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 2 “Grace and Will at the conference” https://tedxottawa.ca/speakers-2019/ Intro The Power of a Dime - Frank O’Dea (Will) The first speaker to take the stage was co-founder of Second Cup and Officer of the Order of Canada Frank O’Dea. He started off his speech by talking about his youth and how he used to be homeless in Toronto. He said that it was a rough and sometimes violent existence. He shared about his drinking problems when he was homeless, saying that he would panhandle with his buddies trying to get enough for a bottle of wine and talking about what they would do tomorrow, “Tomorrow I’ll get a job, Tomorrow I’ll quit drinking, Tomorrow I’ll call my family” then having to choose whether or not to sleep inside or out. He finally realized that he had two choices, “Die or change.” That’s when he thought about an ad he heard in a shop that was about alcoholism that kept repeating a phone number. He went to the nearest payphone a...

(Us listening to Midia Presenting)   At Blue Sky School, we have the amazing privilege of inviting brilliant and passionate changemakers into our space to learn from. On September 19th, 2019 we once again were proven that Midia Shikh Hassan is no exception. I could go into giving you one description of who Midia is and what Midia does but I think this quote concludes it perfectly: “I don’t really define myself as one thing because I am the type of person that doesn't like to be doing only one thing at a time. I identify with a lot of things and a lot of communities” - Midia Shikh Hassan I think this sums up the type of person Midia really is. At Blue Sky, we like to joke that she is good at everything because in the past she has mentored us on the most random range of things that she seems to have expertise on. She discussed with us that day on our current Exploration (a topic to dive into for a 12 week period), community.  She talked about how she grew up in a ...

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...

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...

(Image source) A couple months ago, South Sudan was a foreign topic for me. I had a vague idea of where it was and what it was going through. But now, knee deep into my most current life-long project on building a South Sudanese shelter, I know a lot about what is happening to the women there, so much as a matter of fact that sometimes I imagine that I am living it.  It keeps recurring in my thoughts that in South Sudan right now, a woman is probably being raped, that a child is probably going hungry and their mother and father are not there to feed them. Image source Here’s one thing I definitely know about South Sudan: that this country is suffering and the women there are struggling the most. I have learned a lot from my reading. There are two reasons in my opinion why this is, the first reason is because of the culture there, a lot of people believe that the women there do not have any intellectual depth and you can do whatever you want with them, the second reas...

(image source) “What! Oregano? Really?” This was my exact reaction when I found out that small, commonly-found-in-pasta plant, oregano was the cure to one of the biggest aspects of climate change, the evil, treacherous, methane packed cow burps and farts! Apparently, if you only mix three percent of oregano into the cows feed then it is supposed to reduce the methane by thirty-two percent! Additionally, the amazing plant is also rumoured to increase the prevention of getting disease in cows! The plant is also known to grow very fast and in any condition. This plant is truly a miracle worker! Researchers at Aarhus University believe that adding oregano to a cow's diet would alter the balance of bacteria in their digestive systems and reduce the amount of methane released. Source When I heard this, I knew there were only a few more tasks we had to do if we really wanted this experiment a reality! Now this is my call to action! We have a methane detector, we are growi...