Rethinking Character Matters

Our quest to re-connect with our sense of purpose and passion that brought us to education has caused us to think deeply about what kind of student we want to graduate from our school after potentially being with us for 10 years. "We asked ourselves what kind of human being do we want to graduate from Aldergrove Public School?" As we continued to talk about this we looked at the research around the kind of world our children would be graduating into. While we have a great deal of respect for the 10 Character Matters traits, somehow they did not resonate with our shift to Inquiry and using 6 Social Justice frames. A team of staff worked on answering the question- does this work for us or do we need to look at other traits for our students and context. After some time, we decided we needed to re-think these traits.

We spent some time starting with the Sacred teachings of the Seven Grandfathers. It became our starting point because we wanted to start with our ancestors who welcomed all other Canadians to this great land. Then we began exploring UNICEF's Rights of Children, the work of the World Health Organization, the IB Learner Profile, YRDSB priorities and the Learning Skills on the Ontario report card. What would emerge was 7 key values/ways of being we felt our students needed to have to best prepare them for life in a shrinking and rapidly changing world. They reflected a blend of Character Matters, the teachings of the Seven Grandfathers and so much more:

Self-Awareness, Optimism, Empathy, Inclusivity, Innovation, Relationships and Citizenship.

We worked on creating "look fors" for each of these from an assets-based lens. We wanted students to be able to articulate what they can do in terms of each of these 7 that could be built on each year over a 10 year continuum. we then worked with a First Nations artist to make these come alive in a way that was meaningful for us at Aldergrove.

Equity - for us is about closing the gap and doing what we can to ensure that ALL our students succeed. In order to close the gap though, we have to pay attention to “What the gap is and why it exists?”, “Who is most affected?” “How are we supporting those affected?” In doing so, we rely on the work of George Dei from OISE, University of Toronto. In his book, Reconstructing Dropout, he talked about students remembering incidents of being marginalized from as early as their primary years. This is often a difficult issue to explore and can be quite an emotional one. Still, just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t explore. If we are committed to ALL our students, it’s up to us to find ways to ensure that ALL our students can succeed. Structures can sometimes support some more than others. Our role as educators is to keep our eyes open and to keep finding ways to see how we can serve all to achieve their highest potential. This means that we cannot adopt a “cookie cutter” approach where “one size fits all”. Instead we will have to tailor our approach to support our students the way they need it. This has to be a collaborative process, one in which we depend on each other- students, staff and families to help us learn and understand the best ways to support each other and our students so they can be successful. In order to do this, as a staff, we have one of our lead teachers – Mrs. Wendy Wright responsible for Equity and Inclusivity. If ever you have any questions you can approach any of us. This quest to “close the gap” is an ongoing one to which we are all committed!

Innovation- Environment as 3rd Teacher 

We are preparing students for a world in which they have to solve problems that haven’t yet been created as a result of jobs that also- have not yet been created. Within this context we had to think about how to set the stage for the type of thinking and innovation that they would need in navigating that world. The Ministry of Education through their capacity building series did a monograph on Environment as Third Teacher through which we were encouraged to think about how we can use all aspects of the classroom as a “teacher”. We began to think about this – how could we do this intentionally with our entire school- from the moment children walk onto the school grounds, the halls and the playground all the way to their classroom. We began thinking about the walls and the school grounds. As you walk through our school you will see the many ways in the way we have approached this. Our staffroom has a learning wall in which we have begun tracking our learning as a staff over the course of the year. Our primary wing has a series of environments that have intentionally been done to integrate language, math, science, social studies, drama, art and more. Our FDK Wing has a series of murals that encourage our students to see themselves and each other positively and that can be used to extend a variety of concepts for them such as matching, near and far, shapes and colours among other concepts.

Modern Learning and Innovation. 

We come to education to make a difference in the lives of children and make a difference in the world. Where 4 year olds can understand how gender impacts their relationships and Gr 5 students can talk about how their social locations influence the way they experience the world. 

As a school we have worked on connecting our personal philosophies and sense of moral purpose to the type of education we provide to do just that. We knew that our students were doing well with their literal comprehension and we want them to go deeper. Through a collaborative process of identifying what we needed to focus on we began to look at Inquiry as a framework to support that journey, still we grappled with how do we make the learning relevant and authentic. How do we stay true to our purpose of making a difference in the world. Then as one of our teachers- Bic Fernandes - read an article by Bruce Picower, 6 Elements of Social Justice and suggested it as a potential way to help with that. 

We were a bit uncertain as this was new terrain but collectively as a staff we all jumped in and started thinking it through and using it. We wanted to ensure that our students were ready to engage the world into which they would be graduating. A world in which knowing information and filling out worksheets would not be enough. 

This is modern learning in action. As we continued our dive, teachers continued to explore how we could be precise in the ways we were deconstructing the learning within that Inquiry/Social Justice frame. It was here that we borrowed from Allan Luke’s Four Resource Model to help us. In essence, we were using some of the best educational research to innovatively create an approach throughout our entire school. By using an Inquiry based framework, adding 6 Social Justice Frames, 7 Values and a framework for critical deconstruction of text we have engaged our school (KG–Gr8) in social justice learning and action. This type of learning will allow students to be ready for the world into which they will graduate. 

 

Philosophies of Education

“We teach who we are.” - Parker Palmer

In June 2013 as a staff we began to work to identify “why we were doing what we were doing” – really, we were speaking about what brought us to our profession as educators and to our school. That led to us individually articulating our Philosophies of Education and putting it up outside our classrooms and offices. We had the opportunity to articulate this in anyway that we wanted. It was our hope that by making this both explicit and transparent, we could build stronger relationships and accountability with our students, community and with each other. As we walked through the building and had conversations with each other, what was very apparent was that we were all very different individuals who shared many facets of a common vision. The philosophies were as diverse as they were insightful into the many reasons and beliefs held by all our staff.  

As we moved to our second year, we looked again at how we could try to articulate this in 6 word essays. We could only use six words that made a statement. This again, was another challenge to which the staff arose. As you walk through our school, take a look as we make plain something that people don’t always see or know – what brought us to our profession.

At Aldergrove PS these philosophies have all been brought together in our new tagline: inviting community; igniting learning and inspiring leaders. If you want to see a school that is committed to change the world one child at a time, come visit us :)