Each September the question arises - How do we start off the new school year in a way that is engaging, helps students find their place and launches us forward into our bigger Inquiry investigations. This year we decided to start off with an exploration of Magnetism. It’s exciting and fun; it’s so exploration based; and let’s face it – it’s one of those curriculum topics that feels hard to fit into the year’s on-going Inquiry work.  Our first lesson –  take the magnets and explore. What are some of the observations, wonderings and “huh’s” that arise? What do you see happening and why? Is there a pattern?

What a delight to watch the students exploring around the room, excitedly sharing their discoveries and making comparisons. “They stick to metal.” “But they don’t stick to this bell or door handle.” “Look how this one pushes that one around.”  

The brainstorming following this free exploration touched on almost all of the Curriculum SLE’s, generating upcoming investigations to test their theories and develop students’ personally created understanding of these magical tools. And, one comment about their use even opened the door a crack into our year’s bigger Inquiry focus.

What I learned? - The power of putting children in the driver’s seat of their own learning. Their natural curiosities, wonder and cleverness generated questions for us to explore that they were excited about and had the need to know. Observing and listening to children is our best guide.

I Connect to Inspire and Engage

Since making an effort to become more of a “connected educator” over the past two years I have found that there are so many ways to reach out, learn and be inspired by others.  By accessing community members, colleagues on Twitter, Google + groups and the like I have learned about great projects and initiatives.  Two that I’ve been very excited about this fall are International Dot Day, and Global Read Aloud.

Today my class participated in International Dot Day.  Dot Day is a day (or week) where children, teachers, parents and others come together to “Create Bravely”. The international event is a spin off of Peter H. Reynolds children’s book The Dot, and it is a wonderful way to introduce global projects to a class. The Dot Club website proudly boasted almost 1.8 million participants in 81 countries.

What I learned today was how fun it is to take part in a huge global initiative, but to share that experience with fellow teachers and students around the school. As teachers walked around today after school there was a buzz in the air as we looked at the amazing dots created by students and staff in the various classrooms. Though it was one simple idea, there was such diversity in the dots.  It really highlighted how different and creative we all are!

This afternoon, one of my partners was the lead teacher as we took students through a Reggio-inspired provocation. Photos of interesting scenes encompassing a variety of topics and social issues, such as ecology, poverty, and the third world were distributed.  Students wandered around to pictures and discussed them, as well as the “wonders” they might have.  Meanwhile, the teachers circulated and documented the conversations and wonders that students expressed.  We then came together and discussed them as a group.

This style of inquiry was at first difficult for me to wrap my head around.  Was my job really just to record and document?  What if the conversations were shallow and did not elicit the depth we were hoping for?  How could I give up control of the process and big questions?  Would it work?

In the end, what I discovered was that, yes the students did mostly reach the depth of thinking we had hoped for. Indeed, we are now off on our way to a new inquiry question and topic and students simply came to it in a different way.  In most of the inquiry I do, the students are challenged with figuring out the principles that are already known to the adults. However, with this more open inquiry, the direction was less known.  As they continued to talk to each other they got to the places we wanted them to get to and it was all theirs.

Today I learned a little more about trusting students.

Chris Southworth (@atticasam) is an ADE, Learning Leader at Cranston School and Star Trek fan who has a passion for Wrath of Kahn.

Tomorrow, as part of the Beakerhead festival, our student community celebrates the unveiling of a collaborative mural project, two years in the making. Our students have worked with renowned Canadian mural artist Charlie Johnston (@C5Charlie) to explore the dynamic interrelationships between science and art through the beautification of a concrete ‘bunker’ structure in front of Langevin Science School.  From its initial conception, this project had lofty goals of integrating the artistic expressions of each one of our nearly 650 students into a greater piece representing our collective identity, deemed the Langevin Universe.  Through the creation of panels that have been affixed to the physical structure, our students explored their experiences as young scientists and shared these perspectives and narratives through paint.

As students, teacher, parents, and members of both Bridgeland and Calgary came together and immersed themselves in this project, it became clear that the lasting impacts of this endeavour would far exceed the creation of an iconic artifact.  At the heart of the experience was the meaningful realization of the power a common vision has to unite and inspire a school and its greater community to actively work towards the betterment of their shared environment.

In engaging with the mural, observing and reflecting on all its facets and intricacies, the voices of our students are resoundingly clear. Through the process of constructing the mural, it is evident our students have more than reimagined and envisioned a better world but, ultimately, have already begun creating it.

 @elainemccrady is a Learning Leader at Langevin School who encourages you to explore the mural at our Beakerhead event on Friday from 1-4pm

I have been a teacher for the past 10 years.  Like most teachers, I know that my students will come into my class with the basics.  I have never put much thought into the fact that they know their names, can find their classroom, hang their backpacks, and most importantly go to the bathroom … alone.

This year, was the first that I have been out of the classroom and able to help around the school.  I was eager to help the Kindergarten students on their first day.  My eyes were opened to what a different world Kindergarten is.

It became apparent that my expectation of students knowing their own name may be too high of an expectation for Kindergarteners, especially last names.  In fact, I quickly realized that ALL of my expectations may be too much for many of these students. I spent my morning looking into the big, scared eyes of 5 year-olds and doing my best to help them have positive first school experience.  I’ll admit, I never realized how difficult it is to be a Kindergarten teacher. I took for granted that my students raised their hands, could hold a pencil, and could put on their shoes.  I realized that without the patience, time, and expertise of our Kindergarten teachers my job would be much different.  

So thank you to all the Kindergarten teachers who teach our students what school is and make all of our lives so much easier.  We appreciate you.

Sarah Jordan,  learning leader at Brentwood Traditional Learning Centre, she believes in making school a fun, safe place to learn.

What did I learn in school today?

Having just moved schools this year from having the honour of being principal at Keeler School in Forest Heights to having the honour of being principal at Belvedere Parkway School in Bowness, I have met a ton of new students, parents and teachers in the past weeks. The lessons I have (re)learned are that:

Kids all want to learn, feel smart and successful, and do their best…

Parents all want the best for their children, no matter who they are, what they believe or where they come from…

Teachers are in the realm of education because they want to create the best possible learning and future opportunities for students…

Lastly, and most importantly, that the relationships that I create today will build and develop the culture and future of our school community. The more I cultivate positive and generative relationships with students, parents, and teachers, the greater the learning outcomes that will take place!

As well as the fact that kids love building snowmen, even on September 8th!

Keep learning tons!
Derek

Derek Rakowski (@derekrakowski) has been a CBE student, teacher, and principal. He still thinks he has the best job in the world, as he is learning each and every day…    

When the Canadian Maker Foundation approached us about getting educators involved in the Calgary Mini Maker Faire, we jumped at the opportunity! It allowed us to highlight the Maker approach to learning, as well as to share the stories of some CBE teachers who implemented Maker philosophy last year.

Top five things we loved about spending our weekend at Maker Faire:

5)      Things that explode! Like Coke and Mentos, rockets and more

4)      Design thinking and problem-based learning bring Inspiring Education to life. The educator panel shared examples and experiences that showed how this approach leads to student engagement and success.

3)      The smiles on faces of kids and adults alike when playing a banana piano

2)      The culture of collaboration, openness and sharing that is embodied in the Maker community. Thank you to our colleagues who came down to help with the booth and to experience Maker Faire.  And a “shout out” to Jeremy Lang [@JPLL8]and Brian Simmons [@bwsimmons] who spent their weekend inspiring others.

1)      The sense of "I wonder” – there was an entire building filled with people wondering, “how does that work?”, “how did you do that?” We wonder how to make sure we carry that into our daily work.

We can’t wait until next year’s Maker Faire!

Tracy Dalton [@tadalton17], Erin Quinn [@luckybydesign] and Sanimar Sarpal [@sasarpal] are Specialists with Learning Innovation, who love making, tinkering, learning and creating collaboratively with CBE teachers.

One evening I was at a school that I work with during their Student/Parent/Teacher conferences.  I was in the Learning Commons to support the students and parents as they logged into Iris.   The building was full of excitement as families streamed through the halls and classrooms to meet with teachers. 

As the evening proceeded, many students came into the Learning Commons to share what they had entered into Iris with their families.  Parents were excited to see the photos and videos that were populated in their child’s Iris Student Learning Plan.  Students were excited to share their insights, reasons for choosing artifacts, and goals they had written.

As one student logged into Iris, I overheard a father say, “Which of these goals have you achieved?”  The student responded with “These are the goals I am working towards.  Look at these pictures of my work to see my improvement.”   The student and his father then proceeded to have a conversation about the setting of goals, working towards goals and the process of learning.

What did I learn from this experience?  Conversations about learning in the presence of student work engages and provokes the participants to think about learning in reference to the evidence in the work and to discuss what the next steps in learning could be.  The student’s ability to transform the interaction from a short answer into a conversation about learning is a great example of what can happen when learning is made visible.

Ed Schrottner (@Schrottweiler) is a Science Teacher and a Specialist with Learning Services.  He is passionate about science education that promotes hands-on activities and demos that engage, inspire and excite.

This was the first full day of kindergarten for my students. Students walked through my doors in the morning wearing their emotions upon their faces. Some looked worried or anxious but for the most part my new students entered school looking hopeful. Their eyes wide, they exclaimed joyfully and without reservation at every new discovery in their classroom. They wanted to touch things, to physically get their hands on everything around them. I had so much information I had planned to share with them; expectations, rules, guidelines, all stuff these students will eventually need to know but instead we spent the bulk of our day following their joy.  They will have many elementary years learning to sit criss-cross applesauce so today we jumped up when we were excited. They will soon learn to listen and give their friends a chance to speak but today we talked over each other in our excitement. Later on the importance of cleaning up after ourselves will be stressed but today we dug our hands into some homemade playdough with glee, we mixed colours with abandon and we didn’t even wash the food dye off our finger tips. Yes, their ABCs and 123s are important, but so to, is their joy. My students walked in with hope and they left with joy. Today I learned that joy will be my professional goal in kindergarten, both for myself and for every student in my care.

Katrina Watson (@busybeakers) kindergarten teacher, science lover, momma extraordinaire, artist, cyclist, eater of good foods and thinker of happy thoughts.

Jennifer George is Assistant Principal at Douglasdale School with a passion for literacy, history, and curriculum that inspires. Twitter @firgeorge