Quebec City has its Winter Carnival. Winnipeg has the Festival du Voyageur. Edmonton has the Deep Freeze Festival.

Many communities in Canada and beyond hold winter festivals. They celebrate light and community in the coldest, darkest time of year. They push people to bundle up, leave the coziness of their homes, and meet up with friends and neighbours.

SelfDesign® Learning Community has its own winter festival. Beginning on Monday, learners will gather online for Winterlude 2024. They will take in special presentations offered by guest speakers. They will check out SelfDesign learner clubs and groups. They will meet other learners.

Building community

“It’s really a community-building time,” says SelfDesign Education Program Coordinator Anita Levesque. “It’s spirit building. It’s an opportunity for our learners to deepen their knowledge of important topic areas that aren’t part of their regular SelfDesign offerings.”

Launched in 2021, the week-long event was originally intended for learners in grades 10 to 12. The festival was expanded in 2022 to include learners in grades 8 and 9. Then activities for learners in kindergarten to grade 7 were added.

SelfDesign offers some opportunities to younger learners to socialize with each other — for example, Minecraft and, as of September 2023, Open Spaces. But most young learners enrolled in SelfDesign spend most of their time learning in their local family and community environment.

Learners in grades 8 to 12 have more options to connect with each other — through Open Spaces, Learners Council and other learner clubs and groups. But even for these learners, most interactions take place during their theme meetings.

“Winterlude allows them to mix with learners beyond their themes and with learners from other grades,” Anita says.

Participation by SelfDesign’s learner-led clubs and groups helps build community, too. The Learners Council is hosting games and quizzes. The Gender Sexual Orientation Alliance (GSA) and the Earth-wise Collective are also presenting.

Maintaining momentum and enthusiasm in learning between semesters

Besides building community, the week maintains the momentum of the learning year’s first grade 10 to 12 semester into the second semester.

The week before Winterlude, learners return from the holiday break and have that one week to wrap up all of their final work for the semester and submit it to their educators, Anita says. And during the next week, the educators are busy assessing the learners’ work.

So there are no theme meetings for learners to attend. There are no weekly challenges. The lull made it hard for some learners to keep up their energy and enthusiasm for their learning. They could find it difficult to dive into the spring semester with the same degree of eagerness.

“The Education Program team saw the week between semesters as an opportunity to design some live offerings that could fill in the gaps around community building,” Anita says. “So, it’s a pragmatic solution that meets the learners’ needs for connecting with peers and exploring useful and interesting topics, while keeping their interest stoked.”

Providing practical learning opportunities

It’s also practical for learners. For example, for learners in kindergarten to grade 7, B.C.-based rapper–educator Stephan Duhan, of FUNdamental Raps, will bring music into their learning, Elder-in-residence Michael Harris will facilitate a dreamcatcher workshop, and HomeLearners Network guides will lead challenges and craft activities.

For older learners, special guest Chanelle Tye offers anti-racism training for teens, and Indigenous facilitator Sara Cadeau leads a Cultivating Safe Spaces offering. The Education Program team also offers sessions on how to prepare for the provincial math and literacy assessments.

“We always have lots of learners attending those sessions,” Anita says.

Another popular session is the Live Learner Showcase.

“The Live Learner Showcase is celebratory,” Anita says. “Learners take turns sharing something that they’ve created, something that they’ve learned — it’s all over the map. Some people will share songs that they’ve written or show us things that they’ve built, or they’ll actually screen share from their portfolio. It’s very inspiring and very popular.”

Winterlude also offers learners another practical learning-related opportunity, Education Program team lead Janice Green says.

“Everything they attend, especially in grade 10 to 12, can be used to create an artifact for their portfolios to increase their assessment or grade,” Janice says. “So if they go to a Winterlude offering and reflect on it, and then write about what they learned or blog about it or present an artifact about it, they can include it in their portfolio to be assessed.”

Winterlude 2024 runs from January 8 to 12.

Read about these other opportunities for learners to connect with their peers at SelfDesign:

The Design Post – a newspaper by learners for learners of all grade levels

Learners Council – for learners in grades 8 to 12

In-person camps – for learners in grades 10 to 12

SelfDesign Minecraft – for learners in kindergarten to grade 9

Open Spaces – now open to learners in kindergarten to grade 12