I'm pleased to share the first video in this Spotlight Series, my conversation with Aaron Eden, Director of Entrepreneurial Enterprise Learning at The Green School, Bali. Aaron talks about the importance of using students' interests to make learning more "real", redefining success, and the role of smaller disruptive models in shaping education.
(We didn't have a mic so there is some background noise, but a mix of drums, Adele and loud kids makes it all more real right?!)
See more of Aaron's thoughts on his blog, and my reflections on the Green School model post-visit here. . Big thanks to Aaron for allowing me to record our conversation without any advance notice (!), and for being so gracious with his time.
Feel free to leave your comments and questions below. If you have suggestions for alternative or progressive educators to interview, please use the contact form to get in touch!
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I have decided to focus my blog for the remainder of 2016 on a monthly "Spotlight Series", profiling the ideas of inspiring people ranging from educators and researchers, to entrepreneurs and designers around the world. I have been fortunate to connect with so many people working on fundamental change in education, and I am excited to share their work and ideas with you. Each interviewee will be asked three questions: What paradigm shifts need to happen in education?; What challenges do you face in advancing alternative or progressive education?; and What hopes do you have for education over the next decade? The idea for a video series came to me while I was preparing to meet Aaron Eden (see his blog here) at the Green School in Bali this past fall. I scrambled through the streets of Ubud to find a stand for my iPhone, and a kind driver helped me find one just in time. My main aim with this series is to raise awareness of the work that is already happening, while acknowledging the challenges in creating programs outside of the conventional mould. Having an idea of our collective hopes for education also gives us lots to look forward to, and to work towards. (Note: For the latest posts and embedded videos, click on the Spotlight Series category.)
At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, recently elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made headlines for his talks on Canada’s involvement with the Syrian Refugee crisis and on Diversity and Innovation (with his humblebrag about the University of Waterloo). He also received criticism for “swanning” around with the rich and famous in Switzerland (that selfie with Bono and Leo..). But less attention was given to this little piece on education: The idea of embracing multiculturalism more explicitly through whole school experiences, through our curriculum, is one that we need to keep strengthening here in Canada, and we still have a lot of work to do.
But it’s worth acknowledging our progress too. I experienced the 1980s version of multiculturalism in schools as a kid in Toronto. My sister and I performed an Indian folk dance in the gym, me in a kid’s size sari that my aunt had sewn, and my sister in a full dhoti and drawn on mustache. We loved it, and for the most part, so did the other kids. (I also took part in a Vanilla Ice lip sync performance that year, another success!) Although that folk dance was a tiny snapshot of a rich heritage, it was still a starting point for kids to ask us questions, for us to feel part of two very different cultures, yet also part of an evolving one together. It still wasn't simple. Living in East York back then was a combination of really fun experiences with kids and teachers from other cultures, strong family values and community, topped off with a sprinkling of overt racism some days, like being called Paki as we walked home from school, or being taunted about the "Paki dot" (that last one still makes me cringe. And to think now people wear bindis as an accessory!). Because of these experiences, I feel a humble pride in Trudeau’s understanding and acknowledgement of the complexity of multiculturalism in Canada, and in the importance of sharing these stories with other countries and systems of education. It’s a good reminder too, of the importance of public education, despite all its flaws. Just as public schools have many areas to work on, private alternatives need to address issues of access and diversity as well. It’s that time of the year again… resolution time. Many of us share the shame of failed resolutions despite setting what we feel are achievable goals every year. One Harvard Business School Paper explains this problem as “Goals Gone Wild” (the title of this Harvard working paper), and warns against setting goals that are too narrow, too numerous, and set to an inappropriate time frame.
Here are six strategies to help us become more successful with our resolutions this time around: Recently I was able to visit the Green School in Bali, a school that’s been on my list and on my mind since I first watched founder John Hardy’s Ted Talk five years ago. The idea of a school based on green design principles, aiming to be off the grid, made of open air bamboo structures?! I was basically sold before you could say "John Hardy's sarong!" (the man always wears one!)
Hardy was born and raised in Canada, but was not quite satisfied with our schooling or our society. In his TED talk, he explains how he didn’t quite fit in conventional schools; his needs were not addressed by the rigid schooling he experienced. He moved to Bali in the 70s as a young man, and has been there ever since. After spending a good part of his life building a successful jewellery brand, he sold the company in 2007. Motivated partly by Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, Hardy set out to design and run a school that was based on green principles. The result is a beautiful school sprawling over 20 acres of land, about a half an hour from Ubud, Bali. In the following post, I’ve tried to capture my overall impressions from one of my visits to the school: what I loved, what intrigued me, and what was disappointing. ![]() We’ve all hit that wall dealing with numbers. For me, the moment came in first year calculus. The proofs were over my head, my profs may as well have been talking textbooks, and I felt like an idiot. I seriously thought about dropping out of my program once a term. Thankfully I had a support system to help me get through (really good and smart friends, and a mother who told me I would move back to the suburbs if I dropped out. Ironically, chalk one up to fear-based motivation!) That all or nothing feeling - you either “get it” or you don’t - is one that is pervasive in math learning and teaching. As I teach a group of adult learners in a foundations math course this term, I’m starting to see the signs of anxiety in them as learners. A quiz recently on conversion rates had a handful of them visibly stressed, and verbally cursing about having to do this and wanting to quit. This was a group of people, who, until this point, had been surprisingly excited about learning math. So what is going on here, and what can we do?! It’s not difficult to critique the traditional college lecture; anyone who has sat in one can attest to how they are generally passive, impersonal, and still centred on the person at the front disseminating information to the crowd. How much a student absorbs depends on their capacity to retain information on a given day, their interest level, how much they connect to the instructor, and how capable the instructor is at communicating information. "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." - Benjamin Franklin In an airport lounge recently, I found myself with time to kill and US dollars to spend. Right away a magazine in the gift shop caught my eye, with this cover: “CAN YOU UN-TEACH RACISM”? What a bold question. I picked up the magazine and read the article before I even made it to my gate.
Race issues in the States and Canada recently have been getting a lot of media attention. Here in Canada, this Desmond Cole piece against police carding sparked some debate in my personal and professional circles. Talking about race is difficult, and can be very frustrating. Race issues also don't seem to be discussed in an informed way. So when I came across this piece, quotes like the following really resonated: Four years ago, on the first Thursday morning after Labour Day, I woke up nauseous as hell for a job that I couldn’t believe I was about to start. All day, I couldn’t fight the butterflies. Was I really going to teach at Laurier, my alma mater? What if I fell flat on my face? Should I do the Ellen dance as I walk down the stairs to music?
I showed up to class 15 minutes early, with a stack of course outlines so high and so heavy that I thought I would drop them. A student interrupted me on my way in. “Hey!” he called out. “Sweet,” I thought. "This guy’s going to help me carry this monstrous pile!" Instead, he gave me a puzzled look and asked “Are you the TA?”.. haha. At least I didn’t fall flat on my face. (I also never worked up the courage to run the Ellen bit at the start of class.) The minute class started, I knew with more clarity than I can describe that I was in the right place; I could just feel it. Two hundred bright eyed students were looking at me with anticipation, excited to start their undergraduate careers. Recently, I’ve been feeling a resistance to work of all kinds (summer time vibe?!), and a resistance to creating. So I turned to one of my favourite books, Women Who Run With the Wolves (WWRTW), and as always, got the insight I needed.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes likens the “murkiness” of our creative lives to the pollution of a river, and explains the importance of being patient with ourselves, giving time to sit with new ideas before jumping ahead. She also reminds us that the driving force we each have to execute will wear down at some points - a natural part of our cycles. We deserve time to renew and strengthen our intention. |
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AuthorA passionate educator.. on a quest for a schooling model to love! Archives
August 2017
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