Blue Sky School

Laughs4Hope- By Haley Foy and Madison George Friday, May 4th from 5-8pm Blue Sky School, located at 95 Denzil Doyle, will be hosting an awareness fundraiser for CHEO(Laughs 4 Hope) & South Sudan(Stand 4 Education). We hope to empower guests of all ages (children must be accompanied by a parent or guardian) to learn about our passion projects, taking action, and help out with our fundraisers. We will have “Changemaker Fair” Booths & breakout sessions for our guest to learn and take action along with performances & speeches from our students and others.  (packing backpacks for South Sudan, letter writing to the government about the water crisis, write letters to young people in South Sudan, write “Found Poetry”, play around on Belouga, etc.) Please feel free to come join us and help us make a difference in lives of many Families.

You may have read Grace’s post, the one about our science project. This is sort of the second instillation- the Part 2, if you will. At the beginning of the year, Shauna caught word of ORSF, the Ottawa Regional Science Fair. No one was really eager to participate in the fair except for Grace, who, after the presentation, asked me if I wanted to help. I had no idea why she wanted me, of all people to help, but I said yes anyways. Neither of us had any idea what we were going to do, but we had some ideas. Both of us are quite passionate about global warming, so we brainstormed some things and settled on the amount of methane that is emitted by livestock: specifically, cows. While researching, we discovered that onions, garlic, and a special type of seaweed called asparagopsis taxiformis could reduce the methane produced by cows. We decided that asparagopsis taxiformis was our best option, because after eating it, the taste of the cows’ milk wasn't affected, which we coul...

(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...

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...

Undercover Learning-By Madison One of the questions we're often asked here at Blue Sky School is: "how are we learning math?" It can be hard for people to understand that we learn math without a sit-down class, so I want to tell you about some of our undercover learning with regards to math. At Blue Sky, we often go shopping and we learned about unit value. Another example of when we do undercover math is in our house meeting. In the morning, our coaches put out a little sign with some reminders and a riddle or a "would you rather" question. Our coach Brianne displays the results of the survey answers for the "would you rather" questions in a pie chart. At the house meeting, we convert the percents into fractions and do some math connecting to the pie chart. At Blue Sky School we also do lots of cooking which involves measuring!One more example is all of the building we do that involves math with measuring and weight. Our garden team is also learn...

I've always tried to dismiss the obvious, I've always tried to convince myself that the planet is not heating up, and most importantly, ignored the effect it might cause on us, humans. When I was given the freedom to choose whatever project I wanted here at Blue Sky School, at first I had no idea! But then, the oblivious glasses that were concealing my eyes seemed to fly off as I looked out the windows every day to see that there were extremely weird weather patterns. I was getting really curious and decided to do some research on why this was. I figured out this was all due to a villain in our society: climate change, and climate change was all due to us. Maybe we’re the villains in our society! All of a sudden it hit me, the earth was heating up and as humans, we needed to clean up the mess that we made. I started brainstorming ideas that I could do and it all came down to inspiring others to take action with me. All heroes need to have an army, especially to...