Everything seems like it needs fixing.
The return to school-based learning should be accompanied by a more dynamic curriculum that serves all students...
Greater stimulation and success in the classroom are a big part of what makes kids feel well, happy, positively challenged, and flourishing."
- Andy Hargreaves
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There is no doubt the pandemic's impact on teaching and learning over the past two years has been significant in multiple ways. At Eric Harvie School, we have experienced considerable shifts in how we engage in learning through our days - when we opened the school just over five years ago, we worked very hard to establish a climate of learning that focused on student engagement - ways to get students excited about learning - in a wide variety of ways.
Through peace education, design thinking, place-based learning, borderless classrooms, multi-age class groupings, student-centred learning, inquiry-based investigations, Wonder Time and in a physical environment intended to deconstruct traditional paradigms of what 'learning' looked and sounded like, our school established itself as a place of learning intentionally considering learning through the perspectives and experiences of children rather than through mandated curricular directions.
We explored the curricula, rather than 'learned' the curricula. We celebrated active learning both outside and inside, and we intentionally took our learning beyond the borders of our school as frequently as possible - whether it was into the community of Tuscany, Twelve Mile Coulee or to a significant number of places external to our school, including Head Smashed In Buffalo Interpretive Centre, the Calgary Public Library Downtown, Calgary Reads 'Reading House', the Vivo Centre, the Telus Centre, City Hall, the Calgary Tower, the National Music Centre, Glenbow Ranch Park and many other places as well - all in just three short years.
We were delighted to witness our students representing their learning in multiple ways as well - through song, oral and written story telling, through video, dance, physical movement, art, drama, investigating in person, sharing experiences, asking questions, comparing data, observing and documenting the world as they encountered it through numerous perspectives and situations. We celebrated every learning experience possible with our families and our community and we were delighted to acknowledge the growth, enthusiasm for learning and academic development of our first students.
The pandemic has, without a doubt, constrained many of our initiatives, directions and willingness to explore the world in manifold ways.
We've been cohorted, isolated, compartmentalized, cut off from each other, from the learning spaces and openness of communication and collaboration we had valued so greatly and championed every day. We developed our student engagement opportunities over the first almost four years of operation around flexible, collaborative learner interactions with a variety of experiences.
The abrupt changes prompted by the pandemic created an urgency for teachers to re-consider how to best engage all our learners as a strategy to foster interest in learning and motivate students to invest energy in continued academic pursuits.
Teachers worked together to develop a daily schedule that offered choice, multiple opportunities throughout the week to connect with teachers and classmates and the 'Superhero' project to engage children in learning activities that were academic in structure and design. As we worked through the first 3 months of the pandemic online, attendance was occasionally sporadic, continued engagement was sometimes a challenge as technology demands increased in families and schools but teachers were pleased with the investment of children in learning and the overall positive growth of learners despite the unexpected pivot to online learning - and with the amazing Superhero projects!
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"We're not just in a pandemic; we're living amid multiple and interrelated global crises, from climate change to rampant wealth inequality to attacks on democracy. Our schools can't educate students well if we ignore the world around them." - Andy Hargreaves
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When we returned to in-person learning in September 2020, we were constrained significantly by new rules and precautions. Again, our capacities for developing engaging learning opportunities were interrupted as we contained learners in specific seats in classrooms and removed the capacity for flexibility of movement around the school.
Instead, we moved learning outside. Coulee School - always a component of our learning environment - took on a whole new role in our school's learning focus. We developed websites, applied for an outdoor grant, created opportunities for learning that focused on the natural environment and allowed us to be outside when inside was no longer the safest place to learn. Coulee School became our outlet for engagement and student focus, easing the intensity of the constraints in the school and encouraging learners to continue exploring new ideas and perspectives, new ways to represent understandings, even within a pandemic environment.
This fall we re-opened some of our learning spaces - the Learning Commons and the Maker Space - and made the Hub a more flexible place for collaborating and engaging in hands-on investigations and explorations. We continue to live with constraints and have increased them in response to the recent arrival of the Omnicrom variant, including modifiying the ways we access open learning spaces.
We continue to envision learning through the lens of engagement, interactions with hands-on learning experiences and real-life, authentic encounters and investigations. We continue to advance place-based learning through Coulee School experiences, we continue to engage in design thinking creations and we continue to encourage opportunities for learning that are connected to multiple curricula outcomes.
In the Coulee, for example, we have identified winter feed for birds, used our observation and investigative skills to describe landforms and then used multiple synonyms to create concrete poems, and we have traced ecosystem structures for the survival of flora and fauna from our searches for seeds. And our mural project offered opportunities for learners to capture their thinking in a unique, collaborative effort. Snapshots of how engaged learning brings non-classroom based explorations together with curricular objectives and outcomes.
We have, as well, participated in the provincial assessments intended to identify learning gaps resulting from the pandemic interruptions, as well as possible escalations in anxieties, fears or not feeling safe in a COVID world. We have also considered the increase in digital knowledge students have developed over the past two years, and whether we should capitalize on that as we move forward in this school year, seeking to increase technology-based learning.
Teachers believe the most effective way to identify and address any learning gaps, social-emotional wellness or access to learning is to provoke student interest and engagement - children who want to know more, try new things, investigate and represent new understandings, questions and possible solutions will continue to grow as learners.
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"As schools look to recover from the pandemic, instead of focusing on "learning loss" and persisting with heavy standardized testing, let's bring magic and mystery into learning and teaching...let's infuse the curriculum with meaning and purpose to arouse young people's passions and address compelling issues. And instead of trying to make everything entertaining, let's ensure...students experience the mastery of hard-won accomplishment, while increasing achievement." - Andy Hargreaves
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The 2021-22 school year is still unfolding and our students are still thriving as interested, engaged, curious learners. We continue to focus our energies on captivating them with opportunities to think independently, ask questions, seek solutions, try multiple approaches to discover a best solution, investigate, plan, interrogate, create, propose options. The pandemic constraints have not disappeared but they will not impede learning. It is not the environment, the technology, the curricula, the tests, online videos nor sequential lessons that lead children to grow as learners - it is curiosity, imagination, investigation and opportunities to engage in purposeful work that defines engagement, and it is engagement that motivates learners to continue growing academically even in times of pandemic constraints.
Andy Hargreaves is a reknowned educator, researcher and author. His recent article in the Educational Leadership magazine, titled 'The Future of Learning Lies in Engagement" reflects, in many ways, the experiences of Eric Harvie School and our learners.
Our students may be young but they are mighty learners. And we are deeply committed to continuing with student engagement as our primary motivator for learning.
Lorraine Kinsman, Principal
Eric Harvie School
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