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/

In the State of Gratitude

I belong to a School of Thirds – most events are 1/3 anticipation, 1/3 experience and 1/3 reminiscing. This approach to life is a very real experience of the dimension of time in our cosmos as past, present and future all in the NOW. 

Last week was my final week of EJ School for 2013-14. Reflecting on the year fills me with gratitude I must voice. Gertrude Stein said “Silent gratitude isn’t very much to anyone.” 

Ever since I left the more conventional classroom in 2002 for my role leading site-based education experiences, I have toned down my joy to a private revel and quiet thankfulness that I have no year-end progress reports to prepare.  However, I do miss the accumulated satisfaction of accessing the growth and witnessing the learning that 10 months can produce in a collection of students that make up any given class.

I will visit the classes that came to EJ School this year and deliver the glossy Front Pages the Edmonton Journal loving prepared for each student. I will collect students’ comments on things like their biggest surprises from the week, their favorite activities, anything bad that happened and what advice they would give a student coming to EJ School next year. I will get a rush reading through those student evaluations of the program.

But on the planet of Inquiring Minds Edmonton, like most other places in the education universe, we are thinking about next year. At the Greater Edmonton Teachers Convention booth I had the pleasure of connecting with amazing teachers I have worked with in the past. Some of them introduced me to new teachers.  I will be helping a couple of other sites get ready to try the site-based, week-long, inquiry approach and fine tune elements of their programs.

Bringing students into direct contact with the world of journalism has opened my eyes to many things about the nature of inquiry, accurate information and the burgeoning uses of technology. The risk the Edmonton Journal took in opening its doors during this time of dramatic changes for them to a program like EJ School speaks to its deep commitment to the community of Edmonton. Barb Wilkinson and Karen Unland observed the use Linda Hut was making of just one morning a week for her City Hall classes and knew it was good. They have nurtured me these past 2 years and I am so grateful.

I shared classes and experiences with City Hall School and U School this year. I can’t say enough about those chances to collaborate with Linda Hut and Amissa Jablonski. I attended the U School Convocation for our joint class and the experience of watching students at Convocation Hall will be a culminating highlight of my year. I look forward to Linda's Citizenship Fair that celebrates City Hall School's year end.

Brian Dunsmore and the volunteers at CKUA designed a wonderful afternoon of learning for EJ School classes this year.

SAGE (Rachel Tassone and the Senior’s Association of Greater Edmonton) and Kevan Lyons, the Poet of Churchill Square played such an important role in the connection of students to powerful true story.

The Stanley Milner Library and community librarian, Angie Mills took us around the world and into the past with their newspaper collection.

The Marian Centre opened its doors to share its mission with Edmonton’s less fortunate.

The changing downtown of Edmonton was our landscape.

And my biggest thanks goes to the staff of the Edmonton Journal who were so welcoming and forth-coming with students who watched and interviewed them. The Edmonton Journal is more to our community than a source of accurate information.

The brain research says it takes a village to raise a healthy, resilient child. In the past, present and future it is so and in my EJ School village there is a state of gratitude.

Feeding the Writers

Recently, as part of my facilitation of a week of EJ School (Edmonton Journal) I had organized a poetry reading and interview for a class of Grade 6 students with Kevan Lyons, the Poet of Churchill Square. When we finished, I asked them to get up off the floor where they had been sitting for the last 40 minutes spellbound by the formerly homeless poet and go the tables in the Sunshine Café at SAGE (Seniors Association of Greater Edmonton) and write. 

I suggested they could start with “I just met Kevan Lyons…..”

And so, in a matter of a minute they were all seated; quiet, writing; coats and backpacks dripping off their chairs, cafeteria hum around them, friends close enough to touch elbows as they leaned on the small round tables. Quiet, writing. 

After about 15 minutes, I asked the teacher if she wanted to wrap it up since the yellow bus was sitting outside the door to take them back to their school. 

She said “Not yet. They’re all writing and I have students writing that have never sat this way to write all year.” 

Then she took one quiet girl over and read the shy writer’s journal entry to Kevan. They formed a lovely trio, their heads bent into each other, soft smiles and Kevan listened. I had a tear in my eye, really.

Kevan’s message about how writing healed him and helps him suggest a path of healing to others is powerful.

But just as powerful is the experience of watching children carry a blank journal out into the real world, slow down to take things in and sit to write. It is one of the simple but transformation things about a site-based program and I feel privileged every time I am there to witness it.

I was prompted to write this by a blog I read this morning from Deanna Mascle. She says some very interesting things about the waste of precious time preparing for standardized testing. I agree wholeheartedly with her on that topic and most who know me hate to get me started on it. 

But the words that really hooked me came near the end when she said: 

 "I get a little misty-eyed whenever I think about what we have accomplished together and what my students have achieved – ultimately because I remembered to feed the writer as I designed the class, assignments, and activities. Because I remembered to feed the writer, my students have achieved things they never thought possible."

Here, here.