When the BC Ministry of Education completed its inspection of SelfDesign® Learning Community’s programs and processes last fall, our Learning Experiences Library, our in-person camps and gatherings, and how we provide learners with opportunities to design their own learning received particularly high praise.
The SelfDesign® Learning Experience Library is just one of many resources offered to our learners and families at SelfDesign. From in-person and virtual camps to online workshops, from support services for extracurricular activities like dance lessons, horseback riding and martial arts, to online assistance through our diverse learning resource centre, SelfDesign supports learners on their lifelong learning journey.
Michael Maser, former SelfDesign® educator shares his experience of emergent learning in SelfDesign. He explains that we’re biologically primed to learn every moment we’re awake. And with some nudging or tacit support, this emergent learning can be impressive at both the individual and societal level.
Art Intensive Camp brings SelfDesign® learners in grades 9–12 together for one week to connect, collaborate and share while they immerse themselves in art. When the B.C. government suspended in-person learning in B.C. schools in mid-March to protect students and slow the spread of COVID-19, SelfDesign decided to take the camp online and opened it up to all interested SelfDesign learners.
In recognition that reconciliation will be one of the most important challenges facing today’s learners in the years to come, SelfDesign® seeks to integrate Indigenous culture and perspectives into the everyday learning experience.
The overall vision for reconciliation and learning at SelfDesign® is to integrate and weave Indigenous education and mainstream education seamlessly together so that learner, families, educators and contractors automatically consider both the Canadian Indigenous and the national or international perspectives, ways of knowing and being, and ways of approaching learning.
In addition to nearly a dozen resources provided internally to our community through the SelfDesign Learning Experience Library, here is a list of external resources we have shared with our community to support exploring and understanding anti-racism.
We believe all of our learners are special, but at the Virtual Commencement Ceremony held on June 13, SelfDesign® recognized the Class of 2020 for an achievement unique to them. The group of SelfDesign learners are the first learners to have gone through SelfDesign® Learning Community’s newly designed high school program from Grade 10.
SelfDesign® has been working to build cultural bridges across and throughout our own organization. Our efforts are driven by the more than 80 recommendations put forwards by SelfDesign’s Indigenous education task force, comprised of a First Nations elder, a First Nations SelfDesign parent and learner, and SelfDesign educators including those with Indigenous heritage.
In February 2019, SelfDesign® Learning Community received a very positive performance accreditation from Cognia (formerly called AdvancEd), a non-profit, non-partisan organization that has been accrediting schools for over 100 years, with a commitment to ensure schools are ‘good enough’ and to help them improve.
