So today, I returned to work on Physics after coming back from London Drugs. Feeling no longer in the mood, I naturally went back onto the MacBook for some Bloglines updates. I’m not quite sure how I ended up getting that epiphany moment again.
You see, for the past few years now, I’ve been slowly piecing together my form of the perfect education system. It all very much stemmed from a rather interesting series of events, beginning in Grade 7 I suppose. Grade 7 was the perfect year; something you could only wish that senior year would be like. Well, in a way it kind of was senior year of elementary, but I digress. I had a great relationship with the teacher, knew every single peer in my class, got away with things I shouldn’t have, had field trips every month… And, at least from my opinion, there was no real peer pressure in the class. Most generally there weren’t really any cliques, apart from the girls being better friends with the girls and vice-versa for the boys. Maybe it was because of a somewhat small class, maybe not. But boy will I remember that year, certainly for the rest of my life.
Transition to secondary. It was rough, I’ll admit. The first six months didn’t really go “smoothly”, as I still hadn’t quite found my place in the school. There was three different groups of kids each from an elementary. I guess my friends, well one friend, began merging with the pack.
This new kid he had found… I didn’t take a liking to him. And I still don’t. He’s the smart-ahloc, the guy who never does his work properly but still gets by, the one the teacher never gives a DT to though should. He was exactly the type I was told in elementary to beware of: the alcoholic, the druggie. Mr. Unsuccessful.
As on friend “be-friended” this guy, the others joined. And I stayed behind.
So education, or schooling rather, comes down to two things: learning and socializing. I had just thrown away the latter. And you can quickly come to realize why I got obsessed with the former.
Grade 8 was honours. It was awards. Oh yes, this one is gonna be a keeper, and real success story.
Sorry, you shouldn’t make assumptions :)
Nope, by the time Grade 9 rolled around I was ready. I had a whole new plan to find new friends. It didn’t work out unfortunately. It seemed whenever I found a new group, they just weren’t who I was looking for. So, I continued, eating lunch alone in the art department basements. At least there was Macs there.
But there was this teacher in the first semester. This just terrible teacher. It was French class. And boy did she just whip up that golden rule. With mind-numbing daily journals and 30 minutes of silent reading. She was simply killing me.
First I refused I read anymore. There really is limited selection of french material on subjects I find interesting, such as film or technology. I argued and ranted and raved. At one point she kicked me out of the class. I decided to roam around the forest out back :)
Of course, the good techer who believed in me from last year knew I was not this child. This one who disobeyed the rules of the classroom. So he tried to help. He tried to set up independent directed studies. It was overall a hit and miss situation, but it eventually turned out an A. That A is definitely a great story, however it’s something for another time.
Things continued. After a brief high in proving that teacher wrong, that I was a good student, things took another turn. This time I had hit a depression. And perhaps it was a preventative measure of the brain, but I began dreaming insane happy dreams. One of these was about education. After my experience with the French teacher, I knew things could definitely be better. Something had to change.
And so I embarked on a journey online, discovering all about education reform. Institutions, schools, associations, platforms, ideas, people, stories, etc. I came to the conclusion that either I had to move to San Diego to go to High Tech High, or start a new life in Christchurch, New Zealand and attend Unlimited paenga tawhiti.
After a few months, the school year was coming to a close. I was experiencing the same problems from French class in my English class! Well, school ended with me being winded my last few weeks and dropping overall from straight-A star student to mediocre B-C student. I guess what you’d call an average.
Eventually coming to grips that I wasn’t moving, I had an epiphany. And this one really threw a curve ball in my life. I had to open a new school. If I couldn’t go to HTH or UPT, I was gonna recreate one here.
But how the hell does a 15 year old student start a school?! (Something I’m still trying to figure out :P)
This one idea led to me to refuse going to school after my first week of Grade 10, devoting September to research and ponder my ideas, and evvntually submission into signing up for “online” learning. (It’s not really anything online, just pages of what stuff to read in a book).
That was definitely a high point in my short lifespan. From there I wrote up a story similar to this one, and emailed it to multiple education associations, the Minister of Education, Leader of the NDP, my local MLA and the Premier of BC.
Four things came from all this:
- I got a DVD from an association in Alberta about Charter Schools
- Helpful encouragement from the George Lucas Educational Foundation
- An ongoing conversation with an author and thinker, John Abbott, of the 21st Century Learning Initiative
- An interesting discussion with Penny Milton, CEO of the Canadian Education Association
Number Four got extended. That discussion led to my invitation to a conference that was held this spring in Vancouver: Imagine A School - Rethinking education for adolescents.
It was my first conference, and needless to say I didn’t quite take it the right way. I’m not the most social to strangers, so I didn’t really end up networking, nor did I gain my insight from it. I still appreciate the gesture and hopefully my next conference I’ll be able to actually get something out of it.
And that leads to my two most recent epiphanies. One happened a few weeks ago, and the most recent this night.
First, the former led to me having the most insane brainwave a just reading up for hours on Wikipedia about how kids learn, and collecting all my thoughts about how to change education on a sheet of paper.
And then today. Through reading the idea of providing everyone free access to an online college where people can get actual degrees, I connected some dots. I had just earlier read a column that suggested online learning could revolutionize schooling on The Tyee. I realized the idea was actually quite formidable and could go hand in hand with my earlier ideas. Both my former ideas and this web platform are about providing more flexiblity to the student.
I quickly whipped up some inspirational music (School from Supertramp), and scribbled down my ideas in Writely. Here is where the last two things happened. I began figuring out how do I get my message across that these changes need to happen. While that was processing in my sub-concious, I typed up that list I had written a few weeks ago.
Boy, this is one helluvan entry and surely needs some touch ups. This conclusion is terrible, but I need sleep. It’s 2 am. Besides, it’s not like I’m writing this while on an epiphany :)
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