The SHIFT Blog

  Sarah Cronin is a teacher for the Halton District School Board and the program leader for Special Education at Milton District High School.   She is passionate about helping students with learning differences (LD) be confident and empowered and ready to make their mark on the world.  You can learn more about her journey on her blog . My learning journey this year as an educator is centred around enabling and igniting teacher growth through teacher passion projects.  I’m a big fan of the Hacking Learning Series - and my favourite book so far is Hacking Leadership by Joe Sanfelippo and Tony Sinanis. Chapter 8 highlights running Teacher Passion Projects as a way to develop capacity in staff and to help staff truly benefit from developing as a professional.  Teacher passion projects are when teachers take control of their own professional learning through choosing an area of education to focus on. Topics are varied and learning is centred around working t...

  Gord Donaldson is the current principal at Maple Grove PS who is also currently trying to innovate his golf game to lower his handicap in between trips to hockey arenas and baseball diamonds with his kids. I had a moment recently to reflect on our school’s journey in innovation.  As I pondered how we got to where we are, I never realized how far we have come in such a short period of time.  When you think innovation, you sometimes think big, or quick. Our journey was neither. What it is, is impactful. It all started with a cool spring day in May of 2017 at the Country Heritage Barn.  Knowing we needed something to “Shift”, but not sure what it was, we sent about 20 staff members.  Did that make it more difficult to have 20 occasional teachers in the building in one day? Sure. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Of course, we learned that we need to move from “ya, but” to “yes, and”, but more importantly we learned that a journey to innovation requires risks. ...

  The Shift Blog has been running now for 18 months, documenting Halton’s journey of making school different.  The Shift Blog has grown to include guest bloggers who have helped give voice to other perspectives as we all work to shift our practice.  We at the Shift hope to encourage more educators to share their learning through blogging and to that end, we thought we would dedicate a post to some tips for blogging for the the Shift, which we will call Shift Blogging 101. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone: It was bit of a challenge for us to step outside of our comfort zone when we started blogging.  Through a lot of trial and error we’ve discovered some things that work for us. We typically think about and talk about the topic of a blog for a few days before we sit down to write. Find a blog buddy: Writing a blog post with a blog buddy is not only more fun, but more effective as well.  Once we commit to writing a piece, we get started on a collaborative Google Doc...

  A little while ago The Shift wrote about the Three (Silent) P’s of Innovation .  Simply put they are Permission: educators need to feel that they have the permission to try something new Protection: innovators should feel that they are protected if something goes sideways Policy: people need assistance in navigating the policies that may slow down innovation We’ve worked within these three P’s for the past year, mostly helping to convince others that they do indeed have the permission to try, fail and learn.  Innovation is a part of the Halton District School Boards Improvement Plan, so teachers should feel that they are protected when trying something new. As well, administrators and IPLs are well versed in assisting teachers when navigating through the relevant policies. But something was missing from the three P’s and we’ve recently realized what that is: play.  Students, teachers, administrators, support staff should all feel as excited for Monday morning as t...

  It’s been awhile! We’ve been busy of course since September 4th …spending time in the classroom we’ve been loaned by Milton District High School. We’ve been calling it the Active Room, our Sandbox, or most accurately the Demonstration Room. It’s been pitched as, eventually, a place where teachers and students from all pathways, subjects and panels can come and experience learning in different environments. We’ve been meeting with various furniture vendors in an effort to bring in more variety to the classroom. It’s hard to imagine how to make school different if students are still arranged in rows of desks and are facing “the front” of the classroom. We’ve been looking at some of the non-negotiated norms of school and how we can push back against them, defronting our space so that all spaces become areas of learning is our first challenge. In the end, it is important to us to create a room that all teachers can see themselves and their students learning in. Being new to our...

  Being able to work in a classroom of our own at Milton District High School is a bit of a blessing for us.  Turning this space into our own demonstration classroom is a bit of a dream come true. Who wouldn’t want a blank slate to play in?  We realized quickly that we were going to be slowed down a bit by factors that were beyond our control. The room needs to be able to demonstrate a wide variety of uses for multiple subject areas and pathways all while being functional for secondary or elementary students and teachers. The first step we took in our space was to measure the walls and order whiteboards.  We like to work vertically and from our experience, so do students. Once the install is complete the demonstration room will have space for 17 to 20 student groups to work.  Unfortunately the delivery and install could take up to a month. Step two was to find some furniture vendors who would be willing to work with us in outfitting the room with functional, ...