate our students' learning rather than ceiling it through our teaching practices.

Teachers have proven so flexible - moving from engaged, flexible learning opportunities to online learning last spring with a day's notice. Developing traditional teaching processes to ensure the physical well-being of children through this pandemic year. Pivoting from online to in-person without hesitation. Offering learning opportunities that get kids outside to Coulee School even when our yard is completely hemmed in by giant orange fences. Staying positive and calm through a third wave of positive cases and variants that sends chills through all our hearts. And, perhaps most importantly, still being willing to turn our faces to the sun, be confident in a new year of learning and willing to reflect on our lessons learned from this year so we are best able to live up to our school's vision: to establish and sustain a learning environment that fosters creativity and innovation in a peaceful community of connected, independent thinkers, problem solvers and learners. We are definitely up to the challenges of next year!

Lorraine Kinsman

Principal

Eric Harvie School 

Start With the Children...

  

“What if we give every kid in kindergarten through sixth grade in America the option to spend the academic year engaged primarily outdoors in a kind of “pandemic camp” instead of traditional school? The focus would be on achievement that is not narrowly academic—physical challenges; acts of service; and the development of self-regulation, independence, and friendship. Academic goals would also be part of the program; you can learn a lot of science while roaming a municipal park. But the emphasis would be on creating a new set of challenges for students to master, not on an ersatz version of school as we know it. " 

- Katie L. Martin, Educator & Author

Sometimes it feels like being in a school is similar to a giant bowling game - and it's hard to dodge the giant bowling balls headed our way unbeknownst to us! COVID-19 was a giant bowling ball that smashed right into our school last week, sending all of us proverbially flying in many directions - coinciding with the drop of a new draft curricula that has significant flaws and needs a major overhaul at the very least, as well as being 'budget week' for CBE schools, as we begin to grapple with the realities of next year's school budget.  It can all seem like too much to manage, consider, deal with, work around, learn to live with - depending on which response seems the most appropriate in the moment...

Amongst all these unexpected symbolic 'thwacks' to the best laid plans for teaching and learning our staff and students had been planning and envisioning for weeks, our team was simply outstanding!  They all rose admirably to the occasion, pivoted to online learning overnight and tried to make isolation seem like a bit of a break from coming to school and worked hard to make Friday as engaging as possible on a minute's notice!

We had planned a Coulee School 'blitz' for April for a number of reasons - the weather is significantly improved, our student teachers are (were) still here to help out when we aren't allowed to have parent volunteers join us, we have a grant for temporarily displaying our discoveries on both physical (to be located around/near the Coulee) and digital document boards (on our Coulee website) and, not surprisingly, we were anticipating there would be a spike in cases so taking the children outside to learn seemed like a good idea. Most importantly, the children themselves have many, many questions about the Coulee and some of their happiest learning moments, I am quite confident, occur in the Coulee.

As we contemplate the new draft curriculum, consider what steps the school might need to take in the fall to help students re-assert their in-school learning attitudes, behaviours and approaches to advancing their understandings of the world, and continue to put our best efforts into ensuring the individual learning needs of each student are elevated and enhanced, all of these efforts are focused, with a laser-like beam, on the children.

I have written a number of responses to the new draft curriculum, trying to honestly read each subject at each grade level and identify the strengths and limitations as I perceive them to be - I am about halfway through this personal challenge but am heartened by the fact that opportunities to provide feedback will continue through to the spring of 2022. I bring 30+ years experience and 3 degrees in education to the process but, without the context of why various components were introduced at particular times, it is a long and tentative process. The lines I keep writing over and over are 'developmentally not appropriate' and 'presentation as offered lacks engagement for children in this age group'. 

And I realize the greatest issue I have with the new draft curriculum is that there is little evidence children were considered when the curricula was being developed. And that, to me, is a heartbreaking possibility. 

I believe - actually hope fervently - that most people who have worked with me in schools, as staff or families ,would say that my primary goal with every thing we do in schools is about what's best for kids.  Children need an environment that provokes curiosity, invites investigation and is both welcoming and energizing. They do not come to school just to learn how to follow rules or fill in lists and recite facts. Children are trying to make sense of their world while understanding new ideas and concepts that require play, inventiveness, exploration, connection.  This is what schools need to be in the 21st century. And teachers and administrators need a strong, child-centered curricula as a lens to invite children into learning with joy and enthusiasm.  

As my colleague, Jackie Bates, noted, 

"Children learn best through exploration, through playing with concepts to build an understanding. Memorization appears to be a common thread throughout the draft documents - while there is need to memorize SOME things, we also have to recognize that we are in the year 2021 and we have technology at our fingertips to gain access to information such as dates and definitions. There are important historical events, for example, that we all need to understand but rather than memorize, children need to understand the impact of such events and how they shape the past, present and future."

As we go through the rest of this school year and begin to plan for 2021-22, these are the principles we will continue to adhere to while considering how to best meet the learning needs of all our students. Will we be perfect? Naturally not - but we will do our very best with the resources and parameters available.

We have an enormous mission ahead of us as we enter the next school year and try to weave the pieces of 'school' back together. It will be imperative to hold the children at the front of our work, to acknowledge their emotional well-being and the re-establishment of connections with friends and teachers across the school - as well as meeting their academic needs. And that is exactly what we will do - start with the children.

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal 

Eric Harvie School 

 

 

                                                                            

                                    

Winding Our Way Through The New Draft Curriculum

"As each generation does, our children will grow up to shape the world. They need plenty of creativity and enthusiasm for the task ahead. Nurturing them in loving relationships with plenty of freedom to play is wonderful preparation." - Laura Grace Weldon

"The CBE supports the goal of strengthening the curriculum to prepare students for the future. We trust that government will consider all the feedback gathered across the province and make the necessary changes prior to implementation in September 2022." - CBE, April 8/21

Children live in an odd juxtaposition of home and school, where one offers them the comfort and freedom of a loving, caring anchor in life, and the other the entry point where they begin to acquire skills and attitudes to prepare them for eventually leaving the proverbial nest.  

As parents, we invest everything we are capable of offering to ensure our children feel safe yet capable, protected yet willing to take risks, loved yet confident.    

As schools, we invest everything we are capable of offering to ensure our students develop competencies, strengths and approaches that will carry them successfully into adulthood with essential academic and life skills.

And our work with students is always guided by the provincial curricula which determines the lenses through which our students encounter the world academically and socially.  

There are several ways to approach academic learning within schools - a classical education, for example, emphasizes the study of history, languages and literature through language rather than with images, and has a foundational commitment to the moral development of children, including the idea of immortality and a superior Being as foundational to understanding how the world exists. Classical education is often referred to as 'traditional education' too, and rests on the premise that the accumulated knowledge of a society can be handed down to the next generation in totality -  the world has an ordered knowledge that can sequentially be taught to all children since the goal of education is to have all people understand the world in a particular way that will ground them in strong moral principles of living. Children are all taught in a similar way to reflect their common need to develop the same understandings of how the world functions.

Conventional education, on the other hand, does not have theological foundation and sets as it's purpose the socialization of children to promote the meeting of particular learning needs, understand the world from a more 'scientific' or 'exploration of facts perspective' and to conceive of education as a way for a child to develop their individual skills and aptitudes towards living a quality, educated life as an adult. The focus, therefore is more on the learner and how to best access their ability to learn rather than on a codified content of knowledge every child must learn to be successful.  The goal of conventional education is to produce functional, skilled people who are able to create a successful, independent life for themselves and their families within a secular society of competing interests.

Within these two broad frameworks of learning exist numerous subsets that have evolved through many, many decades of 'schooling'.  Through the twentieth century in particular, schools offered primarily teacher-centred, lecture-style instruction (a classical interpretation of teaching) that was, for the most part, effective for sharing information students could not easily access by themselves, and encouraging of students to take greater interest in the content and lessons presented. Those students who were able to make sense of new knowledge through listening were the most successful with this teaching approach, and there tended to be a high attrition rate in high school environments where students who found themselves struggling academically left school to pursue other, less academic avenues for building successful lives. 

Throughout the last century, there evolved pockets of educational research and theorizing that acknowledged not all students were alike in terms of being able to learn, and a multi-faceted approach to instruction began to emerge that recognized all children could become learners if they were offered different opportunities to learn. As well, significant social changes through the 20th century presented numerous challenges for educators - families moved farther apart as the result of industrial growth, religious affiliations began to decline, women became more predominant in the work force and the social fabric that had held society together for many centuries - withstanding much social upheaval - ultimately began to realign the socialization of children away from home, church and community to secular, individualized, smaller spheres of influence. 

These changes, influenced heavily by drastic technological advances that occurred through the latter half of the century, caused schools to re-think approaches to childhood socialization and learning. 

Researchers studied how children learned, and affirmed the growing awareness that not all children learned best by listening in a lecture-style, teacher-focused environment - nor did this style encourage children to become independent thinkers. The era of teaching all children in the same way began to unravel as schools and educators looked for new teaching paradigms that recognized individual students' learning needs, changing social norms and exponential technological growth within the academic environment.

A new conception of 21st century learning has emerged from the immense changes that unfolded through the last century. While honouring the value of a classical education in many ways (for example, disciplines of study are a typically classical influence), 21st century learning approaches content, teaching, learning, building the classroom environment, assessment and even the use of technology in the classroom from a much different perspective: rather than viewing teaching only through the lens of a body of knowledge a teacher must present to a learner, teaching is structured to be more learner-focused, with the learner contributing to establishing their own learning goals within particular parameters while learning to apply new understandings to novel situation. 

Over time, it has become clear that both approaches can be effective strategies for teaching children, depending on the ultimate goals of a society/school/family.  There is also significant evidence that affirms most teachers recognize there are multiple ways to teach and that different approaches work best in specific learning situations. 21st century, learner-centered approaches to teaching and learning have been informing teaching practices in Alberta for at least the past twenty years, both formally within a couple of the Programs of Study, and informally as teachers have adapted their renewed understandings of content, student development and how children learn best based on their individual needs to flexibly support even the most traditional of curriculum documents. 

Alberta's curriculum has made room, historically, for students to successfully analyze, evaluate and synthesize, as well as to  apply new understandings and skills, in a wide variety of real life and classroom-based situations. Educators have clearly demonstrated that learner-centered approaches to teaching are truly able to enhance traditional, teacher-centred instruction as they offer students meaningful contexts to practice and master their emerging skills. 

Whether a parent considers a classical education to be most appropriate for their child, or that a conventional approach that encourages individual growth would be ideal - or any other subset of these two primary academic perspectives to be the most relevant for their child - it is a component of what parents are being asked to respond to in the survey to the new draft curriculum: does this curriculum meet your expectations for your child's learning overall?

Consider: What is it that I believe curricula should offer my child as a learner?

This is the lens through which you will then consider the new draft curriculum - will it be able to provide the education for your child that you believe to be most valuable for their successful living?

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Responding to the Draft Curriculum - Read the grade/subject areas here:

 Draft Kindergarten - Grade 6 New Curriculum Draft

Once you have read this draft, you will be asked to: 

   - Describe what you believe are the strengths of the draft curriculum

- Describe what you believe are the opportunities for improvement in the draft curriculum

- Offer General Comments

As you read through these draft curricula pages, it is a good idea to use a chart (this is the one we included in the Connect Message today to families) to gather your thoughts and impressions.  Each grade level in each subject area offers multiple Initial organizing ideas (think themes) students will be expected to study and know. Each organizing idea is followed by guiding questions and specific learner outcomes - or the learning goals for that particular theme.  There are structured knowledge, understanding, skills and procedures columns for each organizing idea.  Consider whether your child will be able to successful accomplish the objectives and tasks in each category next school year, based on your understanding of your child as a learner. 

Once you have read through each draft subject/grade area pertinent to your child's next grade and jotted some of your impressions on the chart, consider the workload included across the multiple curricula. Minutes of instruction per week per subject area are mandated by Alberta Education, as indicated in this chart: 

It is a worthwhile idea to consider workload at this point - will your child be able to accomplish all that is required in the assigned minutes in class, or will homework become a reality for them? This is important general feedback for the survey. 

There are more specific suggestions for evaluating curriculum as a parent in the Monday Connect for today (April 12/21).  We do encourage every parent to take an hour or so of your time and respond to this critically important draft - it holds your child's future success in the confines of the document and the opportunities for feedback will be critical in ensuring children's learning needs in the youngest years will be met successfully in the years to come.

Lorraine Kinsman

Principal, Eric Harvie School 

 

A Spring with Promise & Peril...

.    

"Gosh, how I wish we would just get real and say: Ok look, let's not get back on the hamster wheel we were on in 2019.  Let's focus on well-being, authentic learning, curiosity, equity. IMAGINE!"

- Julie Stern 

Spring Break was just what we all needed - or, at least I did!  A chance to catch my breath and relax just a little without worrying daily about the possibility of cases, transitions to online learning or anything else remotely pandemic related.  While there was not the usual travel (which somehow now seems like such a distant memory!) nor daily outings with friends and family, there was at least warmth in the air, time to walk in the great outdoors and an escape from the daily routines that begin each morning with the alarm :)

And now we are back with only 3 short months remaining in this wildly unpredictable school year that will forever be framed by pandemic realities and restrictions. There has never been a school year like this in the last 100 years and I sincerely hope we have the fortitude as a society to prepare much better against any future catastrophes so there will never be another! As we look forward to the final three months of the 2020-21 school year, the promise of spring has presented itself with warmer weather, melting snow, sunshine and increasing numbers of vaccinations - even as the threat of variant COVID transmissions and rising caseloads darkens the horizon of 'getting back to normal'.

It appears we will be living with a spring full of both promise and peril. 

So, how will we navigate the next three months with these competing influences floating large in the background?

With regard to the COVID risks, we will continue - with increased vigilance and reminders in these early days of spring - to follow all our pandemic protocols listed with the accompanying document in each of our weekly Connect Monday messages to families. So far, we have been most fortunate with limited exposure to the virus within our school. We think this is attributable to both the vigilance of our staff and students as well as our families - you have all been so careful to not send your children to school when then are not feeling well that even instances of the common cold or stomach flus that can ordinarily trouble a school during a school year have been virtually non-existent this year.  We applaud your care and thank you for helping us continue to follow every possible precaution during these last months of the school year.

Since we are a school that believes in offering maximum opportunities for students to engage in learning through applying skills, strategies and critical thinking to as many real-life opportunities as possible, we have some significant prospects for student engagement that will keep them busy, focused on learning and active through these final months of this year.

First of all, we are very excited about COULEE SCHOOL!  This is not a new adventure for us - we have been connected to the Coulee since we opened way back in the fall of 2017 as part of Tuscany School. Initially it was space constrictions with the two schools sharing tight quarters that led us to consider the Coulee as an excellent site for learning - that, in turn, guided us to a ton of research and possibilities connected to place-based learning and exploring ideas with children related to fitting into all the spaces in our community on a personal as well as public level. For children to fully appreciate place and how they exist within an environment, they need to appreciate who they are within their families, community, city, country and the world, as well as the histories, geographies and biologies of the places where they connect and live.  

Coulee School offers so many different opportunities for students to engage in considering the impact of the land, the impact of humans on the land and the interconnectivity of living plants and animals within the environment that children never grow weary of learning and being in the outdoor classroom!  For much of April we are focusing on a Coulee School 'blitz' - with several planned in-coulee learning experiences for every class as well as two days of virtual visits and stories with our Blackfoot Elder, Saa'kokoto.  We will be sharing much of the students' learning on our Coulee School websites in the coming weeks - you can check out the growing body of documentation from each class/team through the home site at EHS Coulee School Website

Our 5-Year Celebration Murals Project with our Artist in Residence Rebecca Ellison from Radiant Art has, of course, been quite changed as a result of the pandemic. However, artists Rebecca Ellison, Lexi Hilderman and Kristin Boettger are collaborating to offer both virtual and video lessons for our Grade 4 students to complete the construction of the first Mural before the end of the school year - and we have great plans to have it installed before June 30th as well :). Here is the current draft of the Mural the children and the artists have designed together:

We are confident the Grade 4 students will be applying many of the skills, strategies and critical thinking as they work through the creative process, capturing their experiences at EHS over our first 5 years!  The remaining Murals are planned to be completed in the fall, hopefully as an authentic Artists-in-Residence experience, involving students from all the other grades as well.

We are also working on developing a temporary Coulee School Information Board to be displayed near/in the Coulee for the final months of the school year - the product of the grant we received from the City of Calgary's 'Embrace the Great Outdoors' campaign.  We will have this project finalized by the end of April and look forward to sharing our learnings from and about the Coulee with all of Tuscany soon!

A new project that has just emerged is a natural community art project currently in the planning stages that will also reflect our connections with the Coulee using tree-cookies as the foundation of the art design. We are still in the planning stages of this one, but it will involve all students in the school, be completed by the end of June and displayed on the chain link fence near the playground. Stay tuned for more information on this exciting new learning adventure!

Our Peace Books Video Challenge has launched as well, just before spring break.  Spearheaded by our Peace Ambassadors, the video challenge invites students - individually or in teams - to prepare a virtual/digital representation of a favourite Peace book title in video form to share with the school on our EHS YouTube channel. This will be an ongoing project for the next several weeks and we look forward to celebrating students' digital representations of our Peace book collection!

There are numerous other learning opportunities that are planned to carry students successfully and enthusiastically through to the end of this school year - we are not daunted by the impediments of precautions nor worries about eruptions of COVID cases as we contemplate our role as champions of learning at the school. One does not preclude the other - learning that is engaging and meaningful must always be our central purpose and we will continue to foster optimum learning opportunities for every student despite these strange pandemic times!

It is in the learning, in the exploring nature of the curiosities of children, that we find the greatest promise of this 2021 Spring - we hope all our families enjoy the amazing adventures our learners are embarking on as our final three months begins - we look forward to meeting you all on the trails in Tuscany as the Coulee calls us to truly celebrate spring as nature intended. Outdoors in the sunshine! 

Lorraine Kinsman

Principal