Over this past summer, our school has had a fresh coat of paint. We're starting the year off with clean blank walls.

If we skipped to the end of the year, we would find many pinholes all over the walls, leaving tell tail signs of the learning journeys that happened throughout the year. 

My goal this year is to make learning as visible as we can in our school. Therefore, our walls will become littered with evidence of learning. With a focus on collaboration, our bulletin boards and learning displays will become interactive and engaging. I hope that students will seek feedback from their peers and teachers and create things that have never even thought about before. 

CBE182 is also starting with blank walls. We hope that our past contributors will share, as well and many new people! We have 1000's of passionate people in our organization and we hope that this blog can share some of that enthusiasm and creativity!

For now the slate is clean, leaving a world of opportunities ahead of us. We are super excited to see where our students' learning will take us. I'm sure there will be many obstacles and speed bumps along the way but in the end we will work through the challenges and come out on top.

Oh the places we'll go!

Steve Clark (@stevewclark) is the Learning Commons Learning Leader at Chris Akkerman TLC in Area III. He is passionate about making learning real and meaningful. 

This year, we explored the relationship that humans have with water and our relationship with the rivers that run through Calgary. We asked important questions about how water shapes us and how we shape water, an interconnected relationship that requires serious, thoughtful, consideration, and time to study the topic in depth. The more we learned about the rivers, the more compelling they became. We have become hermeneutic scholars around the rivers’ origin, landforms, myths, civilizations, celebrations, conflicts, disasters and their deep meaning to us and our personal identities as beings living in Calgary at this time in history. The rivers have become a part of us, just as we have become part of the rivers. Everything is the same issue.

A reflection from Zach captures a lasting impression:

Learning about the river changed my thinking about water. I find myself thinking hard about water in different and related ways. I am rethinking local and international water issues and how we treat them. I found that one question would lead to another and once  that question was answered, it led to another, fascinating question.

The lasting impressions from our explorations around water this year have made me respect our rivers a lot more than I did before. I try to waste as little as possible, leaving  a cleaner river and a cleaner earth. I also use less water, knowing that the freshwater supply is finite. Water is a part of us and we need to take care of it. We are the river.

Margeaux Montgomery is an educator who enjoys exploring, wondering, creating and laughing with her students daily.

What did you learn today?

As an Aussie educator who had the opportunity to work intensively with the CBE and on observation in several schools throughout our 6 day visit I learned so much my head was spinning! The blog will give a detailed version.

The Learning Centre and ‘The Class’ were well established, caring places that gave students who needed extra support a place to call home. They were well resourced and ‘The Learning Strategies’ course is something we would like to implement. Wobbly stools and Living Walls were new, as was the concept of Learning Commons.

I thought our Technology implementation and resourcing was a ‘mish mash’ and difficult tomaintain; no-one appears to have the perfect solution! The visibility and usage of student mobile phones was a contrast to home where currently at Loxton there is a ‘No Mobile Phone’ policy in place. How long will we last?!

The tutorial system, before lessons officially started, was a progressive idea giving students responsibility for their follow up learning.

I would love to see our weekly staff meetings changed to the monthly Canadian style and the staff commitment to extra-curricular activities was impressive.

Other positive ideas were: the extensive use of whiteboard walls / desktops for student collaboration, use of a ‘Scantron’ to mark quizzes, food carts selling student made goods, the notion of ‘Wellness’ being incorporated across the curriculum and the various sporting logos that instil pride in school teams. The Loxton Leopards may soon be in existence!

Thanks for the camaraderie!

Jane Garrard (www.loxton2calgary.blogspot.com) teaches at Loxton High School, South Australia; recipient of $20,000 T&D Lifetime Achievement Award.

Our responsible little citizens.

I had the honour of helping out Langevin School on Earth Day. Just like when I went to school in the 70's and 80's, we were tasked with picking up litter in the immediate area of the school. So what did I learn? The difference the students are making day to day within the school is really what makes the societal differences.

I saw this on the wall:

Why the Landfill? Cups made of styrofoam take more than 900 years to properly break down. Cups made with Petroleum bases  (Waxy) take 10-100 years to decompose.

Recycle mixed beverage containers:

 “Rinse first please” is not something we see in your everyday beverage recycling container. Great advice. 

            How are disposable cups made? Mass produced in factories. Starbucks makes 2.52 billion cups every year.

            This is remarkable.

Since September 2012, with 3 weeks down for repairs, Langevin students have saved 53,092 water bottles by filling their bottles in this fountain.

So what I learned, is that these yearly, awareness type events are nice, but Langevin shows in it's day to day studies that it is a lifestyle of environmental awareness, knowledge and good habits that will put our next generation on the right path.

Larry Leach (@ARTICSchair) is a parent volunteer at Langevin School and is the Chair for the Association for Responsive Trusteeship in Calgary Schools.