This is a really amazing space for me, I've sort of found a home here.
Regular school didn't suit me, it didn't work at all but the amazing part
about this school is, its chaotic but completely organized at the same time. I think what it
it does promote an environment where everyone is a teacher and everyone is a
learner, and moving away from a hierarchical notion of, or more
patriarchal, right. Like we're older so we know everything, and moving more into a
model that acknowledges that children have as much to teach adults as adults
have to teach kids. Different things, right. Like adults have a lot of
knowledge that kids don't have, and kids have a lot more awareness of their
vulnerabilities,
and what it means to be human, than adults have. So there's a nice opportunity for
reciprocal learning.
It's about creating an ecology, creating an environment where the variety of
folks that are there, it includes the adults that are there as well,
can continue to learn and grow, and to really reflect on who they are, and who
they wish to become, and then support them in that journey.
I love how it's just so accepting and I can be myself and, kind of, follow my
dreams because I want to be a singer,
when I grow up, and I just kind of discovered that been learning more
about who I am in thinking, and reflecting on who I am, and do I want to do this, or
do I want to do that, and how that's going to impact me,
and other people. Every child and youth that goes to that school is respectfully
given a place to belong.
What VCS did, is it liberated me. It liberates you to have friends, it liberates
you to have opportunities
there's mentors that come in. The kids get a choice.
The kids get to run their own education. And one of the things I love about
Vernon Community School is that difference is the norm and so students
are encouraged to grow and be themselves, and then learning emerges from that, so
you won't see all the students doing the same thing, you'll see them either
interpreting a task in a way that makes sense for them, or making choices around
which mentors to work with based on passions and interests they have.
It's my first year here and within, I think, the first two weeks I was accepted,
I had, like, three different friends, I was accepted in the community. A lot of times,
in the old system,
it just restricted my thinking, restricted my happiness. Whereas here,
honestly it's, it's a miracle for me and especially my parents because yes, I do
have autism, but guess what does that mean
that I should be thrown out? No, it just means I was born with something else
I was born with special ability to think differently,
to, what they call the average. But that's what VCS is doing, they're changing the
average. Every child is unique, and Kim and Marie are very much
attentive to getting to know who that person is,
and what they bring, and what their gifts are, and what their strengths are.
Kim and Marie are more, of like, guiders. They guide us to do things that we like instead of
telling us what to do.
So, if we want to pursue our passions, then they guide us towards that instead of
telling us you have to do this, or you have to do that.
So, if say, you want the career of being
say a book editor, like me, then they will try and find you mentors for English,
but you still have to approach that person and ask them to help you out.
The job of the students is to try to learn who they are, really, and what they
want to do for when they're older, and what their passion is, and what they want
to work on.
So, we are in charge of taking it up, as we say at Vernon Community School.
If you want to do it, you do it. The teachers aren't going to tell you what
to do, and they're not going to make you do something. So if you want to do it, you
just have to do your best to make it happen, and they'll help you with that. In
terms of the concepts and the curricular competencies, those have emerged in
different
inquiries that have been designed for the students and with the students. Sometimes
it's the students that provoke an inquiry, but then we look to the big
ideas, and the concepts, and the curricular competencies and say which fit here. In some of
the inquiries, they're designed so that the students have to identify which competencies do I
want to explore, or which concepts will I take up.
And so the design is always creating a space for students to be designers,
creators, explorers, and then most importantly communicators.
So, critical thinking and creative thinking happen within this work, but it
has to be something that students are driving and creating, and then the
support from the teachers and the other peers comes within that process of
inquiring, documenting, researching, exploring, working with community
members and mentors, and then synthesizing learning to communicate with others.
The act of learning is shared in the school, and it very much is a curriculum
making effort.
So everybody contributing their insights, their perspectives, their narrative of
experience, and it's not just everybody saying okay you've got this and you
figured out this,
it's to collectively, what does that make? What sense-making can I learn from
everybody from the collective. So, I like to think of it as a movement of thinking,
and its individual and collective at the same time, and you bring it back to bear
on your own thinking.
So it's very much adapting, changing, building, making meaning on an ongoing
basis. And I think you learn a lot more when you actually have to teach someone
about it, so we study for a presentation and then we have to teach it to all the
other people, instead of just kind of memorizing it and writing it down.
It's been really interesting and exciting as we wrestle with the renewed curriculum,
to say, okay, these core competencies really resonates but also to say we're
not marking these core competencies. And so Kim and Marie worked to construct
continua, using the core competencies and instead of exams, students engage in
an examination of learning where they self-assess in relation to these core
competencies, and the students support each other to say where do I think I am
on this journey, and where do I think I could go.
It's really a chance for metacognition, self-reflection, and goal setting. And so
midway through the year, and at the end of the year, they use these core
competencies to reflect on their learning and draw from the experiences
that they've had with inquiries, with learning, with mentors to say what
evidence do I have,
and then how does this tell me where I need to go next. I also, if not a singer,
want to be a psychologist
when I grow up.
So I've been kind of practicing how to make other people feel good, and just say
hey I'm always there for you, if need to talk, or just trying to be open.
It is a really welcoming place. They want you to come to school, they want you to
be happy, if something's not wrong then we'll talk about it and have a circle.
And just work, work things out instead of letting problem get bigger and bigger
until we can't handle it.
Well, we go in a circle and we talk when we share our feelings about stuff like
some people like when if they fight or do something, like, they'll bring into the
circle and we'll all have an opinion on this end or will go into a private room
and have a teacher or have just kids to help us out and talk through things.
People have to work together they can't just,
it's not Vernon individual school, it's called Vernon Community School for a
reason.
So we bring in mentors from the community so they come in and they'll
pitch their idea to us and then we can decide whether we want to work with them
and so it's to inspire us
I think because you work with the mentors and you kind of get inspired to,
oh yes I really want to do this. And then you can go more deeply into it whether
that's working more with them, or doing courses on it, or researching it more.
We had a dance mentor come in, and like, that was helping me pushing my passion.
We have a mentor that does, like, creative writing and art. And we have other
mentors who teaches encoding, and we have people who work on bikes, drawing and
pretty much anything, and the greatest thing about this is Kim and Marie will
help us get mentors, but you have to put in the work to get what you want.
There's room for everybody to bring who they are, and who they want to become.
There's space created for that, in a classroom, and navigating what that
space is like, is very artful. For some, students immediately seized it and began
really committing to their passions and,
and growing their identities in really remarkable ways. And for others, there was
a lot of resistance and out of fear, in some cases, out of embarrassment, in some
cases, out of really painful experiences for, for some. And there was tremendous
patience, and waiting, and looking for openings and looking for ways
to encourage, and foster growth. This work, often to an outside observer, looks
perhaps frivolous or, or not really grounded in rigor,
but to be that vulnerable and open to everyone around you in that
environment to do that day, after day is exhausting.
Our work is to promote students' growth, and how do you lift other people up, and
what does it mean to serve others.
That's pretty hard to do as an idea. You have to do it because then you realize
how hard it is. In traditional school, I used to get bullied a lot and didn't
get support, like, it felt like I was just kind of a ghost just floating there.
Just going through people, kind of. And now, people actually, like, notice me and
talk to me, it's
nice.
What does it mean to really meet kids where they're at, what does it mean to
pedagogically love them, and to call them forth, and those are questions that we
just have to keep asking, and I love those conversations. It's an amazing
privilege to be a teacher and work with kids in these ways.
What VCS offers to other educators, other parents, the wider community is the
possibilities of reframing education away from competition, away from
comparisons, away from imposed control. In this case, it helps others see what
learning looks and feels like when it's really genuine. And rather than control
being outside, control comes from within the learning culture itself. And the
power and possibilities of that are amazing. And I've watched parents who
were wondering, well what about grades, and students asking what about grades, and though
some of those questions linger, they're much more on the back burner because what you
now have is a child really enjoying learning, finding passions that they
didn't know they had, and questions that they didn't know they had, and enjoying
the inquiry experience so much so that grades are on the back burner, and
learning has become a priority for them in every sense of what it is to be a
learner.
I joined VCS, it has changed my life
so much, I've met so many new friends.
It just inspires me to say, well guess what, they're my dreams,
what if I can make them come true.