Attack of the Cat! (or not)

My first real movie with iMovie. This is what I do on a Saturday night when I’m bored!

Updates from Me! China, Speak Out, Principal’s Council, Website

Hello there! Ever since I left for China, it’s been go-go-go. A fantastic, but busy part of the year, to put it lightly!

This one post is going to cover all of the stuff I’ve been involved with since China all the way up until now, so get ready for it!

China 2011

China has been one of the most fantastic and rewarding experiences of my life. Not just the voyage to China itself, but the relationships, connections, and experiences associated with it. The group that I travelled to China with was so amazing – both the students and the teachers.

You can visit my actual China blog, for a more comprehensive breakdown of my trip, at http://david.iyls.cbegloballearning.ca.

Here’s a few photos (theres plenty more on my China blog):

The Chief Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council 2010/2011

I blogged about this several months ago – but now that it’s coming to a close – I thought I’d blog about it again.

The Chief Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council is a group that, this year, has met fairly regularly with each other and the Chief Superintendent of the Calgary Board of Education, Naomi Johnson, to discuss and propose issues to education in the city today.

I’ve sure been spoiled this year with the people I’ve been able to work with. As for the China trip, this is such a fantastic and amazing group!

Our goal is complex and simple at the same time – empower the students voice. We’re something new – and really, starting from scratch. We’re the first council of many like us.

Whether or not we get to remain on the council next year is unclear, but I sincerely hope I have the opportunity again. It was an amazing feeling to know my voice was being heard by high-level administrators within the Calgary Board of Education.

Speak Out Conference 2011

Last year, I attended the 2010 Speak Out Conference (read about it at  http://davidcloutier.com/2010/05/alberta-speak-out-conference-2010/). Speak Out is a provincial-level student voice forum where 200 or so students come together from across the province to discuss and learn about educational matters at the provincial level.

In addition to meeting and networking with even more fantastic people, we got to divide up into sessions at a point during the conference. The most interesting one was the “Diploma Exam Mythbuster”. I found it interesting that diploma’s used to be worth 100% of a grade 12 years’ mark. After realizing this system didn’t work, they moved to a 100% class based mar, which didn’t work either. Ultimately, that’s how we ended up with the 50%/50% system implemented today.

I even got to speak, personally, with the Minister of Education, Dave Hancock. I was very happy with our conversation and appreciated the time he spent with me.

One of the things I talked to the Minister of Education with was an editorial he directed towards the Calgary Board of Education of particular concern to me. There were several claims I had difficulty with, but the one that caught my eye the most was “I also find it odd the CBE employs about 6,000 teachers to serve 102,000 students, or one teacher for every 17 students, yet its class sizes last year averaged 17.4 students in K-3, 21.2 students in grades 4 to 6, 23.2 students in grades 7 to 9, and 24.2 students in grades 10 to 12. Clearly, the CBE has many staff preoccupied with activities other than teaching…” – I felt this was a very poor choice of words, and also, very untrue. In addition to teachers in classrooms, we have many teachers outside of the classroom, such as the ones that co-ordinated the China trip, or organized the Chief Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council – we also have support specialists that help our diverse learning community including special needs students. Dave agreed with me that this was a poor statement, and upon reflection, stated would not have published it.

Principal’s Student Advisory Council (or soon-to-be)

Based on the Chief Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council, something I’ve been working on for implementing at my own school next, is the Principal’s Student Advisory Council.

I feel that with Administrative Advisory Councils at all three levels of the Education System (school, district, and province),we can have a much more efficient issue-solving system. The councils can work with each other to make sure the right problems get handed over to the right groups. This extended branching also makes sure even more voices get heard.

I’m very pleased to have such fantastic school administrators that are in full support of this project. It really reinforces that educators do care about the experience their students are receiving.

Henry Wise Wood Website

It’s funny how one thing leads to another. Without the Henry Wise Wood website, I don’t think I’d possibly be where I am now. Going back even further, I first got involved with the website while proposing technology-based ideas for journalism – something I didn’t even want to be a part of in the first place (really funny, how it all worked out, actually).

Anyhow, this is another fantastic project I’ve been able to have a significant leadership role in. It’s really developed my interest in web-technologies more, and helped pursued what I’d like to do in my future.

In addition, something I haven’t really had the opportunity to do before that I did with the website was to work in a real “team”. It’s in my honest opinion that theres a difference between a “group” and a “team”. Teams work together, and groups defer all of their work to one person. That’s my experience with the two terms, anyways. It’s a great new set of dynamics to experience.

Leader

“David is a selfless leader who does not hesitate to help others and spills out positive energy with his laugh and smile! He is naturally funny without even realizing it…”

It’s things like this that drive me.

I’m so grateful for all the fantastic people I’ve met this year.

Off to China! IYLS 2011

I’m off to China for the International Youth Leadership Summit 2011!

Follow me at http://david.iyls.cbegloballearning.ca.

See you all on April 4th!

CBE’s Chief Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council

I just thought I’d write an update about a new thing I’m involved with and that I encourage anyone interested in to look into for next year.

This year, the Calgary Board of Education has come up with a great strategy for bringing student voice into the education system – the “Chief Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council”.

The council meets several times in the year with the Chief Superintendent of Schools for the Calgary Board of Education. Apart from the council, the program is connected to a newly created course called “Empowering Student Voice” which enables students to earn credits for their support of the council. When we aren’t meeting with the Superintendent, we meet frequently with other CBE staff to share information we’ve collected, learn leadership skills, plan our meetings with the Superintendent, and so on. Up to 5 credits can be awarded at the present, via online CTS modules.

So far, our meetings have been great. I’m very happy with the student diversity that has been selected to participate.

This blog comes too with a news article, that I’m featured in (content wise – the picture features a few of our many great members), courtesy of Metro News:

Metro News Article - "Giving youth a voice". I didn't get in the picture, but the first part of the article is an interview with me. Click to enlarge.

More information about the council can be found here. I plan to write a few more blogs on this great group throughout the year as well.

It’s the thing I can honestly say I’m most proud to be a part of right now.

Just a Photo with the Prime Minister!

I came across this the other day and thought I’d share it with my blog readers – whoever you may be.

No story with it really. Just that I volunteered back in the summer of 2009 at a Conservative Party Barbecue, and got a photo with the Prime Minister.

Cat Fight!

My two little kitties fighting. This is also my first YouTube video

Alberta Speak Out Conference – 2010

I’m back from an amazing trip at the 2010 Alberta Speak Out Conference.

Speak Out is an Alberta Government Education initiative to have the voices and opinions of youth in Alberta heard in the educational system. 200 kids at the high school and junior high school levels from around the province, in different communities, were brought together for this event.

The cool thing about the conference though was that it wasn’t just about voicing our opinions and views to the government though, but also about meeting new people, and having fun! I know I sure did!

We were also privileged to have Mr. Keith Hawkins speak for us. Keith is a motivational speaker with some good ideas and points about leadership. I’ve written another blog about the Rapport leadership camp that I went to, and I liked Keith’s approach much more then the way Rapport did things. Keith still had us challenge our boundaries, and try new things that we weren’t used to, but made it fun and brought it to a more personable level. So thank you, Keith, it was great hearing from you. I have to admit, at first when I was looking at the schedule I was pretty much like “Wow… We have to listen to the same guy talk for hours over this thing. He better be good”. Simply put – he was. He was a great guy with some great things to say.

The team that put the event together was also a great bunch of happy people who enjoy what they do. A few others and me from the Calgary Board of Education will be speaking with them over a video-conference to give them more feedback however, as I felt that the actual forum part of this trip, where we piled our ideas together and spoke with others about the Alberta Education system, was rather unorganized and somewhat lacking (update: we did speak with them via video-conference, and provided our feedback. Understandably, they weren’t totally receptive or understanding, but I thank them for taking the opportunity to take the Calgary Board of Education attendee’s feedback).

The forum was probably the only part about this trip that I had any problem with, and kudos to whoever put the rest together. The forum was nothing like the Calgary Board of Education’s “Mega End Symposium” in that it lacked a structure that was effective and gave us a diversity of things to comment on. The questions were rather restrictive in terms of the types of answers we gave, and I don’t really see anything practical that came out of the results – for example, one of the concerns was that relationships with students and teachers weren’t personable enough. Can Alberta Education really do anything to enforce that and make it better? Another was how teachers felt kids not showing up to class affected their work. Can Alberta Education really do anything in the short term about that either? There were some good points, but not enough emphasis or explanation was put on them. Those are just my thoughts. Like I mentioned before, I’ll be doing a video-conference with the team that put things together. So I’ll certainly bring those things up, and come back here later with the types of responses I receive from my feedback.

Back to the rest of the whole thing, apart from some amazing sessions with Keith Hawkins, we had a crazy dance! Tons of fun. I let loose and went crazy. I think people liked my moves.

All in all, I had a great time – and I’d love to do it again next year. Hopefully, the actual forum can be better orchestrated and more like the CBE’s Mega End Symposium. We’ll see.

Seattle Band Trip – 2010

I’ve returned from a great trip with my high school’s amazing band.

We went on a 6-day tour to Seattle, I’ve never been, at least not checked it out – so it was a cool experience, and I enjoyed it a lot!

The road trip from Calgary was brutal. I had fun and all, and I’m sure everyone else did, but the time it takes is absoloutely killer. We stopped in Salmon Arm on the way, didn’t like the town that much from what I saw, but the hotel, the Podollan Inn, was quite nice.

US customs was a hassle, but I guess that much could be expected with such a large group. I’d say we were there for at least an hour and a half. We had some kids that had issues and red flags come up, but those were eventually resolved and we headed along our way.

SO, to the good stuff! The most interesting things in the Seattle area that we visited were:

The Boeing Plant - While the tour was lengthy, it was neat seeing where the aircraft that many of us travel on are created and to learn a little bit more about the process, the building itself was also interesting, the largest indoor open space in the world, and the building had over 1 million lightbulbs. I was suprised to see that it was all casual dress, too!

The Experience Music Project – This was an amazing place to check out, and also featured an amazing Science Fiction Museum (some highlights of that were the original CAPTAINS chair from Star Trek and the Death Star model, being a science fiction fan, I loved it, I’d go back if I could and spend more time). The Experience Music Project itself contained a museum of all sorts of stuff from music in the past, not really my thing, but still pretty interesting,  I don’t recall exactly what, but I do remember how there was many try-it-yourself instruments like guitar, electric piano, and some various percussion instruments. A lot of it like the try-it-yourself stuff was hands on, which was cool. We also got to participate in a song writing workshop, also neat, and fun

The Microsoft Campus – At the Microsoft campus we got to check out Microsoft’s latest creations at their visit center, one of which being the Microsoft Surface. I want one now. It was a pretty innovative and interesting place despite the general vibe that Microsoft tends to give. I got some cool stuff at their store too. (update may-11-2010: the stress ball that I got from the Microsoft store exploded on me, thanks, Microsoft.)

Another place we got to visit which isn’t open to the public, but was neat anyways, was Roosevelt High School. It’s an amazing school, it makes you wonder what’s so wrong with the funding for education in Alberta. Roosevelt is a beautiful sandstone school with excellent facilities and an amazing group of band kids. We go to meet them, listen to them, and our jazz band got to work with them.

We had lots of good times doing other things like shopping, and just hanging out. We also got to go to a commedy club, and Pikes Place Market where I saw the first store of my favourite store, Starbucks!

CBE Mega End Symposium

This is a relatively short blog, but I’d like to post about my experience at the “CBE Mega End Symposium”. If you are given the opportunity to go to one of the future ones, you should definitely take it.

The evening of Tuesday March 9th, 2010, several students from my high school, including myself, and high schools across the city participated in the CBE Mega End Symposium. The students invited were from a diversity of educational backgrounds (ex. regular program, IB, reach out programs, etc.).

The annual symposium’s general purpose is to get feedback from students about their experience within the CBE and using that information to better the experience they provide for future students. Some of the general questions addressed were “How are you being encouraged to pursue your goals and careers within the CBE?” and “If you could go back and do things differently, what would they be?”.

This was the second annual Mega End Symposium and the CBE plans to countinue with this strategy throughout the years. There were only about 60 high school students representing CBE’s 105,000 or so students.

After a short presentation we split off into smaller groups and answered questions following a group discussion for each. A CBE employee logged everything we said (it was confidential, however) but didn’t participate in the conversation. It was all up to us students to get down the most important points about the experience we are receiving.

Everything concluded with everyone getting back together and our group “leaders” (I forgot what the fancy word the CBE gave them was) presenting the top 2-3 points about the experience we are getting with everyone else.

We got free food (dinner and desert), prepared by students at Lord Beaverbrook. So thank you Beaverbrook students! It was great! At the end since there was so much left over I even grabbed a sandwich for my lunch the next day!

Some of us, including me, will be participating in a longer term study for the CBE. 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years and 10 years after we leave the CBE we will be emailed a short survey so we can reflect back and note anything we thought could have gone better and would have helped us out more, etc.

It was a good experience, well setup and prepared. Most of all, I’m happy the CBE is concerned what students think. We are this world’s future, and its important we receive the best quality educational experience possible. It’s important we get all the help we need, are treated equally, and get opportunities outside of just learning the course material if we want them.

We also got the opportunity to sign up as a candidate for the Alberta Speak Out conference in Edmonton. That conference addresses more provincial level educational matters such as diplomas and curriculum material. The CBE can send a few students every year. I got accepted, and my blog about that experience can be found here.