Well, what a year we've had! Our students proved themselves to be resilient, dedicated, and creative. When we went online, we took a little break to do wellness checks, taking advantage of all the online content, viewing and discussing, orally and in writing: videos of people singing from their balconies, photography, poetry, songs, and online concerts. Then we continued as usual, with our novel study discussions and essay writing, using Google Classroom and Google Meet. The students were able to make connections to events happening now with all our novels: Red Scarf Girl, about the Chinese Cultural Revolution (grade 7/8); the old classic, Lord of the Flies (grade 9); and Half Blood Blues, about black jazz musicians in Europe during WWII (grade 11). They wrote exceptional essays, making excellent links to the pandemic situation and the Black Lives Matter movement, and proving that our students are excellent inquirers, with the ability to express their opinions and make links with the world around them.
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To end the year the PHYSICS and PHILOSOPHY students built a Dyson Sphere. . . well, not really . . . but their final exams were thematically linked and considered the implications of building such a structure.
The students felt the need to look towards the future. The last few months have felt like humanity might be moving backwards. There is a future. It’s just not going to be the future we were expecting. For decades scientists had been telling us that we needed to prepare. We now need to innovate faster than we ever did before. Humanity, perhaps like never before in history, is singularly focused on answering the challenge mother nature presented us with. This need for innovation will never go away . . . and that’s not a bad thing. In the Acadecap Secondary Program, we have always striven to form innovators. We do not teach the material, we teach how to learn the material. This is how our students will be able to face the future. When mother nature challenges us again, or when humanity challenges itself, they will identify what they need to learn, self-teach, and then innovate. Those who approach learning as a collection of factoids will be left behind. So a Dyson Sphere. Far future possibility. Metaphor for today. |
AuthorsOur 2023-2024 teachers are: Lucie Lalonde: Français, Humanities Archives
November 2023
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