Blue Sky School

Shauna Pollock and five Pioneers (students) sit comfortably in the Language Lab. They are surrounded by two walls of books organized in rainbow order and a picture of a red octopus is framed on the wall. Sitting on the table between them all is a round microphone, they talk about world water day on their weekly podcast. When Pollock dreamed of starting her own school this is what she wanted. A place where the boundaries of education are pushed and learning isn’t just about what you know in a classroom, but about teaching you lessons for life. Blue Sky School, an independent prototype school of tomorrow, has been living in Pollock’s head for years, but it opened its doors for students Sept. 2017. “I would always say within the next 10 years I’m going to open a school, and then time started passing and I realized, I keep kind of restarting that end date,” Pollock said. After talking to a former student’s parent, who also happened to be a teacher, Karen Hill, timing was righ...

     As some of you may know, the open house for Blue Sky School is on Wednesday the 30th of August. From the time of me writing this, that's tomorrow. That's mind boggling. More work than you could ever imagine has gone into the planning. Every step, from making plans to executing them, has been meticulously planned by Karen Hill and Shauna Pollock. But, what's so awesome about the Blue Sky School facilities? I'm happy I asked.       First off, we have an epic place for clothes. Why am I mentioning the larger than normal closet? Because it's awesome. If you keep walking, you'll see a gender neutral washroom because we respect all gender identities or lack thereof. It's the kind of washroom that makes you appreciate the invention of the toilet. Squeaky clean and perfect, it's the place you want to be in when you gotta go.      It sounds pretty great already, but there's more yet. The next room you will encounter has at least 1600 boo...

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...