More than just ‘Gym’

Being part of a student’s opportunity to participate in physical education is a unique and tangible experience and one that I’ve been grateful for over the past three years. The more time I spend with children in a PhysEd setting, I quickly come to learn that students want more than just 'gym'. I continue to discover that children thrive to participate in games that challenge them both physically and mentally, and in activities that have relevance to their everyday lives.

Enter ‘Physical Literacy’

Students of Panorama Hills School see this relevance daily by participating in lessons designed to promote their development of physical literacy. Like the ability to read various forms of text – magazine, newsprint, and digital media – physical literacy is a person’s ability to move confidently and competently in a verity of physical activities.  This certainly isn’t a short-lived journey, rather one that takes time, even years. Climbing ladders, walking on ice, falling and getting back up are all examples of these everyday tasks whose importance I’ve learned reaches far beyond the walls of our school ... and that’s what drives me, our students and many others within our PhysEd community.

Today, like most days, I continue to learn how capable and eager young children are at leading a healthy and active lifestyle and how fortunate I am to be part of this great journey.

@ChrisFenMac is a husband, father and friend. A Learning Leader and Physical Education specialist advocating for quality #PhysEd and whole-school wellness.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

If you build it, they will come, or more accurately in the case at Tom Baines School, if they build it, they will come. This year, some Grade 8 students have been exploring the world of programming, 3D design, and robotics through one of their complementary courses.

The year began with much excitement and hesitancy from the students, and me, as we investigated these domains. New equipment such as Mindstorms EV3s and a Robo3D printer forced us to constantly reflect, learn, and relearn as we worked together to plan, design, and create.

When the course started, I had no intention of running it as a flipped classroom, and although it never truly evolved into this, to my delight the students took their learning home and expanded upon it. They developed new skills and knowledge with help of online content, experts, and sometimes, parental support. More importantly though they shared this learning with their peers and me. I ended up becoming a student in my own class as my students taught me much more than I could them.

This, in turn, spread to other classes as the students took their learning there and applied their new skills to new situations showcasing their learning in those areas too. Encouraged by this, students not in my class were coming to me to use the equipment too.

However, the coolest part for me was when I had students I did not teach coming up to me asking me what I was planning for next year and how excited they were to take the class. More amazing learning will take place next year as I will be moving classrooms and setting up the Tom Baines Maker Space in the former Industrial Arts room.

Jeremy Lang (mrlang.ca and @JPLL8) is a new father, tinkerer, techno-geek wannabe, future Maker, and a self proclaimed introverted extrovert.

It’s May 5th at 5:00am when 48 bright-eyed Grade 8 students and 5 coffee-fueled educators meet at the Calgary International Airport’s Meeting Place B. The majority of students and parents arrive to the muster point early, eager with anticipation for BP’s annual Voyage au Québec - a weeklong French language immersive experience in Québec. During this 6-day excursion, we visited various historical sites and cultural hotspots throughout Montréal, Québec City, and along the Beaupré Coast.

In the months leading up to the trip, students attended bi-weekly preparatory meetings after school where they selected two sites from the itinerary to research and prepare their contribution to a collaborative documentary film of our trip. These meetings were great opportunities for students to use their language skills in a more casual setting than their classroom as they shared their expectations and responsibilities during the Voyage. Throughout the year, I saw students from the Continuing and Late Immersion programs collaborating on their language learning.

While in Québec, students were excited when we arrived to their sites. They took ownership of asking for our Tour Director to wait a few minutes so that they could film their experience. They were able to speak, in perfect French, to the historical significance of their site.

During the many stops, tours, and meals together, students were independently speaking in French amongst each other, asking questions and for clarification of the tour  guides, engaging in conversation with our very Francophone Tour Director and laughing at his very Francophone jokes.

A student summed up very eloquently what I had learned today...

“Mme, it felt good to use all of the French I have learned in a real French setting.”

Sheena (@MmeSheena) is a FI Teacher/LL, and an Apple Distinguished Educator. She is passionate about blending technology and language learning and offering students real-world language experiences.

The trouble with citing finished examples of classroom work is that something inevitably gets lost in translation. It is near impossible to capture in words the richness of a conversation or the magic of a smile.

But I’ll try…

This year, after many years in grades 1 to 3, I decided to teach Kindergarten. I made a promise to myself that literacy for our youngest learners would be as much about discovery as Science is and as much about problem solving as Math.  It would be as much about creating as Art is and as much about community as Social Studies. It would not be systematically delivered; letters first, then sounds, then words, then sentences. No.

Where is the wonder in that?

Today you would have seen a child (who has yet to know all her letters) write a prescription in the hospital center before moving on to work with a peer to craft a thank you letter for a class visitor. You would have seen a group working on a sign for our fire station. You would have seen tracings of flowers, labeled sketches of tomato plants, and pencil rubbings of nasturtium leaves “Look Mrs. George, I drew a nasturtium. Mrs. George, how do you spell “shum?”

Today in Kindergarten, you would have seen invitations to write in every corner of our space, a topography of sorts Gk. Topographia, from topos “place” and graphein “to write.” Because when students have something real, worldly and relevant to write about, the “shum” in “nasturtium” matters.

Jennifer George (@firgeorge) is a Learning Leader at Evergreen School. She is passionate about literacy and learning spaces that inspire.

At 8:30 AM on March 21st, CBE students from 18 Calgary high schools arrived at the Beijing Experimental High School to participate in the first day of the International Leadership Summit (IYLS) 2014.  The students were tired from traveling and were still used to the rhythms and flow that made up their days 8500 km and 14 time zones away.   The students could feel the warmth of the morning sun that penetrated the cool, hazy Beijing morning air as they gathered in the inner exercise courtyard of this large urban campus wondering what the day and week ahead would hold.  Within minutes, Iris - one of the Assistant Principals at Beijing Experimental High School - was leading us through courtyards and stairwells until we reached our destination.  Then it began - the 4th annual International Youth Leadership Summit in Beijing.

That day and the nine that followed were filled with activities, opportunities and events that merged to become an exciting collage of student engagement, learning, leadership development, adventure, and sightseeing. 

The students who were part of the CBE delegation had all been part of a special system student advisory group and had spent their year participating in leadership and intercultural studies.  As a result, students came with a deep desire to discuss, learn and benefit from their time with their counterparts from the other side of the globe.  What they gained was the experience and knowledge that it is through learning, communicating and collaborating that we are able to truly appreciate the things that make us similar and also celebrate that which makes us culturally unique.  Through this focus on leadership and the immersive cultural experience, that also included traveling to a number of local and regional points of geographic, historical and cultural the CBE students gained deep insights into and an appreciation into the educational, cultural, historical and social aspects of the world’s most populous country.

There is one thing that was clear from this cross-cultural experience.  The CBE students returned home more globally aware, culturally competent, and better equipped to undertake acts of leadership that make our communities, our cities, our countries and our world a better place to be.

To live the richness of this experience more fully, we encourage you to go to:  http://iyls2014.weebly.com

Brant is a Director and advocate for real-world experiences that foster leadership, cultural competence, and success learning & working in the global context. 

Debbie is a passionate #yycbe educator and system Learning Leader who loves working with students to bring voice and self-advocacy to their learning!  #studentvoice