School Works is Ready for Take-off
Some of my best adventures have started in the corner of Slocum and Ferris, the historic lunch counter in the Saint John City Market.
I like to sit there and watch the world go by, catch up on the latest gossip and think big thoughts. Which is why I found myself sitting there in January 2018, listening to my two friends David Alston and Greg Hemmings pitch me their new idea. They’re both serial entrepreneurs, with specialities in marketing (David) and filmmaking (Greg).
A few years ago they got together with others who shared their passion for tech in schools and made a short documentary called Code Kids in support of what would eventually become Brilliant Labs, a non-profit that works with schools and teachers to introduce students to technology through play.
That experience allowed them to meet teachers around New Brunswick who were doing cool and innovative things in their classrooms, which is where I come in.
I’m a writer and for the better part of two decades I’ve been researching, working and writing about community-led change, specifically how groups of people are self-organizing to make life better in answer to the larger disruptive changes happening in our economy, politics and environment.
Recently my work had brought me to the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (EECD) to help senior leaders there determine how to tap into these grassroots networks to help support local schools.
David and Greg wanted their next project to explore how change is happening in classrooms in New Brunswick and around the world and asked if I would join them. Sure I said especially after they told me the first stop on this new adventure was Dubai.
Every March this city on the Persian Gulf plays host to the Global Skills and Education Forum, an annual international conference created by The Varkey Foundation in support of the Global Teacher Prize, which seeks to elevate the work of teachers.
A mutual friend of ours, Riverview High School teacher Armand Doucet was part of this global teacher network and had leveraged it to collaborate with five other teachers to write a book, Teaching in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Standing at the Precipice, that was going to have its world launch at the conference.
Crazy, right?
Crazy good story too and we wanted to be there.
Specifically, we wanted to travel to Dubai and hear what the world leaders in education were saying and bring that information back to New Brunswick to begin a conversation about how to integrate some of the world’s big ideas into driving change in the province’s public education system.
So, in March 2018 Greg and I flew out to Dubai. We interviewed some experts. We sat in the audience listening to presenters from places such as the World Economic Forum, Harvard University, the OECD and Singapore’s National Institute of Education. We saw actress Charlene Theron, walked pass F1 Champion Lewis Hamilton and made small talk with money managers who administer billions in philanthropy for the global one per cent. We met lots of teachers from all over the world.
We came back to New Brunswick with so many ideas swirling in our heads, but there was one that rose to take precedence over all the others.
No one has it figured out.
No one has the solution for changing public education.
There is no ‘one way’, which means everyone is working to figure it out. That’s great news for New Brunswick because it means we have an opportunity to lead.
When you live and work in New Brunswick it can often feel like we are being left behind by a larger world moving too fast for us to catch up.
Certainly the mood within the province’s business and political circles is often dour but there are signals of hope in our communities.
Over the past decade-and-a-half a multi-sectoral network of community-based organizations has emerged, led by people bringing new perspectives and new approaches to New Brunswick’s economic, social and ecological challenges.
In education teachers are self-organizing too, supporting each other as they introduce new teaching methods and tools into their classrooms.
Upon our return Greg and I put together a short teaser video that speaks to that movement for change. It’s called The Mars Collective, so named by David and Greg because we are now living in a world where a journey to Mars is within the realm of possibility for our children.
The teachers and students featured in our short film are showing us how innovation is supposed to work.
The best ideas, the best inventions are developed by people who are driven by a passion to help solve problems that are important to them.
We come up with the best solutions when we are personally invested in the outcome.
So today begins the next step in my adventure into understanding change in education.
School Works is an e-magazine that will tell the stories of New Brunswick educators, students and community partners who are working to change the conversation about education and learning.
It’ll combine the stories I’ve gathered via my own research and writing, working with the Department of Education and some of the things Greg, David and I have learned through our work building The Mars Collective.
I also encourage you to share your stories of success and change because it will be through the cumulative learning from all our stories that solutions will begin to emerge as to how we can move forward, together.
So, let’s go. Let’s lead together with courage, imagination and good humour.
Let’s change the conversation about learning in New Brunswick.
Let’s show the world how it’s done.
Lisa Hrabluk is a writer and owner of Wicked Ideas Media. Find me on Wicked Ideas’ Facebook page or on my personal LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.
School Works is a solutions journalism project and partnership between Wicked Ideas and the New Brunswick Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (EECD).
