Random thoughts of an ed admin lifer

This past Friday our school had an afternoon devoted to professional learning community meetings (PLC’s).  Our practical and applied arts (PAA) teachers met to discuss the development of a survey course for next year’s grade 9 students.  In the past, we taught the grade 9 practical and applied arts classes as distinct 50 hr classes—woods, foods, sewing, CAD and computer applications.  Students were required to choose a minimum of one of these courses when making their course selections.  We needed to move away from this traditional approach in order to broaden the exposure of our younger students to the different practical and applied arts (and because what were doing did not comply with the Department of Learning’s guidelines).

So, with that being said, what ensued last Friday was a very interesting dialogue.  We decided that we would choose a theme in order to tie the various areas together.  We bantered around a few different ideas and then struck on the idea of “Health Lifestyle” as a theme.  This is a good fit because of the “In Motion” initiative in our province, our division’s healthy nutrition in schools initiative and the class will be backed with Wellness (grade 9 phys. ed., health and career education) in the timetable.  Being backed with the Wellness class will allow for further multidisciplinary approaches to learning, but we haven’t gotten that far . . . yet.  What we did brainstorm was a class that would see three clusters of 17 students work through the following units in the course PAA:

Healthy Lifestyles:  Foods – nutritious snacks; Clothing – making of athletic apparel (a sweatshirt in school colours or house colours); Construction - the building of a canoe paddle; CAD – the design of a cardboard boat.  We envisioned the culminating activity for this class as being . . . a day at the river where students, dressed in the shirts they made for their teams, take lunches they prepared in foods, compete against one another in the boats they designed, propelled by the paddles they built.  There will be a production and design team that covers the event in sports caster and news story fashion.  We have yet to flesh out exactly what will be done and what PAA modules will be covered, but that will come in time.  I think that we made a great start Friday and am looking forward to the evolution of this project throughout the next few months.