Session Topic: Teacher as Architect: Building Space in the Curriculum to Teach How

You Like
Time: Block 3
Scribe: Deanna Plested
Interesting Points
1. We can recreate education to work for us, and to work for our students.
2. We ask too much of our students deciding what they want to be, we should more be
helping our students to be healthy and happy, and to figure out who they are.
3. We predetermine the steps, and then ask students to come up with a pre-determined
solution. We need to give students leeway to come up with their own formulas in order
to come up with the solution.
4. Bring your inner geek into your classroom and use that to your benefit. Bring your
students inner geek into the classroom. Find out what you love. Find out what your
students love.
5. The design squiggle: Begins really messy in the research, and then begins to focus in
the concept prototype, and then straightens out with the design.
6.
Connection to Alberta Education

Create lesson plans that start with something of value, not something that might be
important to the program of studies.
Celebrate the curriculum-as-lived, dont blame the curriculum-as-plan.
High School Redesign
o How can we make more kids complete high school?
o How do we change the timetable so that kids have flexibility?
o How do we make it so that kids get credits even if they dont pass?
o Many questions being explored and experimented with

Connections to Specific Subjects

CTS

A high school teacher asked what he could do to get more

kids engaged
o Created a skateboard factory
o Everything based around being a
skateboard factory
o Silk-screening, stickers, templates,
longboards, etc.
o Reaching into the community

Takes kids who would not finish highschool

ordinarily, and this pulls kids in and brings
them back even after they graduate

Core Subject Connections

A teacher made everything in his class tied to star wars

Discussed character development
Made 3D objects

Art

A High school art teacher

Was given a box of broken stained glass.
Asks their students what could we do with this
glass, their students have the idea of creating
human sculptures with this stained glass
The teacher went to the welding teacher and
asked how he could make these sculptures
possible

Other
Control being able to control yourself, before you control others. Knowing that your
environment is impacted by yourself. The only thing you can control every single day is that
you are in that classroom