Over the past 16 months, Rosseau Lake College has been highly engaged in developing programming initiatives to excite our students and parent community and give teachers an opportunity to innovate. With a vision towards the next 50 years we decided to adapt one aspect of school life we felt would affect the most positive change; the timetable.
Many focus groups with students, parents, teachers, and board members followed, allowing us to develop a number of potential master schedules. Our final design was approved by our Board of Directors this past April and DISCOVERY DAYS was born.
DISCOVERY DAYS is a continuation of our strategic goals, to give students voice and choice over their learning and develop greater self-reflection for their future. Students will benefit from deeper learning opportunities as they work on a culminating Discovery Project over the duration of a semester instead of a few weeks, providing them with ample inquiry, research, and tinkering time.
Passion Projects will give students and mentors an individual problem-solving focus that is not mark oriented, but rather skills oriented. Collaboration, critical thinking, design thinking, information management, and self-management are just a few of the vital skills we know will give our students an advantage in post-secondary education as they all contribute towards developing a strong personal brand.
Finally, our teachers will be supported through this growth process with professional development that allows them to become facilitators as well as instructors.
DISCOVERY DAYS will happen every Friday, beginning in late September 2017 and on a trial basis over the duration of the year.
Very simply, this is a non-traditional day of learning where students get to choose the learning space that best reflects their needs, and work on projects that interest them.
Every Friday afternoon we aim to utilize our greatest asset — the outdoors— and provide time for personalized clubs, whole-school activities and longer sports hours.
The timetable change doesn’t just affect our Friday’s, however. Students at RLC will enjoy a shorter academic day everyday, to allow day students to return home earlier. Our boarding students will also have a greater opportunity for tutorial and evening activities.
As a Personalized Learning Community, Rosseau Lake College has done significant work in the past few years, striving to identify individual learning styles and using this awareness in all aspects of classroom instruction, assessment, and reporting. The Personal Learning Profile (PLP) has allowed teachers and students to understand how they learn and what keeps them engaged in order to achieve their academic goals.
Timetable changes are happening in many independent schools across Canada. RLC is unique in that we can implement this change seamlessly throughout our small community. We believe that student autonomy and innovative use of learning spaces is where education is going. This is the right fit for the personalized community of RLC.
Over the next few weeks and months more information will be shared. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Kindly,
Eric Daigle, Academic Lead