The Blue Sky School Commmunity

Blue Sky School is a school built for, of and as a community. Central to everything that we do are our students' voices.

I have always known that the existing schooling system needs deep change. Through all of my previous projects, I have tried to lead this change. There has never been quite enough space for my blue sky ideas. I am so thrilled to see my lifelong, audacious dream of a totally new type of school coming true with the support of a magical co-founder, Karen Hill, 100 Action Team members and tons of community partners. Blue Sky School is the experimental prototype school of tomorrow.

Watching our community work together to build something this huge is truly inspiring. The most amazing thing to see is our learners collaborating with one another.

Three of our incredibly talented and thoughtful community members wrote, directed, filmed and edited a video telling our story!

Our learners of all ages will be contributing to a blog documenting our ongoing learning and the process of building a school from scratch.

The collaboration, community building and celebrations have already begun, before we've even moved in to our amazing innovation centre! Blue Sky School opens for full-time schooling of grade 6-8 learners in September 2017 with a Pioneer Class of 12.

Learning happens when passion and empowerment meet. Blue Sky School is an independent not-for-profit coworking centre for learners of all ages. We nurture the next generation of changemakers and partner with today's innovative leaders.

For more information about Blue Sky School, visit us online.

Blue Sky High - What If YOU Designed a High School?

Walt Disney encouraged people to think big. And then he encouraged them to think bigger. He asked them about their blue sky dreams. Look up at the sky. You can't see the end of it. That's how you should dream. There is no limit to how high or how big you can dream.

Right now, I'm blue sky thinking about high school.

My blue sky dream is to open a grade 4-12 inclusive, immersive, experiential school that caters to all types of learners and empowers them to be confident life long learners who can solve real world problems.

I am researching the current structures and systems of public and private high schools around the world to learn more about how users (students) feel about their experiences there.

I would love to learn about your high school experiences, what worked and what didn't work for you as a teenage learner.

I would also love to pick your brain about what we could achieve in high school. Imagine that the existing systems and structures were wiped clean and you could learn in a way that works for you. What could high school look like, feel like and empower our students to do?

What if formal schooling could be more about preparing learners for their lives than preparing them for more formal schooling (and all that entails, like standardized expectations, a focus on memorization of content and high-stakes testing)? Imagine the possibilities!

One way that I am gathering user input is through a survey. I am also conducting one-on-one interviews, starting an online discussion group (on Voxer) and planning dream-building workshops. If you want to share your experience and ideas, or learn along with me, let me know!

Your input will be helpful for my personal research, writing, educational consulting work and eventual my own eventual Blue Sky High creation.

To start off, I am collecting your thoughts in a quick (5-10 minute) survey. Please fill out the embedded survey (also linked here)

This post includes (creative commons licensed) images that inspire me in my blue sky dreaming about schooling. These were included in a document I shared with artist Jeannette Langmead, in the creation of her masterpiece that is the cover of my book.