Annual Report (.pdf) - Campus Calgary/Open Minds - Calgary Board ...

13/14 annual report
This year 240 teachers and more than 6,500 students
in Calgary participated in the program, reaping the
benefits of these rich learning experiences.
“Our concept of education should expand beyond
the school and make the community a true partner.”
(Alberta Education, Inspiring Education, 2010).
Campus Calgary/Open Minds is the future of learning
right now, creating opportunities for students and
teachers to move their classroom into the community
for an entire week. These sites are fascinating,
educationally rich environments that engage students
in exploration and discovery. Each of the twelve
sites offers a unique lens with which to uncover and
examine curriculum. These experiences make learning
meaningful for students because they are engaged in
authentic educational activities that allow them to make
personal connections. CC/OM creates an environment
that allows teachers to gain a deeper understanding
of student’s prior skills, knowledge and aptitudes, and
use those to advance student learning.
At the site, students are involved in hands-on
learning and spend extended periods of time
observing and reflecting within an authentic setting.
These opportunities deepen student learning and
play a significant role in helping to foster attitudes
and understandings of social, cultural, global and
environmental responsibility. The CC/OM experience
truly opens the minds of students, giving them a
clearer idea of how they fit into the big picture, and
the role they play within it. They become ethical
citizens within their community. Students apply their
entrepreneurial spirit when they take up current
issues which push their understandings beyond their
local setting to national and global communities.
Their creativity, innovation and communication of
understanding continues back in the classroom.
A CC/OM week is a time to ask questions, have
conversations with experts in the community, to slow
down and reflect, to journal and to sketch, and to
“I am here to
learn from my
own observations.”
- student
make sense of the world around them. It is not a week
in isolation, but rather a week that makes a myriad of
connections to personal experiences and classroom
learning. Students gain confidence as learners and
engaged thinkers, and see that they can make a
positive difference. CC/OM has the potential of being
a life changing experience for teachers and students.
It embraces life long and personalized learning,
personal management and well being, literacy
development, citizenship, and generates effective
relationships with the community at large.
The experience encourages and promotes inquiry,
problem solving and critical thinking for students,
teachers, parents and community organizations as
they interact with experts at each site. As students
learn from and share their knowledge with these
experts they not only gain academic awareness but
they also develop a strong sense of respect and fair
treatment of others. When they prepare themselves
for working in the community they begin to develop
the charter to do what is right, act morally with
wisdom, and balance individual concerns with the
rights and needs of others.
The program length, the deep thinking about first
hand experiences that transcend curricular lines and
the time to slow down and reflect transform learning
to its highest levels.
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