EduKARE taking shape...

flickr CC image via Enokson

The most exciting announcement I've heard for a while took place today in my city. Through the collaborative efforts of the City of Red Deer, Red Deer Public Schools and Red Deer Public Libraries, a new library was born today. This library will be different though.

This library will serve as a public and a school library, and it will be located at a new school to be opened in September 2014. This is a concept for library services that I have been thinking about, and writing about for some time. From the archives...

"As schools are renovated, redesigned or built new, physical EduKARE elements could be built into them. Community halls, recreational facilities, health clinics, libraries, satellite police stations, social service agency offices... these could be built in to the new building reducing cost of maintaining multiple facilities. Shared costs between agencies and school boards in providing these collaborative service spaces would save money. Thinking way outside the box, why couldn't senior citizen facilities share the same buildings as well? Sugatra Mitra is connecting senior citizens with the time and so much more to offer our youth in a global context; why not bring his "granny cloud" concept to every school? If we can connect significant others to kids in a global context, surely we can make the connection locally within our schools."

Learning for Living...

flickr CC image via scratanut

Learning for living... Find something you love to do, then find a way to make money doing it"

Life long learning is a phrase being used a lot lately. Educators everywhere are working hard to support life-long learning. They are responding to the perceived need in contemporary society for kids to become life-long learners in preparation for the twenty-first century... but what is a life-long learner, and furthermore, what is twenty-first century learning? 

I am wondering if the impact of both these terms is becoming neutralized by a lack of clarity and context. How we frame learning is key if we intend to create substance around these terms, and then once we have a clear grasp of learning, we can begin to contextualize a platform of support that sustains it over a lifetime that for the vast majority of us, will not extend beyond the 21st Century making life-long learning, and 21st Century learning, somewhat synonymous. 

Zen and the art of early engagement...

flickr CC image via woodleywonderworks

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything;

it is open to everything.  In the beginner's mind there are

many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.

Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi

I have been thinking about the way we introduce learning to kids at the beginning of the kindergarten to grade twelve spectrum. We are taught as preservice teachers to think of early learning kids as "tabula rasa," or blank slates. This is interesting considering that we are also taught during our preservice training that kids have learned an almost unbelievable amount in the first five years of life. We certainly don't seem to honor the widely accepted notion that kids have likely learned more before entering school than they will collectively for the rest of their lives. From the NYU Child Study Center...

During this time the brain undergoes its most dramatic growth, and children rapidly develop the cognitive capacity that enables them to become intellectually curious and creative thinkers.

It appears clear to me that we are very privileged as professionals to have such adept and capable subjects to work with right off the bat. Even if we accept that kids are born as blank slates... tabula rasa, I believe by the time they enter school, kids are chock full of knowledge, skills and attitudes enabling them to learn any number of things... each child is indeed tabula abundans; an abundant slate. Their "beginner minds" are primed and ready to learn. So how do we run with this and make it work for them?

Synthesizing energy...

flickr CC image via NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Some years ago I had the fortunate opportunity to participate in a three day (over three months,) leadership series with Dr. Leroy Sloan. During one of those days Leroy shared a venn diagram with three circles. In the middle of the circle on the left was the word job. In the circle on the opposite end was the word career. In the middle circle was the word life. Dr. Sloan used the diagram to make the following point...

In the measured contexts of our everyday lives, we know a lot about what people do in their daily jobs (the things they have to do), perhaps a little about their career aspirations (the things they want to do), and not very much at all about their lives away from work- the elements that make them who they are... their families, histories, passions, hobbies, fears, joys etc. There is something inherently defeating about this if we intend to work collaboratively and cooperatively from informed and synergistic perspectives.

Learning Circles.

flickr CC image via IDEAleemade

I'm fond of circles. To me circles represent learning that is non-linear, organic and never-ending; not the type I typically experienced as an undergraduate student in the Faculty of Education I attended. A linear path was more or less set out for me in pre-service teacher training, (but there were some bright spots,) and I did what was asked of me. More recently I have become involved in less linear learning paths, but only in the last few weeks have I contextualized them as learning circles. All the way through my K-12 education, and at three post-secondary institutions since then, I always knew when I was immersed in an authentic, organic learning environment, I just didn't know what to call it. It was about the spirit of my involvement in learning, and the spirit of those around me. Collectively we created learning environments that were comfortable and non-threatening, strength-based and multi-faceted. A bright-spot example of what I would have called a learning circle at the time if I had thought about it in that context was my experience in a class taught by Dr. David Wangler.

Dr.Wangler insisted that his students did two things... we had to read, we had to write and we were guided to do both using the best resources available at the time. My undergrad years pre-date widespread use of modern technology in the classroom, so that meant we actually had to read books; lots of them, and then we had to write about what we read. Years ahead of his time in the realm of creating an authentic learning environment, Dr. Wangler set up his class so the students were the drivers of their own learning paths. At the beginning of the term, he asked us to sign a contract stating the mark we intended to get at the end of the term. Each requisite grade corresponded to a set of "readings," five picked by him and the rest varied in quantity according to the mark we intended to receive (for a seven out of nine, I had to read 18 "books," each the equivalent of 200 pages.)