Do you remember the Norwegian schools that have the approach of teaching and learning in natural places - i.e. outdoors. It is called Udeskole - outdoor school. The article HERE was published in 2013.
The winter temperatures in Norway are similar to Southern Ontario and Toronto is compared to Oslo.The CBC covered a Norwegian day care that was outdoors all year, and everyone was happy and learning outcomes were high.
But can we do the same here? It seems unlikely we'd be willing to suit up for a winter day's classroom outside, doesn't it? And what can we do writing-wise in those big mitts. (There's no update on Bernie Sanders' mittens fundraising total).
We have wonderful summers here: What if the school year was turned upside down here and students had the winter months for vacation and the rest of the year for school?
That's a different sort of challenge. It disrupts our routines, our sense of the normal, and gives rise to our ideas of what we're entitled to?
I can imagine these responses:
Parents: "We go to the cottage for the summer" and "What will I do with my children in the winter for sports and other activities?"
Teachers: "We want our summers off...to go to the cottage, too" and "We need our PD and PA days and other vacation days during the year and not concentrated in the winter."
What if the pandemic is longer than 2021? What if there are variants for a while? Could we change things significantly? There is low flexibility and nimbleness in our institutional systems. And our social norms are very set, too.
It seems possible that the organizing structure for this is parents grouping together to take this idea on. Could it even start this coming summer?
Today's images are montages - 2 images sandwiched together with Photoshop filters. The first image is the overlay - it is grunge on a metal water fountain.
The following pictures are the results of the sandwiching. The first is a blue wall/corridor with the grunge image over top. The next is a piece of rusting metal, and the third is rust on the wall of the Calamus 'rusty shed' - I've included the original so you can see how different the results are.
