Blue Sky School

     Why should I go to school? The age of old question asked by the majority of the under 18 population who go to school. You've heard the basic "It's important and it'll help you in your future life" answer told by every teacher ever, but apart from that, why should you go to school? For many, it's not engaging and it's not pleasurable. For those people, whether they want to go to school is almost as rhetorical as being asked, "Would you like to get shot with a massive gun?" (In case you're wondering, for me the answer is no to the gun thing.)      Below are 7 (my new favourite number) reasons why you should put the effort in to go to school every day. And yes, the follow up to the User Interface blog post is coming soon. 1. Why not? School may not be the greatest, but it's most definitely not the worst! It's something to do when you're bored and an excuse to get out of doing chores. It could definitely be better, but it cou...

This week, we got to go to the grand opening of Impact Hub, the co-working space downtown, where Shauna is a member. Impact Hub was terrific. Okay, now a little bit about our booth. We set up a booth with our banner, business cards and one pager. Hari tried to set up our video, but we couldn't get the sound to work. We did really well, we got 32 visitors (wow!) and everyone had something different to say. When I was there, I got to see what everyone’s thoughts and feelings were about the amazing Blue Sky School and I even got to learn things about Blue Sky School that I did not know before. Our visitors talked about what their experiences were when they were in school. Also we talked about how Blue Sky school is different from the mainstream program and much more. It was so exciting to see all the awesome people. Kat from Water Rangers taught us about water testing and Grace set up for us to take a field trip and help them test the water - in kayaks! W...

On Wednesday night, our friends at Shopify welcomed us into their inspiring space for a Blue Sky School Action Team workshop about reimagining schooling. We had an incredible turn-out, over 40 passionate disruptors braved the weather and the traffic to join us after what was, for most, an already long day of work and life. (One of my former BEd students actually took a bus in from Montreal just for this event and had to leave a little early to catch a bus back! Huge shout out to Amanda!) One of the most exciting parts of this event was how many new faces joined us. Blue Sky School really is becoming a movement and seeing the amazing people who come out to learn with us is humbling. We explored the WHY of schooling and learning, but we had to start with the WHY for each participant. When participants arrived, we asked them to answer the question: "Why are you here tonight?" Below are some of our favourite answers: I'm interested in new forms of learning and te...