City Hall School

Did you enjoy the trip to the Garden following the river? Let’s travel it back, down stream into the heart of Edmonton. This time we will swoop to the left just after the Low Level Bridge at Louise McKinney Riverfront Park. We need to make it quick before we crash into the cranes working on the bridge that will carry the Valley Line LRT trains after they burst out of the hole in the river bank to cross the North Saskatchewan. Hang on while we do a steep climb over the Edmonton Convention Centre, watch Jasper Ave flash by below then duck in and around a few tall buildings. After we pass the renovations at the Stanley Milner Library and the construction on 102 Ave we see ahead the distinctive glass pyramid, clock tower and carillon of Edmonton’s City Hall. This award-winning piece of architecture was designed by Edmonton architect Gene Dub and opened on August 28, 1992. Gene Dub’s design combined the old with the new by incorporating materials such as marble and granite from the old City Hall into the new building. It was also designed as a ‘people place’ - a place for civic government and a gathering place for Edmontonians. Here, as well, is the home of City Hall School.

These are interesting times. To contain the spread of COVID-19, the City of Edmonton acted following the direction of Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health. Most City of Edmonton facilities, services, and attractions, including City Hall are closed. To borrow a favorite start to an idea from Linda Hut, “I wonder what people in the future will think about this?”

I’ve known Linda for quite a long time. Our friendship started because of Inquiring Minds. She knew about week-long, site-based, inquiry-learning in Edmonton before me; before it was even called Inquiring Minds. As a classroom teacher 20 years ago at Westglen she took a class to Museum School. For the next 10 years she applied and attended Fort School, ICE School (where we met), and Zoo School. One year when she famously did not get a week to any site, she approached the Northern Jubilee Auditorium, convinced them to let her bring her class there and try the approach. The birth of Jube School. In 2009 the Campus Calgary/Open Minds site coordinators hosted a provincial professional development gathering at the Calgary Zoo. They graciously suggested I bring along a master teacher to share the day. Linda and I drove down together. We talked non-stop the whole way there and back. I got to introduce her to Gillian Kydd. In 2010 Linda was seconded from the Edmonton Public School Board and became the Program Coordinator of City Hall School.

Teachers discussing City Hall School for the first time with Linda often view municipal government as small and full of hard connections to difficult ideas and curriculum. What Linda hopes they discover is that the year-long conversations of City Hall School will bring kids out of their egocentric world to a place that celebrates their active citizenship.  “I have so much more to offer than Gr 6 social studies,” she states emphatically.

And then to illustrate that idea she shares one of her hidden gems, poet Kevan Lyons. I have been most fortunate to witness the power of the formerly homeless poet to connect with children. When he meets City Hall School students, he makes no secret of the fact that this relationship with City Hall School changed him. Small things can make a big difference. Linda treasures parents’ tears, the looks on kids faces and binders of letters thanking Kevan.

The Inquiring Minds website says this about City Hall School:

Leaving the confines of the classroom and immersing themselves in the rich learning in community of City Hall students gain an understanding of complexity of issues that affect our city and the important roles of citizens in municipal government.  Student journals are filled with Reflections, Observations, Wonders and Sketches as they focus on social responsibility, the environment, history and democracy.  The connections with their city and curriculum start in September with a presentation of a “Key to the City” and end with a celebration of citizenship.  Weekly City Beat eNewsletters keep classes engaged and inquiring.

Look at the City Hall School webpage. https://www.edmonton.ca/attractions_events/city_hall/city-hall-school.aspx

Do you want to know more? Contact Linda at linda.hut@edmonton.ca

You can start your application process at the Inquiring Minds website. https://ourinquiringminds.wordpress.com/application/

Jube School

Our first fly-over on this magic carpet ride, is the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. This program exists in two cities: in Edmonton at the Northern Jubilee Auditorium and in Calgary at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. Those of us who have had the privilege of visiting both these International Style monuments built to celebrate Alberta’s Jubilee (50 years) as a province of Canada have experienced a real twinge of Déjà vu or two subtly different realities. The buildings were born twin sisters and live full lives in two different settings and cities but continue, over more than 60 years, to share the same beautiful bone, muscle and skin. Twin spaces. Different places.

Karen Youngberg is the Cultural Development Specialist for the Alberta Jubilee Auditoria Society, a not-for-profit organization led by Board members working for the betterment of the Jubilee and striving to promote the importance of art and culture. She carries a passion for what she does that radiates from her eyes and smile. Her path to Inquiring Minds, like each of the people we will meet who facilitate Inquiring Minds, is unique. 

Prior to coming to work at the Southern Jubilee Auditorium in an office admin job, she had been stage managing and working with Quest Theatre, a company with lots of experience working with and in schools. Her own children had exposure to inquiry learning education. She was eager when I invited her to come and spend an observation day with me at a site being run at the Calgary Arts Common in the fall of 2015. The rest, as they like to say, is history. She connected with a supportive crew from Campus Calgary/Open Minds and built a Jube School (Jube is a diminutive or term used  to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment for Jubilee Auditorium) program at the Southern Alberta Jubilee. In the past year, the existing Northern Alberta Jube School program folded into her job description.

In these days of Covid 19, the Jubilee Auditoria are “dark”, a term they use in the theatre business, meaning the venue has been closed to the public. But Karen is busy creating ideas and sharing activities for connecting folks of all ages with the arts. I, myself, attempted her “One Line Sketching” Challenge.

I asked her to comment on something teachers might overlook about her site and she barely hesitated. “I don’t think teachers realize it is a government building. It’s filled with more than 60 years of storytelling. They will get to feel that lived experience of building. The arts are about creating and sharing community.”

For her, a hidden gem of Jube School is directly related to that idea. Her voice warmed as she related the wonder of a student in Grade 3 who volunteered the fact that his dad loved Led Zeppelin. Building on those associations for kids makes participating in an activity about the Jube's state of the art sound system a connected, deep learning experience. Karen enjoys revealing the long list of artists who have walked from the dressing rooms out to perform on the Jubilee stage.

The Inquiring Minds website describes Jube School this way:  

A week-long program of personalized, interactive, arts-based learning rooted in elements of each class’ curriculum. Creative explorations in the technical, visual and performing arts will inspire learners and educators to make personal connections in, through, and about the arts. Working alongside some of the world’s best teaching artists and technicians, students have a hands-on opportunity to create, reflect, and explore in an environment that supports personal and social growth, empowers practical learning and inspires curiosity that enriches the individual, the class, and our community. 

Take a look at the Jube School webpage. https://jubileeauditorium.com/edmonton/jube-school

Do you want to know more? Contact Karen at kyoungberg@albertajubileesociety.ca

You can start your application process at the Inquiring Minds website. https://ourinquiringminds.wordpress.com/application/

The Case for Classroom or Meeting Place

In the last few months the changing circumstances of some of our Edmonton Inquiring Minds sites as well as the possibility of some new ones led to a discussion among site coordinators through email and at meetings around the topic of classrooms on site – from “what would be a dream situation” to “are they even necessary”. 

These days, much of the talk about classrooms is about how to bring the world into 21^st century learning spaces through the creative use of technology.  Brain research is showing us that concrete experiences in rich real world activities are actually the neuron synapse way to lay down the foundation of deep learning through connections. But a "box" out-of-the-box can facilitate it! 

So here is the case for a classroom out-of-the-box. 

I discovered early on in my ICE School experience that the space we called a classroom was used mostly as a staging area: a place to hang up coats, stow boots, lunches and backpacks, a spot to get away for a period of time from the distractions of real world work and noise (much of the space in an NHL hockey rink is in almost constant motion), touch some of the interesting artifacts of the game, check out my library of books on hockey, horse and history, eat lunch, access a bathroom, keep a water bottle (there are not many water fountains out in the working buildings of the real world) and leave a few things at the end of the day so they could welcome learners back to the “routine” of another day on the site. Much of the day unfolded somewhere else.

During the development of the ICE School program I realized that the experience of a site based program was to take an education “known” and turn it around (it is all the rage to call this process “flipping”). Spending 5 full days away from school moves students from the “Wow” of arrival to developing the ability to look longer and more deeply and facilitates seeing beyond the first impression. It takes a while to become calm and comfortable and a space to lay down the routine of coming and going plays a grounding role.

In the section titled “The Classroom or Meeting Place”, Campus Calgary/Chevron Open Minds’s generous sharing through Implementing the Open Minds Education Concept in Your Community – a guide states:

       It is necessary (my bold italics) to have a room or space that will serve as a base for the teacher and their students. They need a place for sharing journals, discussions and snacks/lunch, and where they are away from the other visitors and staff.

    

    Requirements

The following description is the ideal – this isn’t always possible.
·         a colourful, bright space. Classrooms that have a glass wall have been very successful as the public can see what is happening and the students feel more connected to the site
·        in some programs the students sit at tables in five or six groups. Many sites use trapezoid tables that can be rearranged easily into groups or other formations for other users of the space. If the chairs are medium height they can be used by all ages.
·         It’s useful to have a carpeted area so the teacher can have discussion time with the students sitting near her. A white board or easel also is helpful. An overhead projector and LCD projector may also be useful.
·         counter with sink, coffee maker, cupboards
·         coat racks and runner for shoes/boots
·         tables/counters for display of books/artifacts etc.
·         access to washroom facilities

The final words go to the godmother of week-long, site-based inquiry programming, Gillian Kydd. After reading the above she sent me this:

"Made me think back on all the “meeting spaces” I’ve experienced since the program began, from the damp smelly panda theatre at the Zoo which was the first one, to the dark storage closet at Glenbow, to the tiny conference room at the Calgary Arts Centre, to your colourful locker room type space at Northlands, to the small lobby at our local museum, to the old school house with pot bellied stove and minus 25 in Fort Mac, to the round windowed room at the top of the ski jump at COP, to the gorgeous glass wrapped sea to sky views in the OM classroom at The Rooms in St. John’s.
Many of the cramped ones have been replaced but you are right – they are simply meeting places – the real classroom is the world.
Love
Gillian"

The real classroom is the world. 
Amen.