Blue Sky School

Hello readers of this blog. I’m going to fill you in on what I have been doing for a group project. If you don't know what Blue Sky School is, it is an experimental prototype school of tomorrow. It was started by Shauna Pollock and Karen Hill. It was designed for students that want to explore their passions or want to try something new. The idea is that we will build the skills to become changemakers. I started at Blue Sky because I needed more help with work and I was having trouble making friends. I was one of the first students out of nine in the whole school. Now that you are caught up, a couple of months ago, Shauna asked a few of the learners if we wanted to do a group project and we all said “yes!” She told us that we were going to be working on a project about LeBreton Flats (where the Ottawa Senators were going to build a new arena) with the purpose of drafting a proposal for how LeBreton Flats could be redesigned, followed by a presentation to the NCC (National Cap...

Blue Sky School has a few spots open for new learners entering grades five to nine in September 2019. Located in Kanata, Blue Sky is Canada's first full-time school designed as an innovation centre and entrepreneurial incubator for youth. You might think to yourself, "Interesting, but not relevant to my family." ...In June 2017, in less than 48 hours, we went from not giving the school a second thought to seriously considering Blue Sky. My 14 year old is now nearing the end of her second year with the school. What led us to choose to enroll our daughter in Blue Sky School? In June 2017, we weren't planning to make any changes. The grade six public school year had gone pretty much as expected. Every few years, we paid for an updated psycho-educational assessment that stated our daughter was gifted and clearly needed enrichment. However, she just missed the cut off to be placed in the school board's gifted program. Each year was the same story. Meetings with...

Could Walt’s Vision Of EPCOT Be Applied to Shaping the Future of LeBreton Flats? By: Grace Hill Hi, my name is Grace Hill and I am a proud learner at Blue Sky School , a not for profit Independent school in the Kanata South area. At Blue Sky school we like to reach for the stars, and that is exactly what we are doing in our most current project: Developing the LeBreton Flats area. Our plan is to gather public input by running several workshop to citizens of the Ottawa area of all ages. This means schools, workspaces, and universities. Then, we are hoping to gather all that input and shape it into a report to send off to the current organization who plans to develop LeBreton Flats, The National Capital Commision. This is a huge, ambitious project, and there is so much to learn! So, of course, the first steps for embarking on this journey were learning more and researching about this topic. This is a very open ended first step and we were all fully expecting we would go o...

Reflections Of A New Blue Sky Learner By Jessica Rice As a new Blue Sky learner, it has been my responsibility to learn how the school works and if I feel comfortable and safe here. After just one month at Blue Sky, I realize that the environment has helped me so much. Instead of sitting in a class of 30 kids with one teacher, there are enough coaches for everyone to get the help they need. Because there are so many coaches, it’s really easy to base your education and learning around your personal interests. My whole project is on animals, and because I’m learning through something I love, it is a lot more motivating and exiting. At Blue Sky, I can get the help I need with my work, and that is why I don’t feel stressed. When I first visited Blue Sky School, I didn't expect it to be a regular school, however, I also didn’t expect it to be as awesome as it is. I have anxiety, so I have good days and bad days. Last week I had a very bad day, a good friend came in to the room I...

Blog Post: LeBreton Flats This exploration (6-8 weeks with a topic we focus on) myself and 3 other learners, Grace, William, and Carson are working on a project lead by Shauna (co-founder of the school and one of our coaches). This project has to do with an area of town called LeBreton Flats. For those who don’t know, there has been a lot happening in this area of town recently. There was a promise from two business leaders that there would be a Sens hockey arena in this area of town. However, the two men who promised to build it got in a bit of an argument. They were given four days to work it out...they didn’t. The deal fell through and this area of land currently known as LeBreton Flats remains abandoned as it has many times before. LeBreton Flats is a downtown area that has a lot of potential. One side of the Flats is surrounded by the War Museum and the Holocaust Memorial. There is also a small attraction that has information on the town that used to be in LeBreton Flats. T...

Calling all history nerds and fans of Leonardo da Vinci! Wow! To think that half a century ago, Leonardo was walking and talking on this planet, making the world a better place with his amazing brain! It is crazy how smart he was and the huge impact he made on this world, a big enough impact that 500 y ears later, his name is commonly known. Unfortunately though, in today's society, though Leonardo name is commonly known not a lot of people no half of the amazing work he did. I think it is so important that we learn about Leonardo, that is why I am so grateful to Luc Lalande, a dear friend and mentor at Blue Sky School who came into the space and talked to us about Leonardo’s amazing legacy. I learned so much, including his notable painting of the Mona Lisa, his depth of understanding and art of the human body, his inventions and innovations, and to get to the point of this post, his notebook sketches. One of Leonardo's notebooks Amazing sketches, studie...