Blue Sky School

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...

Happy learners at Blue Sky School. Our attitudes begin to develop in childhood and constantly evolve and change over the years through day-to-day interactions and experiences. All the things that you have been through, all the people you have met and interacted with can have an impact on your attitude. One’s school environment can greatly influence one’s attitude.    Unfortunately for our daughter, her conventional school experience was not the best. As a bright and eager learner who aspired to work on more creative projects, her needs were not being met. She was so bored. So stuck. It was sad to see such passion being sucked out of her and she began to develop a very negative attitude towards school.     The infrastructure of the conventional school model just doesn't allow for this type of creative outlet. It's a time management and numbers thing. No fault of all the great teachers out there.  With the increased demands on the...

She tested in the 99th percentile. At parent-teacher conferences, her teachers spoke about her brilliance. Her report cards were As and Bs. The reality though was that she was coasting. She spent her days drawing and daydreaming. She came home each day with naught a memory of what the day had held. Her teachers were honest about the fact that she didn't complete classroom work and tests. She had both an IPRC and IEP, but resources just weren't available, and truthfully, no one really knew what to do with this kid. She was smart, yet the structure of the traditional school system just didn't work for her. It wasn't that she couldn't do the classwork; it was that it didn't make sense to make her do it. She had mastered it already. It wasn't that she couldn't do the tests; it was that she found them boring. I dragged her to the information session for Blue Sky School. She was sullen and uncooperative. As if school could be interesting. As i...

When our family first visited Blue Sky School in November of 2017, we were just looking for something  different, not life-changing. Quite unexpectedly, we got both. Our 11-year-old son was struggling in the public system, unable to focus and falling far behind. Jay’s  teachers did everything they could within the parameters of the system, but a typical classroom setting  simply wasn’t meeting his needs. The kid who used to beg me to go school, even when sick, had grown to dread and avoid it. Once the  happiest and funniest of our children, he grew sad, angry and withdrawn. Once a kid favoured by his  teachers, he was getting in trouble nearly every day. Once a social and well-liked child, he was regularly  bullied. His peers laughed at him for not understanding the work and resented him for disrupting the  class. “I used to hate math; I wouldn’t even talk about it. I was so embarrassed because I couldn’t do it. Blue  Sky made me find my lov...