As our staff has continued to look at ways to support our students, we endeavoured to bring the critically-acclaimed documentary, Beyond Measure, to our school.  On the May 2016 Pro-D Day, our Professional Development Committee paid the $500 licensing fee and invited other Richmond secondary schools to watch the sequel to the first documentary by Vicky Aberles, Race to Nowhere.

The motivation for the movie was our desire to make improvements coupled with the BC Ministry of Education redesigning its curriculum.  Embracing a model that resembles many of the International Baccalaureate principles, the redesigned curriculum looks to encourage student passions and Individualized Learning and we were very interested in making a move to more Project-Based Learning.  The movie looked closely at several schools in the United States that were making positive moves in the same direction, as a way of inspiring others to follow suit. While Race to Nowhere analyzed the shortcomings of the “teach and test” methodology that was dominating many of the education programs in the US, the sequel was more about what could be done if we changed our focus.

Highlighting schools like High Tech High in San Diego and others in Kentucky, Massachusetts and Texas, the movie was inspirational for many of our teachers, and encouraged some lively discussion afterwards.  We continue to look at ways of giving our students more opportunities to engage in “hands-on” learning (something they told us they wanted more of in our Student Focus group conversations), follow their passions and make learning more engaging and meaningful for them.  The movie got us thinking about we can do to help education be more inspirational for our students and we will continue to analyze potential instructional techniques.

What follows is a series of questions that we addressed following our screening of the movie:

• How can out school create a culture where every student has the opportunity to find success?
• How do we define success?
• What is our purpose?
• How are things different from when you were a student?
• How can we create a culture of excellence?
• How have we created a culture of caring?
• What supports do you need as teachers?
• What is one personal commitment to change that you can make today and initiate immediately in your classroom?
• What are some scheduling/structural changes we can make that would help?
• What changes can you envision for our school and how do you foresee this happening?