"If Students Designed Their Own School" Response

    The video that I watched about a student-designed school/program made me think about regular school systems. After a half-year in high school, I'm used to a system where we all have different teachers and students in our classes, as well as independent schedules. The classes are also all planned out for us, including what we do and when we do them. This system is steady and concrete, so our school can be more organised because of the amount of students we have. However, in a single class or a very small school, like the student-designed school in the video, the things that we learn should be flexible.

    This program, "the Independent Project," is located in a public school, which means that the students can have some interaction with the other teachers and students. However, they learn more independently and work in small groups. The students "design their own learning" through three activities: weekly questions, individual endeavours, and collective endeavours. Through these projects, they can choose what they are passionate about while practising both individual working and collaboration skills. This could be a good idea because when you get a job you want to do something that you're interested in, and when you go to university things not related to your job don't matter as much. Because there are only nine students in the program, the students can make better relationships with each other and get closer to each other, like when they discuss what has recently happened to them. In a regular high school, you only meet most people in one or two classes a day, so it's harder to get to know everyone better. After all these points, the Independent Project concludes to be a program that is more adaptable to what you want to learn and letting others know about you more. This sounds like Genius Hour, and it is good because you have the passion and determination to learn what you want, enhancing your experience.

    If this program were to happen in Fraser Heights, there would be a lot more than 9 students in it. However, the important thing is that people would learn what they want, and the environment would be a lot different from the regular school - you would be able to meet the other students more often. To do mostly Genius Hour type projects for one whole semester would be nice for those who want to set their own goals, and it would be interesting to see a student-designed school happen in our school.