[UPDATE: June 2] Sparks from Session 2: Our Growing Baseline
As promised, our shared baseline continues to expand following our second session. Here are the additional entry points and contexts shared by the rest of our Courageous Minority cohort:
- A Provincial Online School Leader in British Columbia: Disrupting traditional graduation pathways to allow students to earn credits through personal passion projects, rather than forcing a rigid set of specific courses .
- Teachers in West Vancouver: Launching an extracurricular âImpossible Projectâ where students collaborate using AI to build things they donât yet know how to build, replacing traditional grading with process-oriented self-reflection and peer commentar y.
- A Preschool Director in Brazil: Cultivating creativity and critical thinking in early childhood (ages 3-5) to prepare them for a 100-year life, resisting the pressure to prematurely enforce basic academic standar ds.
- A Teacher in Los Angeles: Fostering civil discourse by bringing politicians with opposing views to campus, teaching students how to communicate despite disagreements, and utilizing mastery-based evaluation in middle sch ool.
- Educators at a Massachusetts Lab School: Rebuilding trust and curiosity for adolescents who have lost their internal drive, focusing on authentic assessment of the life skills they already possess and helping them overcome the hurdle of finishing proj ects.
- A High School English Teacher in New Delhi: Embedding problem-solving into a rigid, standards-based curriculum by cultivating student voice and the confidence to pursue meaningful problems over the course of a year.
- A High School Leader in Brisbane: Moving away from reducing 13 years of schooling to a single grade by developing profiles that tell the story of a studentâs journey and the specific value they bring to their local com munity.
- An International School Math Teacher in London: Highlighting the challenge of âlack of student agencyâ in problem-solving, and actively trying to bridge the bizarre gap between the strict required curriculum and studentsâ personal passion p rojects.
- A Teacher at Avenues in New York: Navigating the realities of pushing project-based, self-determined learning across the finish line for 10th-12th graders.
- Our Global Nodes: We are also joined by a Grade 6 teacher in Edmonton, a Head of Digital Learning in Melbourne, a Teaching Learning Coordinator in Hong Kong, and educators from Oregon and Kansas who are observing, reflecting, and preparing to design their own ent ry points.
A Core Reminder from Session 2:
Problem-finding often stems from personal dissatisfaction or âunhappinessâ with the status quo, which drives the genuine desire to find a solution. Furthermore, human interdependence means using your unique strengths to create value for others, while allowing others to use their strengths to support your weaknesses. This dynamic brings to life âMe through Weââwhich, alongside âMy education, my wayâ and âCourageous Minorityâ, forms our three meta-level design approaches and community slogans, guiding us to discover and fulfill our unique selves through the support of the collective.