Tag Archives: school

How long before ‘Un’school is the kind of school most kids choose?

This Hyderabad-based edtech startup aims to help students ‘un’school themselves

This is an example of disrupting higher education that I wrote about recently.

An affordable online learning ecosystem which provides a course, mentorship, projects, and guaranteed internship opportunities.

I’ve wanted to see opportunities like this at Inquiry Hub (at high school). Not for every kid, for kids that want it. But I also think that as we create these opportunities, more students will want it… if not in high school, certainly instead of an overpriced college education.

How is ‘un’schooling going to change the look of schools and universities in the future?

Here come the kids…

School starts next week. Kids will be entering schools in BC after many of them have been absent since the start of March break.

Yes, some will be anxious, and many will be nervous. But I believe most students are (also) exited and looking forward to it! Let’s make sure adults, parents and educators alike, model the enthusiasm we want to see.

We can be cautious without showing fear. We can be safe without projecting anxiousness. We can show our own nervousness as excitement and enthusiasm.

What we project will be projected back to us.

The teachers you remember, remember you

It’s a simple formula: Get to know your students and they remember you. They might remember one awesome lesson you did, but in more examples than not, it’s not only about the things they learned but the relationships you’ve developed.

Many high schools are opening with less face time with students and/or shorter semesters. There will be an appetite for teachers to ‘get to business’ and to ‘cover the curriculum’. But the start of the year is a great time to ‘get to know your students’ and to work with them to ‘uncover the curriculum’.

Spend time connecting with students. Let them spend time exploring and discovering what they must learn. Do this and not only you, but also the things you have taught, will be remembered.

Getting back in gear

We had an incredible holiday planned this summer before COVID-19 hit the world. A trip to Barcelona, a cruise with stops in Spain and Italy, and a week in Portugal. This didn’t happen, but we still had a wonderful summer with BC based destinations. I had my email vacation auto reply set up, and for the first time in years I really ‘let go’ of work.

This week we’ve already had a few virtual meetings and I have one more today and tomorrow, before kicking it into high gear next week. But I have to admit that these meetings, where we are planning for September, have my mind racing as I think about the new school year.

The biggest things in my mind are:

1. For Coquitlam Open Learning – how do we maximize support and appropriately staff for an unknown influx of students?

2. For Inquiry Hub Secondary – how do we maximize the learning experience while focusing on safety, and also considering possible changes in phases?

In the end, much decision-making is out of individual control as our district makes a concerted effort to meet the needs of all learners. But unlike other schools, COL and iHub are different, and need special attention and considerations.

I don’t have answers to many questions yet, but I’m getting more comfortable in not having immediate answers, in living with ambiguity. But as High MacLeod says, “‘Learn to live with ambiguity’, but do not live in it.”

As we get into gear planning the new school year, I’m sure we are bound to find ourselves with more questions than answers. Patience, thoughtful questions, and priorities around care and safety of our students will help us find a good, supportive path for our schools and our learning communities.

Disrupting higher education

Universities and colleges are going to be around for a while, but two things are disrupting the need for many students to attend an expensive school for four or more years;

1. Targeted Certification

2. Coronavirus

Tackling the second one first, students are questioning the value of what they are paying to go to school, when suddenly most or all of their courses are online due to COVID-19. The interesting thing is that not all of them are going to head back to class and think that the experience is still worth it. Smaller universities are already struggling and if things don’t bounce back, the cost of doing business on a smaller scale are going to force costs to rise. Lower enrolment and higher costs are a double edged sword that some universities won’t survive.

As mentioned, targeted certification is another blow to the modern university. Have a look at this article Google Has a Plan to Disrupt the College Degree. For the cost of textbooks for a semester, Google is providing certification, in just 6 months, in fields where students can come out to decent paying jobs.

A few years back my nephew took an 18-month comprehensive course that cost a lot of money. The program could be paid up front, or by giving up a percentage of salary for the first 2 years after graduation. The skills training was so good and in demand, that most students took the expensive choice of paying up front, knowing they were likely going to land a 6-figure (or close to 6-figure) salary when they came out. It was a hard 18 months, but my nephew (who lives in California) landed a job with a Silicon Valley start-up soon after finishing this program.

Engineers, doctors and nurses, and other professions that require comprehensive certification will still require a university degree for quite some time now, but there is going to be a big shift to certifications and polytechnical schools.

I’m happy to have started higher education with a general arts degree that took me longer than 4 years to get. It was an amazing time. But I was able to get that degree with under $10,000 debt to my name. Many students today leave their first 4-year degree with much much more debt, and only the promise of more schooling before they can find a job and start paying back their debt.

Universities are becoming the place to either get professional degrees, or places for the affluent to spend a few years growing up, or a place for less affluent students to start accumulating debt. Meanwhile, job specific skills training and certification programs are sprouting up and challenging the need for many to go to university. This disruption is coming fast, and I think we are going to see many universities struggle to transition what they look like for a lot of students who will opt out of this path of higher education.

Lessons from nature

Took a bike ride today on a trail near Squamish and passed this massive rock that sheered of an adjacent rock face. Three trees have grown around it, adapting to the shape of the rock. It almost looks like they are there supporting the rock from falling over, like massive pillars burdened by the weight of the rock.

That’s not the case. The rock was probably there long before the trees, and they have grown around the stationary rock. They adapted to the presence of the rock.

In the coming weeks, schools will need to make some major adaptations to the structures put in place due to Covid-19. Some of these changes will be challenging. Unlike the giant, unmovable rock, the parameters of the response will be fluid and changing. Similar to the rock, what we are going to be facing will be long-lasting. This school year will be one where outbreaks determine responses and communities will be impacted.

Covid-19 will be the immovable rock, and we will need to respond organically.

Uncertainty as the new norm

When people make goals, they often ask themselves or are asked by others coaching them, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” I can pretty much guarantee that anyone asked where they saw themselves in five years, back in 2015, was pretty much wrong. Every. Single. One. I made light of this idea with a fun post ‘Truth is Stranger than Fiction‘, back in April.

Now I’m looking at the same thing in a different light. It’s one thing to understand how hard it is to visualize where we will be in 5 years, yet another when we don’t have any idea where we will be in the next couple months? Schools ‘re-open’ in September and our province has said that we won’t know what ‘open’ means until the middle of August. We could be completely open, mostly open, partially open, or fully teaching from a distance. My guess is that learning will be blended, but by how much, I honestly don’t have a clue? Are students only coming in once a week or twice a week? Will students have an option to stay home and still expect teachers to work with them? Will teachers report to school every day? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Will there be a second wave of Covid-19 in Canada? Will the virus mutate significantly? Has it already done so? Will the virus be an issue right into 2022? Will there be a vaccine, or will we manage/mitigate the spread or impact in some other way? Will the borders to the US re-open soon? Will there be a major recession? Will Covid-19 be with us for years to come like flus that return every winter? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

I’m used to people asking me questions and giving them answers. I am usually someone that is ‘in the know’, but this virus has humbled me. It has made me far less certain about where things are going next. Ambiguity is the norm now. So is uncertainty.

Within every crisis lies an opportunity. Our perspective has a huge role to play in this. When we are stuck thinking ‘woe is me‘, well then a crisis is a crises. When we recognize that ‘stuff happens‘ and that stuff is separate from how we respond to it, then we can start to see the opportunities.

How can we support local businesses? How can we help the needy in our communities?

What can we do to meaningfully engage students in classes from a distance? How can we leverage the right tools so that when ‘learning from home’  students get more voice and choice in the work that they are doing? How can we make the student experience seamless as we bounce between varying amounts of time students spend at school vs home? How do we meaningfully build community without having our students spend much, if any, time together? …At least for these questions I have a few ideas.

The new school year will bring many challenges, and with those challenges we will also have opportunities. Opportunities to challenge the status quo, and to do things differently. I won’t pretend that I know what’s in store. I understand that there is a lot of uncertainty ahead. Uncertainty is the new norm, and we’ll just have to get used to this.

Final week of school

This time of year is always challenging. The days are filled with loose odds and ends being tied up, and I’m usually both nostalgic about the wonderful year it has been, while also disappointed that we didn’t do more. How did our little Grade 9’s of four years ago graduate so quickly?

I’m going to miss our graduating class next year, but in all honesty, I’ve been missing them since the March break, when remote learning began. This has been a whirlwind few months and while I usually try to hold on to these final days and cherish them, I find myself thinking, ‘Let’s just get this year over and done with!’

This isn’t a typical year-end feeling for me. I want to see yearbooks passed around. I want to see students hugging each other goodbye. I want to hear the exciting summer plans of students and teachers.

I want to feel like there is some normalcy to the end of the school year. Instead, I find myself being underwhelmed, tired, and wanting to reach Friday as soon as possible. Just admitting that makes me feel disappointed. I think part of this feeling is that so much effort was put into making last week special, that it already feels like the year has ended. The grad – celebrations, the final presentations, even a virtual brunch organized by one of our teachers.

It isn’t that this year wasn’t special, it’s just that it already feels over. And so admittedly, I’m ready for a break, and while I still have a couple weeks of finishing the year off, a part of me feels I’m already done.

I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way.

Questions about September 2020

I was speaking to a friend that teaches at a university and she said about 30% of students that would normally come to her university next year are requesting a one year deferral, and taking a gap year. If that’s happening at universities across the province, and the country, that’s going to have a devastating impact on universities. Also, what are these students going to do next year? The two most productive things that students do in a gap year are work to save money, and travel (get some life experience). The job market is not going to bounce back quick enough, with unemployment at some of the highest levels in years, and most countries aren’t going to lift travel bans any time soon.

So what are all these gap year students going to do?

I wonder about the mental well-being of students who are not going to school, can’t get a job or travel, and are home and idle?

What can we do to support these students?

I also wonder if all of our colleges and universities will survive financially with such a decrease in students and revenue?

Will a percentage of high school students also stay home? Will there be a spike in high school students wanting to take online courses rather than try blended courses with teachers unfamiliar with this form of delivery?

Will private school students and their families decide that they should just go to public school rather than pay expensive tuition for an online experience?

We are headed into some very unknown territory and the impacts to what schooling might look like for September 2020 and beyond may not unfold in ways that we are expecting.

School 2020

I used to think I had a good handle on where things were going. What does the end of the school year look like? What will September start-up look like? All this is out the window.

An online grad/annual celebration in June? Never would have guessed that was coming, I had a theatre booked for the occasion.

Students sitting socially distant from each other? I don’t have more than 4 single desks in the whole school.

There is a lot to think about with respect to the coming school year. How will the year start? How often in a week will students attend? How much will be taught from a distance? Who will struggle and who will thrive in this new environment?

We will adapt. We will make it work. But making it work isn’t enough over a sustained period. It’s one thing to ‘make it work’ for the last 3 months of a school year, and yet another for that to be your plan for a full year.

As busy as June is, it’s also a time to be creative. September 2020 will be here sooner than we think, and school will not be what it has been in the past. We need to create opportunities for students not just to survive the year, but for them to thrive.

One December 31st, 2019 I picked my #OneWord2020 to be Resilience… I don’t think I could have picked a better word!