Bringing Imagination to the Table of Learning

"Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. " - Margaret Wheatley

Once upon a time...lots of great stories begin with this hopeful phrase....

Once upon a time teachers at Eric Harvie School imagined a year of learning during a pandemic that would not only be a story of limitations and constraints.  This story of learning would carry children into the natural world intentionally, making connections with each other and honouring visible relationships.

This story would elevate the notion of relationships, embodied in the words: We Walk This Path Together...

Teachers dreamed of possibilities and engaging students in breaking those possibilities wide open to be bigger, better, more interesting and engaging than teachers might ever begin to imagine!

And so the concepts embraced in the notion of 'Coulee School' emerged from imaginations seeking to break the restraints that would define all learning in school year 2020-21. 

That imagined beginning nested in the work of the students and gained life as a new story of learning - a story that nudged children to question, wonder, reflect, discover, innovate or explore as they uncovered and began to make sense of new elements of life on our planet, making connections with prior understandings and knowledge.  Imaginings of the teachers flowed seamlessly towards the collective learning  the children would create as they acknowledged and understood every story begins with a blank page...

"Research shows a direct connection between a student’s mindset and academic success." - Ron Berger

As the school year unfolded, the work of our learners began to emerge both physically in their numerous representations of their school work, and virtually on the pages of our Coulee School website. The diverse teaching and learning across the school was phenomenal in scope - relying on the questions of students, we witnessed the brilliance of learner curiosity as it became the impetus for investigations and explorations as students acquired and assimilated new information into their knowledge repertoire. The array of information was captured so eloquently by learner representations - and then we imagined bigger, transitioning student work into public displays of exploration and new understandings. 

The energy of this project has been oxygen to our school during this year of constraint and limitations. We were outside where viruses seemed less menacing.  And we were engaged actively in real discoveries, authentic questions, puzzles that we needed to make sense of and perpetually changing natural conditions. The more we ventured into the Coulee, the greater our awareness of learning possibilities became until we were positively crackling with energy, curiosity and open minds!

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s 

mind there are few."

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

What began as possibility - imaginings and ideas from a group of teachers trying to open up learning opportunities in a year where every familiar experience had been swept off the table - came full circle, reflecting the power of relationships, consideration, perseverance, tenacity and inquiry when students were invited to participate in the learning processes.  And #Coulee School became a real event to celebrate!

As we look ahead to the fall, there are many uncertainties for sure. We wonder what the expectations for each teacher, staff member, student will be as we sit, firmly mired in the face of not knowing, of speculating, of being anxious. This pandemic year has brought about some amazing learning for the children in attendance when they could be here - but there are also children who weren't able to be in school every day this year - sometimes for extended stretches of time. And others who will be returning to EHS from a variety of possible teaching situations. One thing we know for sure: our expectations will need to be tempered with reality and be judiciously shared. 

We have to imagine ways to bring school to life as we enter the fall, to celebrate families, siblings, friends and share stories. To make the unknown visible for and with our students. Some will need extra support; some will need the freedom to fly. All will need interested, caring, supportive adults to guide them in these journeys. 

"But our kids are not broken.

To foster students’ growth, districts should think beyond traditional ways of grading and teaching. 

Instead of federal and district test results becoming labels...districts should use them diagnostically, as guides only,

 and encourage teachers to collaborate with students in understanding their skill profiles so that the kids feel empowered in their own development." 

                                 - Ron Berger 

As staff and teachers begin to envision next school year, we know there are many things to celebrate - imagination and resiliency immediately come to mind. We also know whatever our journey becomes next school year, it will be best led by student questions and curiosities and the more hands-on, engaging learning opportunities included, the more likely learners are to invest themselves in developing deeper understandings of the world. 

A beginner's mindset stays open to new possibilities. Even as we anticipate knowing what the outcomes will be, we still want to experience the richness of living in the possible, imagining the best, seeing what happens as we navigate the journey.  

 Schools should also recognize their students’ resilience over this past year, support their healing and emotional growth, and honour them with meaningful and challenging academic work, not with remedial classes. That’s how we’ll get our children back on track. " Ron Berger 

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal

Eric Harvie School

An Invitation to Re-Imagine - the Beginner's Mindset

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s 

mind there are few."

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

"The pandemic has turned us all into beginners as the usual ways of doing things were no longer an option. Virtually every business and organization had to design new ways of operating to accommodate social distancing and keep everyone safe. 

This meant that as individuals we had to reimagine habits like going to restaurants, movies, and working out. We had to have difficult conversations about bias and equity that challenged our actions, interactions, and systems. Traditions like birthday parties, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and graduations were reinvented. " 

- Dr. Katie L. Martin

*******************************

When the whole experience of living through a pandemic finally fades to rearview mirror status, and we are reflecting on the experiences that carried us through with some semblance of success and resilience, it is my most sincere hope that we spend a bit of time recognizing the opportunities we have had with which to successfully re-imagine many aspects of our lives and living experiences.

Re-imagining our daily living habits is not - as Dr. Katie Martin points out in the top quote to start this entry - something any of us do as a general rule. We tend to do what we have always done, with occasional adjustments to acknowledge growth of a child, or a variation in our interests, or perhaps a change in job, home or location. Essentially, we follow similar routines of work, school, extracurricular activities through all the days of our lives and fit special occasions around these routines. Such are the foundations of our lives and our dependable routines are truly the keys to living successfully as humans.

As Fanny Fern, 19th century novelist and children's writer observed, "There are no little things. "Little things', so called, are the hinges of the universe." 

We become adept at managing many things in life because our routines fit comfortably with our views of the world and serve us well with meeting our basic physiological needs such as food, water and shelter as well as many of security and relationship needs as well. Most often, it is the routines and structures we build into our lives that offer us psychological support as well and help us to live up to our full potential in this world. Although we may tweak something here and there on our schedules from time to time, we tend to minimize the big interruptions - such as moving or changing jobs - because they require extended time and attention that must be reclaimed from other areas of daily living. 

In other words: routines matter. 

The pandemic has not only interrupted our daily routines, it has interrupted every routine - how we live, shop, eat, celebrate, relax, entertain, be entertained, exercise, engage in hobbies, sports, music, meet other people, greet other people, communicate, travel, save and/or spend our money, understand our political systems, vote, read, write, manage our health and wellness - both physical and mental, worship, study, gather together, relate to each other, vacation, raise our children. There is no area of modern living that the pandemic has not invaded and caused us to change every habit we have ever practiced or imagined ourselves practicing. 

Routines matter - except when they can no longer be practiced. Then they are missed. We yearn to 'get back to normal'. Return to what we had. Recollect and re-knit the fabric of our lives as we remember how things used to be.  We have adjusted and we have accommodated and we have removed, ignored, tolerated and played the waiting game. Now we just want to return to normal.

What if we re-imagine, with a beginner's mindset, what 'returning to normal' might mean?  There are millions of possibilities to be explored if we take this pause, this forced time to reflect and re-imagine, that might impact every aspect of living and possibly enhance or improve our future living experiences.  After all, we have the time to reconsider...

Early in the pandemic, families mentioned they appreciated the family time they had gained together once the multitude of after school and evening activities began to subside, generating conversations about reducing the number of demands on family time 'when this was over'. Other conversations about the importance of walking through one's community, using the public library - and missing the public library, finding ways for families to spend time together playing games, watching movies, hiking, inventing activities and special events across the community (like the beautiful window art so many homes displayed in the spring of 2020). Innovation and creativity and re-imagining with a beginner's mindset. 

"When something is new, there is no expectation to know anything about it. This allows you to approach the situation with a different mindset than one of an expert who has a preconceived notion of what should happen, and can put you on autopilot rather than thinking about new and different opportunities. 

A beginner is: 

• Open to how things works and new possibilities
• Free of expectations about what will happen
• Curious and wants understand things more deeply" (Dr. Katie L. Martin)

The pandemic is no longer new and we are wearying of all the demands it has made on us to do everything quite differently than we did before - to think about how we do everything in a way we never gave much thought to before the pandemic invaded our doorsteps around the world.  One thing it does continue to offer us - hopefully as it truly begins to wane - is the opportunity to continue to reflect, reconsider and re-imagine how, why, when, where, what we might do differently as we begin to reconvene in less restrictive ways - both in our lives and in our schools.

Bringing the children back to school without restrictions and with opportunities to engage in best possible teaching and learning practices is what educators are most excitedly anticipating, even as we continue to adjust and accommodate teaching to reflect the hybrid experiences of both in-person and online instruction. As we look forward to a return to 'more normal' circumstances, we have the opportunity - actually the gift of opportunity - to re-consider teaching and learning with a beginner's mindset that is focused on how we best meet learner's needs and what those learner needs might be, based on the best research and information possible. 

A return to normal does not necessarily mean a return to every practice and routine that existed before. 

"...developmental scientists and educators have long known that academic outcomes in the later elementary-school years are built on a foundation of authentic, conversational language and on the nurturing of meaningful relationships in early childhood. Early learning is fundamentally a social process, during which the architecture of the developing brain is constructed from emotional connections with trusted caregivers and friends...children experience greater academic and social gains in classrooms where teachers are emotionally attuned to them—bending down to chat spontaneously and meaningfully, and following curricula that encourage physical, collaborative, open-ended play." - Erika Christakis 

Sometimes it takes a pandemic for the world to acknowledge what we already know, and then seek to re-magine new possibilities with a fresh mindset.  

Research has been abundant for the past 25 years (or more) in helping us understand how children learn best. We are often tempted to choose to acknowledge and support the research that fits with what has already been established because that will not require us to change what we are used to thinking and doing, or recognize that perhaps our historical practices have come up short for supporting many children in their development as successful, joyful, innovative learners of the world.

Perhaps a beginner's mindset is a lofty goal; perhaps it is not. One thing I know for sure is if we do not take the time to reflect, re-imagine and look forward with intentionality and investment into the best educational research possible and allow that to inform our practices in education, we will definitely have squandered this world-wide opportunity to try and improve our investment in children. 

"Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity." - H. Jackson Brown 

"Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. " - Margaret Wheatley

Through to the end of the school year, I hope to engage in some re-imagining of school on these pages, to reflect and explore with a beginner's mindset as much as possible, what could be possible for learners returning full-time to school from a widespread patchwork of learning experiences, and how hopeful, research-based, innovative thinking might afford greater access to best teaching and learning for all children. They have survived the pandemic with us and they deserve no less.

Lorraine Kinsman

Principal   

 

In Search of Possibility, Inspiration, Discovery - Have We Lost Our Ability to Imagine?

 

 

"To help young people become more receptive to learning, we need to actively engage, cultivate and sustain their focusing skills. Luckily, brain research points to effective ways of gaining children's attention." - Marie-Nathalie Beaudoin 

"I hope that our classrooms expand from a place where we are taught to a place where we can explore together. " - Katie L. Martin

"We need a new story that teaches us how to live together differently in this country because right now most of the stories are divisive." - Dr. Dwayne Donald 

"Instruction that promotes complex thinking over memorization is associated with strong class participation, achievement and students setting hopeful, aspirational goals for their educational futures....Collaborative, interdisciplinary, active and problem-based learning have been found to improve student attendance, course completion and graduation rates."                                                              - Mosher, Hartwell & Brown

Recently, I read an article about the discovery of insulin 100 years ago - interesting to me because my mother was a childhood diabetic in the 1930's and would not have survived without insulin, despite the many tribulations she endured at the time as researchers, doctors, patients and their families continually refined the medication, best practices and understandings of this 'miracle' medicine.  

It reminded me of another article I read within the last month about the speed of vaccine development for the COVID-19 virus - which was actually not a 'speedy' process at all, but a series of developments over almost 10 years prior to the pandemic occurring in 2020 when MERS first began appearing in the world - and this had built on vaccine research that had begun a decade before that. 

Research building on research until a worthwhile and timely discovery is made. 100 years apart but a similar process - discoveries are made by a researcher or group of researchers, questions are asked by many others, there are experiments and conversations, graphs, charts, comparisons, wonders, imaginings, 'what 'ifs' and maybe's, exploring and predicting, trying, failing and trying again. In the early 21st century, we call this 'design thinking' in many circles - including the field of Education - and as I reflect on the state of the visible world (so much of what hits the media represents only a small fraction of the human experience overall), I am wondering what the role of design thinking really is in the world of 2021?

It feels, sometimes, like possibility, inspiration, discovery and imagination have fallen out of fashion in our zeal to have 'hard facts' that often are so over-analyzed and turned inside out that the actual truth never seems to really be acknowledged or perhaps, even available. 

There have been times in the past five years when trying to understand the truth of the world's events has been a gargantuan and futile effort, caught as we, the 'public', have been between lies disguised as truth and fiction masking as fact all jumbled up together with a loss of empathy, kindness and care overall. As many of us struggled not to get caught on this slippery slope, humanity itself was suddenly and unexpectedly assaulted by a virus that rapidly began killing thousands of people. Immediately, lifestyles changed and we became wearers of masks, inveterate hand-washers and struggled to define what 'social distancing' actually meant - and then vaccines arrived on the horizon and suddenly everyone was questioning everything. Where was the evidence of how the virus was transmitted? Where was the evidence masks worked? How did a vaccine get made so quickly? What is herd immunity? What is a variant? Is this a disease of 'old' people or not? Everyone wants an answer - no! Everyone wants the 'truth'!!

And a draft curriculum arrived midst all of this clamour for the truth, asking children to recite a particular version of history, study known algorithms and calculations in math, be classical in our thinking and slide back into historical patterns of social interactions that we have already clashed with in our not-so-distant past. More 'truth' for all of us to clamour for as we continue to close doors, narrow our perspectives and hide from anything that is not familiar and reliable from our pasts. 

And I wonder where our human ingenuity exists within all this muddle of fear, anxiety, best intentions, confusion and disarray of life that is 2020-21? 

Where does imagination go when fear overwhelms?  Why is building on the discoveries of others no longer celebrated but regarded with suspicion? Where does one find inspiration these days for new ideas, re-designing, thinking bigger, trying out new iterations of previous thinking? Why is it suddenly horrifying to discover anything new about math? Where are the possibilities for tomorrow?

As I watched a few children creating in the Maker Space last week, it was clear to me that imagination, inspiration, discovery and possibility are alive and well in our children! The Maker Space has been very quiet during this pandemic year, and it was not the lively, noisy place of old with just a few masked and protected students working in the Studio at a time. Nonetheless, the children were fearless in their designs, trying out new ideas all the time, adding ideas to each other's, trying to capture their dreams in fabric, wood, glue and nails - there are our dreamers and doers of the future!

They will carry this deep-seated belief they can change the world, one nail or hot glue gun at a time, from their earliest experiences of school. They will know curiosity can lead to great things for humanity. Our children will dare to explore and discover, try new things and help each other out with ideas and new iterations. 

When they are in the Coulee, they carry this perspective with them there too, as well as an awareness of the history, the connections, the presence of Na'a as they explore, question, wonder, imagine and investigate their world. They are not in pursuit of any truth; the presence of possibility is what captures their imagination. Each child knows they will experience and see the world through their own lenses, appreciating the nuances of others' perspectives at the same time. There is room on the planet for all of us to care and share together.

This pandemic year has caused so many of us to withdraw and turtle, to worry and pull back to home, to question and fear as well as feel frustrated, angry and isolated. Our children are capable of echoing every fear and worry we display, especially in these days of isolation when parents and teachers are their primary sources of contact and security. These are, without a doubt, precarious days...

Yet there is optimism and joy to be found in the laughter of the children, in the discoveries, the designs and inventions, the plans and stories they each dream, share and grow together with every waking moment. It is essential the adults in their world sustain the bubble of confident possibility they naturally carry as they make sense of the world. Their future does not feel constrained by the pandemic in any way - and that is extremely refreshing in a world that, just now, feels so riddled with distrust, disorder, blame and an unending search for some definitive truth that never really seems to be attainable.

Perhaps it is the children's work to help us remember the importance of possibility, imagination, inspiration and discovery. And they do this so effortlessly every day  - when we give them the space to do so. Our work, therefore, is to create the space and let them show us the possibilities of their futures.

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal