Blue Sky School

I am going back and forth on how I feel about the Covid crisis. It’s controversial. I know it doesn't seem like it, but it is, for different people and different perspectives. It’s different from anything else we have endured in the past because a war is at least more black and white, for some, meaning war was generally known as brutally awful. For me, a fifteen year old white girl who is relatively living comfortably during this time, brutally awful is not the feeling that comes to mind. For healthcare workers it definitely might be, or for people vulnerable or suffering from coved, but for the majority of us we are not necessarily “suffering” from this in particular. Now I say “in particular” because heck, we are humans, we always find a way to struggle. As a matter of fact, going back now, the Covid crisis is exactly what some of the population NEEDED. To slow down, to rest. The planet needed this, that’s for sure, and are thanking us every day with every sunshine inst...

Top Ten Best Moments(Part 1) “Grace and Will at the thing” https://tedxottawa.ca/speakers-2019/ Intro I think I can speak for both Grace and I when I say that we had an amazing time at TEDx Ottawa. But before we get into that we should talk about how we were invited. We were invited because of our participation in a program at our school called Eloquent Ottawa which was created by the, you guessed it Canadian Institute of Mass Communications(Or CIMC). The CIMC just so happened to be a sponsor of TEDx Ottawa. With that out of the way time for the story of getting there. After school on the big day we jumped into Karen’s car and went straight to Pita Pit  to fuel up. Then we hit the open road and drove to the Tunney’s Pasture LRT station. We rode to Rideau and then set off on an adventure to find the NAC. We walked in the direction we thought it was for a few minutes until we were on some bridge. That’s when we admitted that we had no idea where it was. So we broke out...

On the 23rd Monday of September 2019 we had our first session with Alex from Eloquent Ottawa , where we learn how to be boss public speakers!  We first discussed what to get out of these sessions. Pretty much, each learner in the program will pick a topic of their choice, and write a speech about it that's five minutes long. The end result would be to present our speeches to the Blue Sky community, so stay tuned for some lit speeches!  Then, we got into doing an activity called “People of Paris.” The purpose of this activity was to confront our public speaking fears. Each of us had to get up, turn to the audience and say “People of Paris, ... and then they would add their own phrase to say to everyone. Then, we had to do it again but this time as a character of the audience choosing. For example, we picked a President, a Unicorn, a Tourist, Mr Clean, and the Queen to name a few. This really helped us feel more safe with the rest of the learners in the program. This has,...

The Nurtured Heart Approach by Grace (with consultation from Emi) The “Nurtured Heart Approach” (NHA) is an approach we use at school and are encouraged to use in other areas of our life. This approach was introduced to us by our very own Karen who is very familiar with it and uses frequently in her day to day life. She has also applied it to her old BIP classroom at Bridlewood. NHA is a practice for  seeing people and the world in a more positive light through the power of kindness. The way it works is simple, you give tons of energy to the positive things you notice, and zero energy to the negative things you see.  How do you do this? It’s simple, once you see somebody doing something that's nurturing the environment or their learning  in any way, especially the little things, you stop and recognize that person for it in a real and authentic way. For example, you see someone open the door for someone else, stop them, say something like: “I just want...

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...

We have all had experiences where working with others did not go so well and we could not understand someone else’s point of view. I get it, it would be much easier working with someone who is similar to you and you would just agree with everything, but the truth is, the beautiful thing about working in a group is having the end product not just being one idea, but all ideas. A force bigger than one is powerful, no matter what the end product looks like. In my opinion, it is worth it if in the end your group feels proud of what you have accomplished together. This does not deny that it is still hard working with others who are different from you, it just proves that working with someone who is different is essential. I have learned this through my learning journey at my school, Blue Sky. There, we were taught for one whole week on how to work with someone who is different from you. In this blog, I will be answering this question through my experiences in this learning journey. I...

     If you want to have a ball and help out in your community all at once, then come on down to Blue Sky School! On May 9th , students at Blue Sky School are hosting a Spring Clean Up! The meeting location is at 95 Denzil Doyle Ct, Kanata from 11-12 ! There you will receive all the supplies you will need and will be given a location to clean up! You can contact us at grace@blueskyschool.ca for further information! We hope to see you there to help us clean up our community!