Just back from a whirlwind six-day sojourn in New York City, I’ve been thinking about the thread that runs the breadth of the learning I have been fortunate to join in on the road. In the British Columbia backcountry, Cuban fine arts classrooms, backstage tours of Disneyland, weekends at local ski resorts, and now the Big Apple, I’ve shared a […]
Read more "Learning On the Road: NYC Edition"It is the second day of spring, earlier the same year, and a colleague and I are shivering in soaking clothes in a damp ring of protective salal and cedar above Chin Beach. We are conducting reconnaissance on the Juan de Fuca Trail, assessing its relative difficulty, subjective and objective risks and hazards, and gauging the […]
Read more "Scenes in Adventure Learning (Part II): Reconnaissance"Aligning our departure from Chin Beach to the 8am low tide, our group of seventeen grade nine and ten students and four adult leaders set out around the rocky bluff at the western edge of the beach, walking in the shadow of towering sandstone cliffs. Groundwater drips down mossy walls and splatters on the slick […]
Read more "Scenes in Adventure Learning (Part I): Over, Under, Through"The performing arts are made of fleeting moments of genius. Whether on nights under the lights on the school stage, or transcendent travels among musicians from different places and cultures, I’ve been fortunate to spend time basking in the magic created by our school’s musicians for a few years now. As a newly minted […]
Read more "My Life as the Music Department Digital Archivist"EDCI335 Final Design from Bryan Jackson on Vimeo. You can read the full PDF of the paper here. Background Drawing identified-gifted learners from the Coquitlam School District, Gleneagle Secondary School’s TALONS (The Academy of Learning for Gifted Notable Students) Program offers Ministry-identified gifted learners interdisciplinary core curriculum (Social Studies, English, Math, and Science for grades […]
Read more "EDCI 335: Final Design Project"Whether working with the TALONS, philosophers, or the #IntroGuitar community, I am fortunate to get to spend a good deal of time planning lessons and thinking of learning experiences that are not only ‘memorable,’ but hopefully also: personal, meaningful and – optimally – transformative. I would agree with a definition that sees learning as Jeanne […]
Read more "On Memorable Learning"Having brought along the Music Department‘s HD Flip Camera, I put together this 20’ record of the first three days of the Adventure Trip, collecting our journey east to Harrison Hot Springs, down the Harrison River toward Kilby, our exploration of Harrison Bay and journey west to the Dewdney Slough and on the Fraser River […]
Read more "Rolling on a River | TALONS Adventure Trip 2013"“People who hear about the types of trips we take with young people invariably have two responses,” I told the class just over a week ago. “They either say, ‘You’re crazy,’ or ‘Wow! How lucky are you to have such a job?’” I understand each of these responses. Maybe we are a little crazy: we […]
Read more "On outdoor trips and trust"Tomorrow morning, the TALONS are driving out to the eastern edge of the Fraser Valley, and setting out in a fleet of Voyageur canoes with our friends at Ridge Wilderness Adventures to travel the Mighty Fraser River. In a few days, we’ll arrive at Fort Langley, and from there will be on bikes, returning to […]
Read more "John Steinbeck’s Adventure Trip Advice"I’m happy to report that the fruits of last summer’s Unplug’d 2012 event have emerged as a fabulous mosaic of letters, songs and stories written and published in Algonquin Park over a weekend in August. You can find my letter, written in the form of a song, on my page here, as well as video of […]
Read more "Unplug’d 2012: Letters from the Edge"