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.