When Wyatt Miller-Unser commenced from SelfDesign® Learning Community in 2013, he had basically completed a curriculum that he had designed to further his own interests in photography, videography and graphic design.
The Kelowna-based learner was one of hundreds of learners who went through the school’s grades 10 to 12 in the first years after the school started offering the high school option in 2009. He took full advantage of opportunities in his local community to do the independent learning SelfDesign Learning Community supported.
“We had a lot of freedom back then with many of the courses,” Wyatt says. “I could write plans for solo courses and get those approved. I did a tonne of those because I wanted to do videography, photography, outdoor photography…. I just kept doing them, and they kept approving them. And if I pulled together a group of five or six people and found an instructor, the school would cover the instructor fees. So I just would persuade pretty much everyone I could to do courses on topics I was interested in, and then I would get the instructors from the local colleges in Kelowna.”
For several videography courses, the instructor Wyatt arranged to have hired was the head of the film arts department at the local Centre for Arts and Technology in Kelowna.
“He would have us do scripting and lighting and setting up shots and filming and editing and pretty much everything that you don’t tend to get to do when you’re in grade 10 or 11 like I was,” says Wyatt, who now works as a professional videographer and graphic designer. “It wasn’t just ‘turn the camera on and film some stuff.’ We covered everything that you do when you make a film.”
Young Wyatt as a learner
Wyatt came to SelfDesign as a very keen, young learner. He had attended another alternative distance-learning school for a couple of grades in elementary school, but they couldn’t keep up with him.
“I didn’t like having to do curriculum at the same pace as everyone else,” Wyatt says. “I loved to read. It was all I would do. So when I was with that other school, I couldn’t make myself do stuff that slowly. I would read the whole book that was assigned and be, like, ‘Great, what’s the next one?’ And they would say, like, ‘Nah, you’re in grade 4. You’ve got to do more grade 4 stuff.’ And I was like, ‘But I don’t want to. I want to learn about —.’ And it would be the grade six curriculum or whatever.”
He says that his parents supported his appetite for learning and for diving deeply into topics that interested him.
Another reason Wyatt’s parents moved him into SelfDesign was because SelfDesign recognizes learning that many other schools don’t see as curriculum. As an example, Wyatt says, “I would do baking and cooking and use that to learn math. That’s where I learned fractions, cooking stuff. At SelfDesign I was able to learn things, and then just tell the learning consultant about it instead of having to follow a specific curriculum.”
Designing high school
In 2009–2017, SelfDesign’s grades 10 to 12 were structured allowed learners a lot of flexibility and control over what they learned, how they learned it, and how long they took to learn it.
Wyatt says that, for him, that degree of freedom in his learning led to him developing a strong sense of responsibility for his own learning.
“It gave me a lot of responsibility early on. It placed a lot of the responsibility for learning on me in a way where I could follow interests and I could make courses if I stepped up and did that.’”
It also helped him identify his interests as a way to make choices and decisions.
“All throughout school, and in college, too, I was able to just pick an interest, then pursue it and see where it would take me,” he says. “I could be, like, ‘I want to do a photography course.’ And I’d try it and love it and do another three photography courses, or I’d be, like, ‘Man, that’s not at all for me. I want to try this other thing instead.’ I really enjoyed the kind of mindset that came from that — that it was okay to try things to see if you liked them or not.”
He says, “There was so much stuff I would do just to try it to see if I liked it and if I wanted to pursue it further. I tried a lot of stuff that I didn’t love — it just wasn’t for me — but it was really fun to try it for a month or two as a class. And you know, the photography stuff I loved, but now I don’t do much with it other than just for personal enjoyment. I enjoy photography solely for myself and not for work. But it was really fun to try and to have that as a course or four or five.”
Wyatt after, and back to, SelfDesign
After SelfDesign, Wyatt enrolled in the Digital Arts and New media program at Selkirk College in Castlegar.
“I went in trying a lot of stuff but leaning more towards graphic design and branding,” he says. “Then, just through the people I was meeting and instructors and stuff, I ended up doing a lot more video.”
For his final-year project, he and a friend made a commercial feature of a local business.
“It talked about the history of the shop and stuff like that, but that was really fun,” Wyatt says.
That project spun off into a new business venture when he graduated. Wyatt and his friends set up a video production company in Nelson.
“It started because of that one commercial-like video we had made,” he says. “We did a bunch more of those kinds of videos featuring local businesses — coffee roasters and a brewery that was just starting up. We did real estate videography, photography for products and just a whole bunch of different things. It was super fun.”
Today, Wyatt has returned to the Okanagan, where he continues to do video and design work as a freelancer and consultant. He’s also circled back to SelfDesign, where he handles all the videography for our HomeLearners Network.
“I like trying stuff,” he says. “I don’t get bored exactly, but I do have a drive for finding new experiences, especially in my work and in learning in general. I don’t like it when I get to a point where I’m pretty good at something, where I can do everything easily and there’s not a lot of learning left in it because I’m not adding new stuff. As soon as I get to that point, I start looking around and thinking, “What else can I add and learn about and become better at and do more of? Learning more and doing new things — that’s what keeps me engaged.
Meet other SelfDesign learners, past and present
Meet other members of SelfDesign’s community, past and present
