It all started about a year ago, when we engaged the (excellent!) design firm on our website redesign. Our original website was totally homemade and we wanted a bit more polish. Here are some early design ideas from SP-CE:

A core value at 乌鸦传媒 is student buy-in, so of course we asked students (and teachers) for feedback on these designs. The feedback was surprisingly consistent: the designs looked too polished and too 鈥渃ommercial鈥�. But鈥� wasn鈥檛 more polish the whole point of this exercise? One student wrote: 鈥淪ome of the ideas are good but none of them are really giving 乌鸦传媒 [...] It looks like the ads you see on the skytrain.鈥� We had uncovered something that鈥檚 important to us: authenticity. A school needs to maintain credibility. Still, it has been our experience that the sheen of infallibility and gloss affected by many organizations interferes with the vulnerability and authenticity needed to form the bonds that real community and strong education are founded on. At 乌鸦传媒 we aim to speak openly, own up to our mistakes, and develop real human connections. A design that is too commercial, too polished, too reminiscent of an advertisement, doesn鈥檛 align with that realness and vulnerability. Our website is meant less as an advertisement trying to sell you something and more as an invitation 鈥� to be curious and to learn more about our community.

Following this first iteration we continued to brainstorm. The 鈥渁ha moment鈥� struck with this image:

What a great photo! It evokes STEM, but rather than a schematic for a machine, this is a blueprint of a community 鈥� something so important to 乌鸦传媒. The image is technical but artistic; it鈥檚 precise but creative; and it evokes the theme of a work in progress. Seeing this photo unlocked what would become our final designs, based on AI-generated blueprints:

These designs resonate with us and, perhaps more importantly, with our students. To us, they resolve the paradox of needing to be polished yet authentic at the same time. If you鈥檇 like, take a look at our redesigned website at . (We put together the site ourselves using the designs from SP-CE.)

The final piece of our visual redesign was our logo. To create a balance with the more 鈥渙rganic鈥�-looking design elements above, our new logo is more conservative with clean lines:

Our branding process included not only a visual overhaul but also reexamining our values. A school is a vast collection of people and processes, all interacting in complex ways to manifest the experience that a student, parent, or teacher has at that school. It鈥檚 challenging to embody the shape of that experience with a few pithy words, but it鈥檚 also a useful exercise to try.

The results can be found on our new values page. One change we made was to expand the notion of character-building to encompass not only virtue but also important qualities like curiosity, which we deeply value. We also emphasized that student buy-in includes both respecting students鈥� time (i.e., avoiding busywork, or repeating content that students already know) and also involving students in decision making (through our democratic process in school meetings). The biggest change was adding a new value: striving. We believe in striving and continuously challenging ourselves, even if this means being uncomfortable along the way. We realized over time that this principle guides many decisions at 乌鸦传媒, and wanted to explicitly highlight this on our site.

What makes a good school? Some may contend that there is a universal answer, and indeed we can agree that schools should aim to meet certain minimum standards in areas like health, safety, respect, and care. Beyond that, though, every organization sets priorities and makes tradeoffs. We do not delude ourselves into believing that 乌鸦传媒 (or any school) is the best school for every single student; rather, we try to be clear about who we are and be the best school we can in serving our community of families and teachers. We are a community that prioritizes challenge, STEM (for everyone, not just certain demographics or echelons of society), good character, and good conversation. 

An important moment in the 乌鸦传媒 journey comes when parents complete the final enrollment documents for admission. This year, we added an explanation of our philosophy and values for families to read through and pledge their intention to support the process. If you鈥檇 like to check it out, you can find the 乌鸦传媒 Parent Pledge .

A value is a belief about what is important. It is ultimately values that bring people together or push them apart. For 乌鸦传媒 to find its people, we need to signal our values. We have attempted to do that visually through our design elements and textually through statements of our values. We feel blessed that we鈥檝e been finding our people so far. If you see yourself as a 乌鸦传媒 person, perhaps we will see you too before long!


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鈥淚f you want to build a ship, don鈥檛 drum up the folks to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.鈥� 鈥� Antoine de Saint-Exup茅ry

One of my motivations for founding 乌鸦传媒 was to cultivate curiosity and a sense of wonder in students. When holding office hours as a professor at UBC, I would be excited to nerd out about AI and data science but would more often be approached by students asking what will be on the test or disputing a small deduction of marks. I wished for more curiosity. And yet anyone who has interacted with children knows that they are born with a drive to wonder and inquire.

Cultivating curiosity is a laudable goal, but how does one achieve it in practice? My approach is foremost to assemble a team of life-long learners who model what intellectual curiosity looks like to our students. Practically, this impacts the types of questions we ask in job interviews and how we evaluate potential hires. We look for teachers who are passionate about what they teach 鈥� perhaps reading, consuming podcasts, tinkering, dabbling, consulting or otherwise practicing and life-long learning outside of their teaching duties. 

Beyond hiring decisions, we can promote curiosity in the way that we teach. The most common advice I give to new teachers, or students mentoring other students, is to not be too helpful. This may sound tongue-in-cheek but it is serious advice! A common misconception is that, when a student is working on an assignment or problem, the goal is for them to finish the task. Hence, helping them finish. But finishing is not the goal at all; rather, the goal is learning. As previously discussed on this blog, growth requires struggle. I view curiosity and productive struggle as in a sort of feedback loop: curiosity provides the motivational fuel for struggle, while struggle and overcoming challenges can pique curiosity for what comes next. 

In practice, every teacher will have their own approaches given their subject areas and personalities, be it inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, demonstrations, experiments, games, special guests, field trips, or something entirely different. In my math class, I often try to answer questions with questions. If a student asks how to do something, I ask them how they think it might be done. If they ask whether an answer is correct, I ask how we might assess correctness, even through a simple sanity check. Through this apparent unhelpfulness, I hope to instill the habit of questioning, as well as self-reliance and justified self-confidence.

A master of teaching without giving away the answer is celebrated Australian math teacher and YouTuber Eddie Woo. For example, in on the Pythagorean theorem, it鈥檚 not until almost 9 minutes into the video that he actually states the relationship a虏 + b虏 = c虏. This is left as the punchline. Eddie Woo knows not to give away the answer too early because doing so would short-circuit the process of wondering, 鈥淗ow are the sides of a right-angle triangle related?鈥� This moment of wondering is too precious to skip. 

(Teaching without giving away the answer is one thing but, occasionally, I also engage in the more extreme practice of teaching without knowing the answer. This may come about, for example, during a math appreciation session when the thread of inquiry tugs us in an unexpected direction. I generally don鈥檛 recommend teaching without knowing the answer of course, but from time to time it can help to model forging into the unknown and create authentic moments of vulnerability as a teacher.) 

One of the many difficulties of teaching is providing just the right amount of help so that students are able to make progress, but must practice their sense of curiosity and challenge themselves along the way. It is my sincere hope that, as educators, we can help ignite the fires of curiosity, and take good care to keep them aflame. 

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If you are seeking a way to build mathematical curiosity before high school, consider checking out 乌鸦传媒鈥檚 Math Club for Grade 5-7 students.

Let me set the stage. I introduce this class in a conspiratorial tone, letting students know they are about to see real financial information from the school. This gets their attention! The data in question is from 乌鸦传媒鈥檚 summer camps, specifically an export from Eventbrite listing all our ticket sales. (It鈥檚 indeed private, but not terribly sensitive, information and I do like giving students more ownership and responsibility when I can.) Here is a small piece of it:

I also magnanimously share a big mess of all our expense receipts from the summer camps, which students are responsible for interpreting and processing. Here鈥檚 one such receipt, for printing brochures:

As you can imagine, many good lessons authentically arise here, from credit card fees to economies of scale when printing, to giving students a real sense for how much these things cost.

In the project, students must answer various questions about the summer camps such as, Which camp made the most profit? Or, How much did we spend on advertising to 鈥渁cquire鈥� each 鈥渃ustomer鈥�? Here they are puzzling out these questions and lamenting the messiness of real-world data:

Spreadsheets can be used for entirely different kinds of computation, too, such as mathematical modelling. In class, we modelled the population dynamics of rabbits and wolves (specifically, the Lotka-Volterra model). This is a situation where complex behaviour emerges from remarkably simple rules. The entire 鈥渃ode鈥� students must write is just a few carefully placed additions, subtractions and multiplications. From there, a beautiful picture emerges:

The plot shows the populations oscillating up and down: the rabbits die off, causing the wolves to starve, thus removing predators and triggering a rabbit revival, and so on. It鈥檚 remarkable how quickly students can get here with no prior experience in coding or mathematical modeling. And from here, to extend this basic model, many students followed their intuitions and imaginations to add more complex assumptions into the model, from other predators to accounting for the animals鈥� age to extinction events.

Now that we鈥檝e seen examples of what we do, let鈥檚 move on to why, which I will summarize in three categories: spreadsheets are applicable, they are welcoming, and they prepare you for 鈥渞eal鈥� programming later on.

Spreadsheets are immediately useful and applicable. As soon as 乌鸦传媒 students learn about spreadsheets, we put them to use across the curriculum: from analyzing telemetry data from a SpaceX rocket launch to tracking personal health metrics and goals. These use cases are authentic, not contrived. Likewise for the summer camp budget data, which was easily exported to a spreadsheet because that鈥檚 how people view and analyze such data in the real world. I imagine most readers of this blog use or have used a spreadsheet for some purpose, from personal finances to making lists to workplace applications. The applicability of spreadsheets creates buy-in from students. When I polled last year鈥檚 students on whether they thought we should continue teaching Spreadsheets in Grade 8 at 乌鸦传媒, I was amazed that every one of them responded 鈥淵es鈥�. Even the one student who didn鈥檛 enjoy learning Spreadsheets grudgingly admitted that we need this, responding to the survey that it was 鈥渒ind of boring but very useful鈥�. I鈥檒l take it!

Spreadsheets are visual and welcoming. One scary aspect of coding is starting with that blank page on your computer, or arguably worse, a page of unintelligible pre-written code. With our budget example, students start with the story, not the algorithm. Stories are much more approachable and relatable. Ultimately, the process is concrete, visual, and fun. I snapped this photo of a student who painted a smiley face into their homework spreadsheet: 

Another advantage of spreadsheets鈥� visual representation is that there are no hidden states of variables. In traditional coding, we press 鈥淩un鈥� and many different steps happen instantly, leading to an end result or error message whose origins we need to untangle. With spreadsheets, we can see all the steps explicitly. 

Spreadsheets introduce essential programming concepts. They say Excel is the world's most popular programming language. (Well, Microsoft says.) Others might argue Excel/Sheets are not really programming. I鈥檒l gladly sidestep this debate and instead point out the common ground, for those readers with more technical backgrounds: like other programming languages, spreadsheets have various data types including strings, booleans and logical expressions; they have functions with ordered and optional arguments; they have function documentation, comments, and string literals in quotes; they have ifs and nested ifs; they have errors and error types; 鈥nd more! After using spreadsheets, these ideas will look familiar to students when they tackle Python or another language in later years at 乌鸦传媒.

We live in a rapidly changing world where AI is starting to perform tasks like writing, speaking, and coding. Spreadsheets were arguably computers鈥� first 鈥渒iller app鈥� almost 40 years ago and are still extremely commonplace today. Spreadsheets aren鈥檛 going anywhere. They allow students to explore practical real-world applications in a visual and interactive way, while laying the groundwork for future exploration of computer science and computational thinking. I find myself unexpectedly passionate about teaching spreadsheets to high school students. They have been a big win at 乌鸦传媒: challenging but approachable, serious but fun, and conspicuously practical and useful.

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Dear 乌鸦传媒 families,

As we start a new year, I wanted to share a general overview of 乌鸦传媒鈥檚 progress and what lies ahead on this journey. 

Growth. We launched the school in September 2022 with 16 students and grew to 38 this year, with 4 more joining next month for a total of 42. This admissions cycle we received approximately double the number of applicants compared to last year, which we are very pleased to see (though Shaun now has a lot of work to do!). We will likely grow to 60 or so students next year.

Staff Growth. As you know, this year Shaun, Linda, Paloma and I were joined by Philip, as well as Erica taking on a larger role within the school. We are also fortunate to have a number of part-time support staff including Thanh, our Makerlab expert, Edwin, our teaching assistant, Milad, our summer camps coordinator, and parents Rachel and Vlad joining the board of directors. Looking to next year, we are aiming to hire 2 full time teachers, with a focus on expertise in chemistry, computer science, social studies and/or French. Students can expect to see candidates coming through and delivering sample lessons as part of the interview process, and will have the opportunity to provide feedback on the candidates. We are also looking to add a part-time school counsellor and part- or full-time administrative assistant to the team.

乌鸦传媒 Family Association. A few months ago we launched the 乌鸦传媒 Family Association, initially led by Dikla and Ildi. This is an important step for the school and we can already see the enrichment to our community in progress, with our bowling event in December, a snow day event planned for February, a meal program to be introduced shortly, and an overnight trip in the works. I was a bit apprehensive about launching our parent group because I have seen them implemented in ways that didn鈥檛 feel inclusive and efficient, but I think we are off to a great start here and we will surely learn and adapt further as we go. 

Facility. As you may have heard, we have secured a lease on the 3rd floor of our building here at 1490 W Broadway, which we will occupy starting September of this year. We will build a science lab/classroom upstairs, which will be of great benefit to chemistry but also to all of the other sciences. We are currently awaiting our permits, which (unbelievably!) now take even longer than they did in 2021-2022 for the 2nd floor, but we鈥檙e almost there.  

Fundraising. About a year ago 乌鸦传媒 was designated a registered charity by the CRA. As you know, we received two major donations last year. We also received an unsolicited $10,000 donation last week! We are now working with a fundraising consultant who has connections with corporate philanthropy divisions. We will host an event this spring for possible corporate and individual donors and have high hopes that this process will bear fruit. If possible, we aim to build an endowment whose yields can help fund the school long-term. Overall our community is responding so positively to 乌鸦传媒, and for some who are able, this appreciation is extending into considerable financial support. 

Challenges. A challenge this year has been the implications 鈥� both social and academic 鈥� of device use at school. As you know, we are now experimenting with device restrictions. This is a difficult and complex topic, but such an important one. I previously felt that we needed to stand back and let our students develop self-regulation with devices since they will be let loose, so to speak, after high school. I have shifted my perspective towards feeling that, like other addictive 鈥渟ubstances鈥�, perhaps some of these technologies should be (and eventually will be?) regulated by higher powers, and in the meantime schools may need to take a more active role. It鈥檚 important to us that we implement these changes with as much buy-in as possible; I was pleasantly surprised to learn that most of our students support these restrictions, and want to continue to build buy-in with those who don鈥檛. 

This has also been a heavy year for 乌鸦传媒 teachers, but we can expect improvement next year when we bring two new teachers on board. A lesson for me here is to proactively seek creative solutions when I anticipate a high workload ahead, rather than simply planning to power through 鈥� which is possible, but not always ideal.  

Thank you. Sailing the educational waters is challenging but deeply rewarding. Creating a new school and a new community is something we can only do together. Thank you for being part of the 乌鸦传媒 journey. I am proud of our accomplishments so far and can鈥檛 wait to see what the future holds.

Best,
Mike

The Coddling of the American Mind was written by New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and lawyer Greg Lukianoff. I can鈥檛 possibly summarize the book in one short essay, let alone one word, but I鈥檓 going to try anyway: this is a book about the rise, causes and consequences of safetyism. The authors define safetyism as the belief that safety (primarily psychological, but also physical) is paramount and must be prioritized above all else. The book explains trends on college campuses through the rising belief that speech must be curtailed in the name of psychological safety. We are thus brought to the first of three 鈥淕reat Untruths鈥� defined by the authors, the Untruth of Fragility: what doesn鈥檛 kill you makes you weaker. (The other two Untruths are Emotional Reasoning and Us vs. Them.) Here the authors draw on the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb鈥檚 Antifragile and its basic idea that challenges and struggles are an essential component to thriving in some systems 鈥� in this case young people.  

The Coddling was a fascinating read full of unexpected connections to my work in education. The chapter on helicopter parents and overscheduled children connected to my observations about students鈥� increasing fixation on grades over curiosity. The concept of safetyism provided a useful framework for considering our ideas about students leaving the safety of their comfort zones and yet safeguarding their sense of self-worth in the process. The section on teen mental health validates our observations about social media and internet use (likely a big topic in Haidt鈥檚 upcoming book, The Anxious Generation). 

But it wasn鈥檛 until near the end of The Codding that I was struck with the 鈥淎ha!鈥� moment. To the question of why our education system became more progressive but less rigorous, The Coddling provides a possible answer: through the lens of safetyism, rigor is perceived as a threat to the psychological safety of students. If something is hard, it can make students feel bad, and therefore needs to be avoided. The results: grade inflation across both and the , the cancellation of Provincial Exams in B.C., and even . This approach is like trying to make a problem go away by pretending it doesn鈥檛 exist. On the contrary, students need to be challenged so that they can grow, and avoid potentially much worse feelings if they reach adulthood without the necessary skills and resilience. 

How do we reconcile these criticisms of safetyism with the need 鈥� which feels self-evident to me 鈥� for students to be safe at school, both physically and psychologically? I believe the answer comes down to balance, through a series of many small, nuanced judgement calls; this is our job as educators. If a student isn鈥檛 meeting expectations, we need to let them know honestly but supportively. If two students are not getting along, they should have the opportunity to resolve conflicts on their own, but there are also cases where we need to intervene. Every student should encounter a math problem that they can鈥檛 solve, but they should know that it鈥檚 OK not to solve every problem. I do not advocate for an extreme position here, or one without empathy and caring. Rather, I advocate for thinking about the wellbeing of young people in the long term, not only the present. Just as parents need to avoid dispensing too much junk food or hovering too much at the playground (a particular struggle for me personally!), as educators we must at times let our students struggle. This is not easy. But it is exactly our empathy and caring that should drive us to do so. 

In short, we must keep students safe without expanding our definition of safety to include the discomfort of disagreement or the productive struggle that comes with rigor, challenge and growth.

When I started The Codding, I did not expect to find a common cause between two trends I observed, decreasing dialogue in universities and declining academic standards in high schools. But the pieces seem to fit together. Rather than capitulating to safetyism, 乌鸦传媒 stands for the power of dialogue and mutual understanding even if opposing viewpoints are uncomfortable, and for striving and challenging ourselves even if failure is unpleasant. Indeed, these are core values of the school, and I believe upholding them will enrich and strengthen our students and our community. (This also means not everyone at 乌鸦传媒 subscribes to my arguments here, but that鈥檚 OK, or even a good thing.)

If you agree with my points above 鈥� or perhaps especially if you don鈥檛! 鈥� consider picking up The Coddling of the American Mind as an approachable, thought-provoking read that weaves a theory of safetyism by drawing on trends all across the fabric of our society.


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On the first question of whether our school system is producing useful learning, I held preconceived agreement with the film that it often isn鈥檛. I found myself unhappily nodding along to the kids talking about cramming for tests and forgetting everything a few days later, as well as their laser focus on grades and university entrance rather than curiosity and authentic learning. Indeed, these concerns were among the big motivations for starting 乌鸦传媒. What challenged my views more was the latter question about the cons, or tolls, of homework. The film depicts starkly contrasting images of kids doing homework in bed at 1 am by dim lamplight vs. kids playing outdoors and spending quality time with their families (the proposed no-homework paradise). This raises an important question that the film provoked me to ask: What might my students be doing with their time otherwise, if I didn鈥檛 assign this homework?

Of course I can鈥檛 know for sure, but I can guess, and herein lies the difficulty: I think the answer varies hugely from student to student, and also over time. I know 乌鸦传媒 students have stayed up late doing homework, and I wish they could have gotten enough sleep those nights instead. I also know some students spend hours playing video games or scrolling social media, activities which are unproductive at best and damaging at worst. There is so much to think about here. 

Whatever the approach, I wish for 乌鸦传媒 students to be part of the conversation by asking themselves important questions as well. For example, 鈥淐ould I have managed my time differently to get more sleep this week?鈥� Or, 鈥淚f I鈥檓 late or don鈥檛 complete this assignment, am I letting anyone down?鈥� Or even, 鈥淒o I really need to complete this homework at all, or is it time to let go and get some sleep?鈥� The last question is one that I observed many UBC students struggle with, because they were used to completing everything, always. (At one point I even assigned an utterly unreasonable homework question to emphasize this point about letting go: 鈥淒o 400 push-ups, 300 sit-ups, recite the alphabet backwards 200 times, and memorize the names of 100 countries.鈥� After a few years, a student actually did it, with video evidence and all! I didn鈥檛 know whether to applaud, laugh or cry.)

Watching Race to Nowhere raised another homework question for me: if we are going to have homework, what types of work are best done at home? Indeed, a common paradigm at school is that whatever work you don鈥檛 finish in class is assigned for homework. But maybe this is backwards? The students who work more slowly might be precisely the students who need more help from the teacher, and should not be the ones left to struggle at home without help. Perhaps homework shouldn鈥檛 be about learning a new concept, but about practice and fluency. For example, reading for half an hour seems like a great homework assignment. Or in my domain of math, perhaps exercises in practice and fluency, rather than the latest topic that students are still wrapping their heads around? On the other hand, we do want kids to spend time figuring things out on their own, as long as it鈥檚 a productive struggle.

Part of the issue depends on the kids鈥� lives outside of school and home environments. Are family members or friends available to help with homework? Does the student have free time outside of school? Is there a quiet study space at home? The variation between home environments raises equity issues here as well, though the film didn鈥檛 address them. I believe these equity issues are important to consider on a system-wide scale. At 乌鸦传媒 in particular, we are in the fortunate situation of working with families who are committed to education, and kids who do have the support and environment that allows for productive study outside of school.

The film did a great job of also bringing the parents鈥� perspective into the conversation. For example, several interviewed parents discussed the pressure and anxiety they feel surrounding their kids鈥� academic performance. One parent talked about how their relationship with their kids was altered from supportive to adversarial because they were constantly monitoring their kids鈥� completion of homework. I think these are important discussions, and that they transcend the issue of homework, to the more general question of what happens when parents鈥� tie their happiness to the mast of their kids鈥� academic success. 

Overall, I enjoyed Race to Nowhere, more so for the questions it raised than for the solutions it provided. The film certainly succeeded in engendering a strong sense of empathy for the kids lost in the race to nowhere. 

Race to Nowhere ends with advice to four key stakeholder groups: students, parents, teachers and administrators. You can find the advice on pages 37-40 . I was glad to see that 乌鸦传媒 is onside with several points there, including 鈥淐onsider a later start time for the school day in high school.鈥� With our 10am start, we have that one covered!

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Over time I came to understand that acknowledging one鈥檚 mistakes is not always the default response in teaching. Teachers, perhaps like most people in positions of power, often prefer to maintain their image of infallibility and avoid jeopardizing the established power dynamic. I鈥檓 here to argue that the path of humility and vulnerability is ultimately the better one for student learning, because teacher vulnerability enables student vulnerability, which enables learning.

First off, what does student vulnerability have to do with student learning? To learn is to improve at something, which implies being unskilled, or not yet fully skilled, at the outset. (I do not mean to deride students even one iota by calling them unskilled here; we are all beginners when we start something new.) In the process of learning, students need to show this less-than-perfect part of themselves to their teachers, their peers, and themselves. That is not easy. In an unsafe environment, students may associate productive struggles and failures with a diminished sense of self-worth. We must avoid this! (During my time at UBC, I would sometimes phrase this to students as, 鈥淵ou are not your GPA!鈥�) If students can admit when they are confused, if they can ask questions in class, if they can share ideas that might be half-baked, that is when the best learning happens. By creating an environment of psychological safety, teachers allow students to be vulnerable, which allows them to learn.

What about teachers, why do they need to be vulnerable? When a teacher is vulnerable, students see someone in a position of power also struggling, and this makes it okay to struggle. A teacher鈥檚 vulnerability can manifest in a number of ways: by sharing that we, too, struggled when learning this particular topic many years ago; by joining in as a participant in classroom activities (for example, if asking every student to share a poem they wrote, then sharing a poem of one鈥檚 own as well); by sharing failures (for example, I have a on my website); by publicly reflecting on our own teaching and how it could be improved; by sharing our own fears, as teachers, of not knowing all the answers; or by simply admitting when we made a mistake, as in my own defining moment in my first year teaching at UBC. Everyone has their own way of being authentically vulnerable. But regardless of the details, being vulnerable as a teacher creates a safe environment where students feel that they are safe and they too can be vulnerable. 

A possible objection here is that, by focussing so much on psychological safety, we are coddling our students and therefore not building resilience. Here is an excellent response to this objection from my co-founder of 乌鸦传媒, Shaun Olafson: 鈥淚t's not about creating a padded cell and staying safely inside it, but about protecting ourselves for the journey outside of the safe and known. Helmets, seatbelts, brakes... People often mix up their roles in the world. These things exist so we can go fast. In the same way, we want to equip students to safely accelerate and reach new heights in their thought and learning. True coddling would be our students not trying, not reaching, not challenging themselves.鈥� I 肠辞耻濒诲苍鈥檛 have said it better. Students will lack resilience if they never try and never fail; on the contrary, we want an environment where they do try and do fail. This is why one of our taglines at 乌鸦传媒 is building justified self-confidence. Superficial self-confidence comes from the illusion that everything is easy. Justified self-confidence comes from 鈥済oing fast鈥� 鈥� in a psychologically safe environment that serves as the much-needed seatbelt for high-speed learning and growth. This is progressive thinking in service of rigorous education.

Learning is a vulnerable process. A safe classroom environment allows students to focus on learning without distraction, or worse, thinking less of themselves in the process. As educators, we should not just tell students, but show them, that failure is for everyone. As Parker Palmer put it in his thought-provoking book, The Courage to Teach, 鈥淭eaching is a daily exercise in vulnerability.鈥� Amen!

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My journey started with , a piercing and influential essay/rant about the state of high school mathematics. The 鈥淟ament鈥� was written by mathematician-turned-teacher Paul Lockhart in 2002 (and was later expanded into a short book). You may enjoy reading the first page about a musician waking up from a terrible nightmare; this is Lockhart鈥檚 metaphor for his own living nightmare as a mathematician. In the essay, Lockhart points out that few people understand what math really is: math is art, full of elegance and beauty, done for its own sake rather than practical gains. He (quite rightly) blasts high school math for being uninspiring, dry, and a terrible missed opportunity.

Fast-forward to 2022, my first semester of teaching math at 乌鸦传媒. I 肠辞耻濒诲苍鈥檛 help the feeling that something was missing, so I re-read Lockhart for inspiration. I asked my Grade 9 students to read it too and brainstorm with me, but I still lacked direction. Then, I encountered a in which host Steven Levitt discusses math education with renowned mathematician Steven Strogatz. (I鈥檒l take this opportunity to recommend one of Strogatz鈥檚 popular math books, .) Strogatz echoed Lockhart in lamenting that 鈥減eople don鈥檛 have any idea what math is.鈥� On the podcast, he proposes a high school 鈥渕ath appreciation鈥� program, analogous to music appreciation or art appreciation classes, in which students learn to appreciate the beauty of mathematical ideas. It clicked. The following week, I hosted my first math appreciation class at 乌鸦传媒.

Following Strogatz鈥檚 lead, I based math appreciation on , a set of containing inquiry-based mathematics lessons. Each book is centred on a theme such as 鈥淭he Infinite鈥� or 鈥淎rt & Sculpture鈥� or 鈥淧atterns鈥� or 鈥淜not Theory鈥�. The books don鈥檛 contain an 鈥渁nswer key鈥� because such a notion would not be appropriate here; math appreciation activities are open-ended, but the books provide just enough scaffolding to send you sailing in the right direction.

Here are a few photos from math appreciation at 乌鸦传媒 in 2022-2023. As part of 鈥淧atterns鈥�, students looked for patterns in a simplified model of a billiards game by drawing different trajectories of the 鈥渂all鈥� and observing the results:

Some students progressed further than others through the activity, but it did not matter; no one reached the endpoint because it did not exist. We all simply enjoyed the 鈥渁ha!鈥� moments along the way. 

Here is another instance, this time from the 鈥淜not Theory鈥� book:

A common theme in math appreciation is the involvement of something tangible, whether it鈥檚 drawing patterns on paper or manipulating 鈥渢angle鈥� toys (shown above) to construct knots. We concluded this particular activity by recreating the knots from the fantastic video . This formed a nice connection to physical reality. 

Finally, below are photos from a larger inquiry project that spanned several months in math class. Here, a student 3D-printed 3D representations a 4-dimensional hypercube by following along with a book, :

Following the prints, the student was able to reason about how a cube鈥檚 various properties, such as the volume or number of edges, changes in different dimensions. 

Lockhart writes about math that, 鈥淭here鈥檚 no ulterior practical purpose here. I鈥檓 just playing. That鈥檚 what math is鈥� wondering, playing, amusing yourself with your imagination.鈥� Because our math appreciation activities are inquiry-based, the students create the landscape as they explore, so no boundary or limit constrains them. Students are indeed exploring mathematics while playing. Unfortunately, the word 鈥減lay鈥� hardly feels apt when thinking about most high school math classrooms!

Making math playful and fun is beneficial even beyond the enjoyment of the moment. We all know that math often induces dread or anxiety in students (and adults, for that matter). I believe these positive mathematical experiences serve to strengthen students鈥� relationship with mathematics in general. This is so important, especially in cases where these feelings are complex or negative.

Looking ahead to the coming year, I hope to add more explicit connections between math appreciation and 鈥渞egular鈥� (or 鈥渁pplied鈥�) math class, which I believe will benefit both aspects of the course. For example, the billiards game activity, shown above, ties in elegantly with ideas about proportionality, divisors and prime numbers. I also hope to introduce the idea of mathematical proof, and building appreciation for elegant proofs, which are often compared to poetry. And speaking of poetry, I am also keen to further explore the connections between math and literature and other arts. (If this sounds intriguing, you may enjoy reading .)

Embedded in our society is a deep misunderstanding of math. It is viewed as a tool based on arbitrary rules, or a particular type of hoop-jumping exercise, rather than a deeply creative art with a strong sense of aesthetics. In being intentional about making applied math genuinely applied, I wish for my students to wield math as a powerful tool at their disposal. In including pure math at 乌鸦传媒, I wish for my students to finish high school with an idea of what math is really all about. I wish for them to think of mathematical beauty with fondness 鈥� and, indeed, with appreciation.

Thank you to Edwin Yau for sending the podcast interview my way, and ensuing conversations.

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Gifts of this magnitude are atypical for a new school or even an established school. To us, this signals a belief in the importance of STEM education in the future of our society. In the words of our donors: 

鈥淲e benefitted greatly from a high quality STEM education offered by knowledgeable and enthusiastic teachers. Until 乌鸦传媒 was established, we noted the absence of a school dedicated to excellence in science and technology. We believe 乌鸦传媒 fills an important gap in Vancouver. Had a school like 乌鸦传媒 been available when our children were young, they would have been so enthusiastic to attend. We hope that other children with interests in science and technology will benefit from what 乌鸦传媒 can offer in the company of like-minded peers.鈥�

- Anonymous Donors

鈥淐anada has more university graduates per capita than virtually all countries but we are at the bottom of the list when it comes to those earning STEM degrees. What you are doing to get students turned on to, and proficient in, STEM subjects in their high school years is hugely important to seeing that we graduate more Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics students in the future.鈥�

- Walter and Nancy Segsworth

What do these contributions mean for 乌鸦传媒? This solid financial base gives us the confidence to take steps that will most benefit 乌鸦传媒鈥檚 future. As 乌鸦传媒 board member Murray Goldberg put it 鈥� drawing on his experience founding several successful companies and serving on the board of York House School and Harvey Mudd College 鈥� we should 鈥渋nvest in seeds, not food鈥�. With these new funds in hand, we will be making long-term decisions about financial aid and hiring that would have otherwise been infeasible for a start-up organization. We are also now pursuing, with confidence, our expansion plan to increase the size and capabilities of our facility, including the addition of a science lab. 

At 乌鸦传媒 our approach has always been to dream big for every aspect of the school, knowing that we could dampen our blue sky expectations as needed over time. From day one we鈥檝e paid our teachers fairly while also offering significantly more prep time to collaborate and innovate. We鈥檝e used a sliding scale, need-blind tuition model to make the school as accessible as possible for a socioeconomically diverse group of families. We set out on this journey with the hope (faith?) that we would find supporters who believe in what we鈥檙e doing, just like we do. As of today, it would seem that hope was not unfounded, nor that faith misplaced. It is an incredible vote of confidence for 乌鸦传媒 that private individuals, and corporations like Teck Resources (with a past $25,000 donation), are stepping up to support what we do. It鈥檚 thanks to supporters like our anonymous donors and Walter and Nancy Segsworth that the skies above 乌鸦传媒 remain bright and blue.

But walk into a high school* and there is no distinction here: just, math. And yet, high school math is not applied mathematics 鈥� it implicitly takes place in a parallel universe rather than our own 鈥� nor is it pure mathematics 鈥� there are no conjectures or proofs in sight, nor mentions of aesthetics or beauty. In this post I argue that high school math is confused about its identity, falling into an abyss between applied and pure math and succeeding at neither. 

(Here, I focus on the applied side. In a separate post on 鈥渕ath appreciation鈥� at 乌鸦传媒, I describe how pure math ideas are integrated into our curriculum.)

Consider this typical Grade 8 math problem: Yesterday Johnny ate 8 more apples than Lee, who ate 10% fewer apples than Johnny. How many apples did Johnny eat?

I abhor this question, not because of the calculation required but because the 鈥渃orrect answer鈥� is 80 apples. Nobody eats 80 apples in a day! This is a common failure in attempting to teach applied math. A 鈥渨ord problem鈥� is supposed to connect math to the real world, but word problems with nonsense answers achieve the opposite: they establish math as its own separate universe, rather than a tool used to describe our universe. Or, as Keith Devlin put it in his essay, , 鈥淭he real lesson being imparted is that mathematics is a stupid, arbitrary subject having no relevance to the real world.鈥� Sadly, such nonsense 鈥渃orrect answers鈥� are all too common in math classrooms. 

One solution is to eschew made-up word problems entirely and apply math to real situations. A great example appears in in which he has students examine a real water tank filling up with a hose, rather than a hypothetical one. I think this is a fantastic approach, though it can be resource-intensive to prepare just right. (The talk also highlights a key point: mathematics classrooms focus entirely on training students to find the right answers, completely missing an equally important mandate: training students to ask the right questions.) Another great way to apply math genuinely is interdisciplinary lessons via collaboration with other teachers. At 乌鸦传媒 we are ramping up this approach next year with an integrated math/physics offering led jointly by two teachers.

In my own teaching, I connect math to the real world as often as I can. An exam question about buying McDonalds burgers required students to integrate their common sense knowledge and make some reasonable assumptions about how many burgers they can carry at once. A student (politely) grumbled that I didn鈥檛 provide them with all the information needed to answer the question. Aha! But this was exactly my point: math is part of real life, not separate from it. Building this mindset often requires un-learning some previously held beliefs about math.

In service of applied math, one of the main skills I aim to impart to my students is sanity-checking their answers. If a student finishes a calculation and arrives at an answer of 鈥�3000鈥�, they often view the final result as just some squiggles on the page. Sanity-checking is the process of remembering that the 鈥�3000鈥� represents something about our world; therefore, we can leverage our common sense knowledge to check if the answer makes sense. 

In one particular case, 鈥�3000鈥� was a student鈥檚 answer to this exam question: 

Estimate how fast you walk in metres per second by estimating the size of your step, and the number of steps you take per second. Feel free to stand up and walk around if helpful. 

Does 3000 sound right? This particular student accidentally converted their measured step size of 60 cm to 6000 m (60x100) instead of 0.60 m (60梅100). That is completely fine! As I often tell my students, mistakes happen to all of us and cannot always be avoided. But what I want students to avoid is seeing 3000 m/s as their walking speed without objection and moving on to the next question. By contemplating 3000 m/s in the real world, we notice that this is much faster than an airplane! We can then start hunting for the calculation error and, usually, it is easy to resolve. The sanity check both helps us find calculation errors and also strengthens our mental connection between math and the real world. To my students I must sound like a broken record, repeatedly insisting on sanity checks, but they do build this sanity-checking muscle over time. 

Although I support teaching applied math by really applying it, in my classroom there is also a place for abstract problems, which serve as easy-to-craft extra practice for important concepts. For example, I do ask students traditional high school geometry questions like finding the third side of a right angle triangle:

Even here, though, one can find ways to keep the students alert beyond following memorized procedures. For example, on an exam I presented this triangle:

The only correct answer I accepted was, 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a ridiculous question!鈥� 

Why? Because the triangle above has its longest side labelled 8 and a shorter side labelled 10. It does not make sense. I鈥檒l admit I enjoy being irreverent for its own sake (and I think students enjoy it too!), but more importantly I am sending students the message that, contrary to typical school math, not all problems have an answer. The world is messy, and applied math is used to understand the world; therefore, applied math is messy.

Most high school math courses 鈥� even the highest level courses like calculus 鈥� are meant to be applied math. They do not enter the world of pure math by design, but unfortunately they do not truly enter the world of applied math either. To do so, we need stronger connections to the real world by going out and measuring things, using math to make predictions, and embracing ambiguity in our world. Students may need to un-learn their pre-existing relationship with math when they enter high school, but there is still time. High school is not too late to start objecting that nobody eats 80 apples in a day.

*It is hard to generalize about 鈥渉igh school math鈥� as there are millions of such classes around the world and thousands just in BC. Here I am referring to the typical high school one might see in BC鈥檚 standard pre-university math curriculum, though likely one would find many similar classrooms across North America.

Thank you to Anupama Pattabiraman for several rounds of helpful feedback on drafts of this post.

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I was first exposed to the notion of starting a school when I lived in the US, where you can find many innovative . At the time, I was inspired by charter networks (larger chains of affiliated charter schools) like and . For those unfamiliar, charter schools are privately operated but publicly funded schools. To receive public funding charter schools must adhere to certain local requirements, for example that admission is via lottery, but in general charter schools are given a good deal of autonomy. The existence of charter schools can be a contentious political issue, and their net effect is complex to assess, but without a doubt there are many ambitious, innovative, and fascinating charter schools out there. Currently, Alberta is the only Canadian province with charter schools. If BC had charter schools, 乌鸦传媒 would have been one.

In the current landscape, the only options are public and independent.鈥� While the notion of trying to start a new public school is daunting, it comes with a huge advantage: the school is free to attend for everyone. 乌鸦传媒 is trying to mitigate the tuition barrier through our innovative tuition model, but as long as tuition is not free, barriers remain. So why, then, give up on the public system? Indeed, there are many aspects of 乌鸦传媒 that could potentially be implemented within the public system, such as project based learning, an accelerated curriculum, a STEM focus, an admissions process geared at collecting like-minded learners, our school culture, student governance, and maybe even our famous 10am start. In an optimistic scenario, one could imagine a so-called Mini School with most or all of the above features. There are also aspects of 乌鸦传媒 that 肠辞耻濒诲苍鈥檛 be implemented in the public system, such as our higher per-student budget due to smaller class sizes and more teacher prep time (more on school budgets in an upcoming blog post), or our independence from the ebb and flow of political tides (which, in the public system, causes structural changes to be made and unmade endlessly with much disruption and little benefit). If these were the only concessions we needed to make, that would be acceptable. 乌鸦传媒 would be a different school than it is today, but it would still absolutely be worth creating.

But there is one concession that we could not make 鈥� the deal-breaker, so to speak 鈥� and that is teacher hiring. In public schools, teachers are hired by seniority. As the hypothetical Principal, I would not have full freedom to select teachers. This system forces teachers upon you who may not fit the school, while simultaneously keeping out those whose pedagogical training may be non-traditional and therefore not union-approved (like myself, in fact). More than anything else, 乌鸦传媒 needs a team of teachers who buy into the school鈥檚 vision, who can rely on each other, who complement each other鈥檚 strengths and weaknesses, and who choose to be in an environment where everyone is held to a high standard. In short, then, 乌鸦传媒 could not be a public school because we reject the notion that teachers are interchangeable workers essentially represented by one number: their seniority. Crucially, charter schools are typically not bound by these edicts. 

That is the story of how 乌鸦传媒 was born as an independent school, certified under the BC Ministry of Education and Child Care鈥檚 Independent School Act. By all accounts, we have used our freedoms well to attract a stellar team of educators. The price of these freedoms is the fear that an independent school will only serve a more privileged slice of our society. Thus far, we have managed to achieve remarkable diversity in our student body, and our recent designation from the CRA as a Registered Charity will enable us to ramp up fundraising efforts towards more financial aid. We like to aim high, so we鈥檙e aiming for the best of both worlds. 

鈥營n BC at least, there is no difference between independent and private schools, though there is a difference in perception and values between schools that think of themselves as independent, like 乌鸦传媒, and schools that think of themselves as private.


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How did we get here? Previously, BC students were required to take Provincial Exams across various subjects, with the exams accounting for 40% of the final course grades. If a students鈥� course grade and exam grade differed dramatically, a red flag was raised. Over the last 25 years we dismantled our Provincial Exam system. First we scrapped our so-called Scholarship Exams, then Provincial Exams were made optional and then, finally, we eliminated the Provincial Exam system entirely in 2016. 

In the absence of any checks and balances, teachers are now under pressure to raise grades. A very honest Grade 12 student from Vancouver鈥檚 west side once told me, 鈥淭he most important part of school is rushing to the guidance counsellor鈥檚 office on the first day of school and getting transferred to the teachers who give out easy A鈥檚.鈥� Yikes! Consider the inequities this implies: students who have the knowledge and resources to game this system can access higher grades than those who don鈥檛. And private schools face a conflict of interest: what if their customers demand high grades, which can be handed out without oversight?

As grade inflation progresses, admissions averages in our universities鈥� most competitive programs are now in the low or even mid 90s. At the University of Waterloo, a student applying with a GPA below 90% would reportedly have a mere of admission to programs like Computer Engineering. The average GPA for admitted students at UBC goes up every year, and is now at nearly 90% across all faculties. As grades lose their meaning, some universities, such as UBC, now consider applications more holistically, but this approach has serious limitations including subjectivity (less transparency in the process), authorship questions (i.e., application essays written with the help of tutors) and strategic resume-padding (aided by family resources or connections).

How does all this impact me as the principal and math teacher at 乌鸦传媒? For one, assigning grades with no reference point is a bizarre and complex process. When designing a test I ask myself, How difficult should I make it? How much time should I provide? Should I include a bonus question? These decisions might be enough to push grades past the university admission threshold in either direction. I assign grades like 鈥�90%鈥� without anyone agreeing on what it is 90% of. I shouldn鈥檛 be left alone at this guesswork! The point of standardized testing is to agree on a common set of these test parameters instead of teachers individually choosing them. We have tests either way. 

In the absence of Provincial Exams, 乌鸦传媒 students demonstrate their achievements in other ways: they participate (and shine!) in extracurricular events like math contests, enroll in AP courses with standardized AP exams, and, over 5 years, create a digital portfolio showcasing their projects, proudest successes, failures, and moments of personal and academic growth.

Standardized tests are not perfect. They may emphasize rote learning over creativity, promote 鈥渢eaching to the test鈥�, and unfairly assess students with exam anxiety. Personally, despite all their problems, I believe the pros of having some sort of standardized testing outweigh the cons. They feel like the least bad of many bad options. A system without exams, such as we now have in BC, is even more unfair and even more easily gamed. This is precisely the reason why MIT defied current trends and . [Update Jan 2024: see also the New York Times article , with similar claims and arguments.]

I believe the BC Ministry of Education arrived here with the best of intentions: by identifying something problematic and eliminating it. Unfortunately, our new system lacks any anchor point for grades, and thus promotes confusion, unfairness, and perverse incentives. Our Provincial Exam system was flawed, but much less so than our current system.

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1. New stakeholders: enter parents. When teaching at a university, the educational relationship is between teacher and student. High school education, on the other hand, is a 3-party partnership between student, school, and parent(s). I have already come to cherish working with parents towards the development 鈥� academically and otherwise 鈥� of our students. It feels great to collaborate with parents towards common goals. The 3-party relationship comes with challenges as well. For example, parents are a crucial stakeholder but are rarely physically present at school. To help them stay informed, my role is expanded to include documentation and communication of what we do. What should I communicate with parents? How often? By what medium? Should certain communications be to parents only, not students? These are important questions. At 乌鸦传媒, we signal our strong commitment to parents at the top of our website, where we share our commitment statements to students, parents, teachers, and society. 

2. Connections and applications of the content. At UBC I taught machine learning and data science. As these techniques are ubiquitous in our world, real-world applications abound. For example, we used data sets pulled from Twitter or the Government of Canada or elsewhere, and extracted real insights from them. This is exciting and motivating for students. In high school, the material is often more foundational and thus further removed from its ultimate application. And yet, one of 乌鸦传媒鈥檚 core values is to bring students on board with the value of what they鈥檙e learning. This is a challenge but also an exciting opportunity. We bridge this gap through a combination of appropriate real-world projects (e.g. designing and building furniture with the students) and emphasizing connections in more foundational subjects (e.g. connecting surface area and volume to how your fingers feel wearing mittens vs. gloves, or the geometry of your small intestine).

3. Stakes and consequences of failure. In a large university class with 150+ students, even the most caring teacher must come to terms with the fact that not all students will fully digest the material. This is partly a numbers game due to the large classes, but there鈥檚 more to it than that: if a student doesn鈥檛 digest my 3rd year machine learning content, that is a setback for them (and perhaps for the taxpayer, who is partially funding UBC) but they (and we) can most likely move on from it unscathed. Teaching math in high school on the other hand, I feel a huge responsibility for every 乌鸦传媒er to learn the material well. If a student doesn鈥檛 understand percentages or graphs, this gap will almost surely cause difficulties down the line. I understand that there will always be challenging circumstances beyond my or anyone鈥檚 control but, to whatever extent I can, I feel a deep responsibility to make sure every student understands foundational mathematics. The stakes are high. This is a big responsibility, but it is also meaningful and fulfilling to feel the importance of our work at 乌鸦传媒.

4. What is high school for? At UBC my job was to communicate, to the best of my abilities, a certain slice of computer science or data science. There is still a huge space of approaches one could take in this task, and many opportunities to work hard and excel; but ultimately, my role as instructor was neatly defined to teaching that material (and inspiring excitement and curiosity!). In high school, my mandate is broader: it is both to teach something, but also to help each student grow as a person. My big picture goal is for 乌鸦传媒 students to be the best version of their 18 year-old selves that they can possibly be upon graduation. This includes organizational and time-management skills, communication skills, compassion, humility, interpersonal relationship skills, self-care skills, awareness of life鈥檚 鈥済otchas鈥� and perhaps recommended 鈥渓ife hacks鈥�. Although I was aware of this difference in scope 鈥� and indeed it was part of the appeal of starting a high school in the first place 鈥� the day-to-day moments still surprise me. Am I modeling compassion? Healthy habits? Can I ask the students to tidy up when my own desk is a mess? I do my best! Overall, teaching high school feels like a huge opportunity 鈥� and an honour and privilege 鈥� for large-scale impact on the lives of my students. And, I cherish the moments in math class where I can stop and say, 鈥淗ey, we need to talk about humility.鈥�


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In the decades since then, these trends in our education system have only continued. Individualized learning. Inquiry-based learning. Project-based learning. Peer instruction. Learning how to learn. One might ask, 鈥淲hat about just learning the content?鈥� And, indeed, there is cause for concern about lowering standards. When I taught at UBC, veteran colleagues expressed deep concern that students are entering university less and less prepared each year. Many high school teachers report that standards are lower every year. Once, when I was bored in my own Grade 11 math class many years ago, the teacher dusted off a decade-old textbook, commenting that it was much more challenging than the contemporary textbook and would keep me busy. Kids immigrating from all over the world 鈥� from France to Romania to China 鈥� report that it takes years for their Canadian math class to catch up to what they were learning back home. Here in BC I am increasingly faced with the refrain that in the age of Google, knowledge is unimportant (see also On the depths and shallows of knowledge). Overall, it sounds like our education system is becoming more progressive and less rigorous. Are we making a bad trade?

I believe this is a false dichotomy, an incorrect assumption that more progressive means less rigorous. We are making a trade but we don鈥檛 have to. Rather than being at odds with teaching rigorous fundamentals, progressive teaching actually aids this process. How? By sparking motivation. Student motivation is critical because teaching and learning are not the same thing: I can teach all I want, but learning can鈥檛 occur without my students鈥� active participation. Students don鈥檛 have to listen to me when I talk; they don鈥檛 have to think about my class after hours or discuss it with peers; they don鈥檛 have to attempt the homework, or struggle with the challenging parts if they do. If my students are not willing learners, teaching is futile. By bringing students into the learning process 鈥� whether through inquiry or projects or self-reflection 鈥� progressive education rightfully identifies that students need to be active and willing participants in their learning. While the old-fashioned system may work for certain students in certain cultural or historical contexts, transplanting that system to our society won鈥檛 just work. If a teacher talks but no one cares, did they still make a sound?

Beyond its pedagogical efficacy, progressive education has many other benefits. Projects, for example, promote communication and teamwork skills, which are increasingly important both in the modern workplace and in modern life, more broadly speaking. Inquiry-based approaches promote creativity in a way that rote memorization does not. Viewing our society with a critical lens builds our collective awareness of injustices that we must strive to correct. At age 7, my daughter is aware of her feelings and expresses them in a way that took me until adulthood to master; I am convinced that those skills, nurtured in our modern school system, will serve her well. For all these reasons and more, I enthusiastically embrace progressive methods in my own teaching. I would not want to let go of this progress our education system has made. 

It is not a matter, then, of progressive versus rigorous education, but rather a matter of facilitating progressive and rigorous education. Occasionally these two forces may be at odds, or we may be told that they are; more often, though, we can have both. Why can鈥檛 students work on projects they are passionate about, using sophisticated scientific methods in the process? Why can鈥檛 we learn empathy and citizenship alongside rigorous scientific approaches? With enormous challenges looming, from climate change to global pandemics, we need education that is both rigorous and progressive to train the next generation of problem-solvers who are both skilled and knowledgeable while also creative and collaborative. When the next global challenge hits and we are scrambling to find solutions, we won鈥檛 be able to just Google the answers. 

Let鈥檚 embrace progressive education, but use those approaches to fuel a rigorous education rather than stifle it. And if we need to dust off some old math textbooks to remind ourselves of the standards of yore, let鈥檚 do it. Let鈥檚 start there and make a project out of it.

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Failure Mode 1: A 乌鸦传媒 student is turned off a subject because they aren't challenged.
Students are drawn to 乌鸦传媒 for a variety of reasons; one being that they weren鈥檛 sufficiently challenged in school. Indeed, it鈥檚 a common pattern for students to be bored, then disengage, and then start performing poorly in school. If a 乌鸦传媒 student is bored and subsequently decides they aren鈥檛 interested in the subject, we have failed to provide them with the intellectual adventure that we promised them.

Failure Mode 2: A 乌鸦传媒 student is turned off a subject because they feel they aren鈥檛 cut out for it.
Sadly, this happens frequently in our world, especially with math. How many times have you heard someone say, 鈥淚鈥檓 not a math person鈥�? I always find this saddening. If non-math-people exist, they are surely much more rare than the group of people who are convinced math isn鈥檛 for them. Likewise for other subjects as well. If a 乌鸦传媒 student entirely gives up on a discipline, then we have failed to support and encourage them.

Failure Mode 3: A student is treated differently based on how they look, or how much they pay.
Discrimination is unacceptable, full stop. Ensuring that it doesn鈥檛 happen, particularly as a result of unconscious bias, is a complex question requiring deep thought and care. Furthermore, at 乌鸦传媒, different students pay different tuition amounts based on our sliding scale tuition model; it is likewise essential to us that financially-driven power dynamics do not seep into the classroom. If 乌鸦传媒 students feel they are treated differently based on appearance, finances, or indeed any factor outside their control, that would be a failure to uphold our school values.

Failure Mode 4: A 乌鸦传媒 teacher feels unappreciated or disillusioned with their work.
One goal when founding 乌鸦传媒 was to recognize teachers as the lifeblood of a school and treat them accordingly. Ultimately, supporting teachers will also benefit our students indirectly, by allowing us to attract and retain amazing educators. Hence, our commitment statement to teachers front and centre on our webpage. For more on this topic, see the related blog post, On finding great teachers.

Failure Mode 5: During a lesson, a 乌鸦传媒 student just can't figure out why they鈥檙e doing what they鈥檙e doing.
There are many reasons why a school might have students spend time on a particular activity: to build skills that will be directly used in the future, to build foundational skills upon which other learning will build, to explore student interest in a subject area, to maintain compliance with a higher authority, or simply to have fun. At 乌鸦传媒, we strive to have it clear, in our own minds and our students鈥�, why students are being asked to do a particular task. If students don鈥檛 understand why we are learning something 鈥� either because it hasn鈥檛 been clearly communicated, or, worse, because there is indeed no good reason 鈥� then we have failed to achieve our goals as a school.

Although these failure modes are hypothetical so far, we will always need to remain vigilant in upholding our values and avoiding these pitfalls. We think that clearly identifying failure modes will help us keep an eye out so that we can take action when we need to.

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Accountants and comedians: these two professions could not be more different, right? Accountants must be organized, detailed-oriented, and meticulous. Nothing should be missed. Comedians, on the other hand, must inspire and elicit strong feelings in their audiences. Yes, being an organized comedian wouldn鈥檛 hurt, but it is secondary to the art of the performance. Being an outstanding teacher requires excelling at both of these disparate skill sets. When teaching a course, one must keep track of dozens of homework assignments, lecture notes, quizzes, exams, grades, missed work due to illness, and all the rest. Any small mistake leads to confusion and frustration from dozens (K-12) or hundreds (university) of students. Being organized and meticulous is a must. And yet, being inspirational is equally critical. An outstanding teacher motivates students and sparks curiosity. Every class is a performance; like a comedian, a teacher should also possess a strong voice, a keen sense of timing and, yes, ideally some good jokes as well. It would seem teachers must do it all.

Teaching is challenging for many other reasons. Teaching is personal: to teach most effectively, one must be authentic, build trust with the students, and create a safe environment for learning. This means lowering one鈥檚 defenses and being approachable, yet still maintaining boundaries. As a teacher, one is inevitably also a role model to at least some students, and this brings with it a sense of responsibility to be the best version of yourself. 

Beyond the teaching skills, being an outstanding teacher requires deep subject-matter knowledge of the discipline being taught. Much of what makes a learning experience outstanding is the way that the specific content is motivated and communicated. A skilled teacher can do a fair job of teaching many disciplines, but to do a great job requires seeing the big picture all the way down to understanding the smallest details of the subject matter.

Finally, an important skill in teaching is avoiding what is sometimes called the 鈥溾�� or 鈥渆xpert blind spot鈥�. This cognitive bias leads us to teach too quickly because we have a hard time remembering what it was like to see something for the first time. If a skilled teacher can get inside their students鈥� heads and anticipate what students are thinking or wondering, they can effectively set the pace, identify where students might stumble, and correctly interpret student questions.

Job opening: Teacher. A successful candidate will be: detailed-oriented and organized, inspirational, funny, approachable, and a natural leader who possesses deep subject-matter knowledge. The ability to simulate other human minds is a plus.

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An important part of understanding fractions, in my view, is understanding the major intuitive distinction between the numerator and the denominator. When my students see a fraction like $$$\frac23$$$, I want them to think of the 鈥�3鈥� as the unit size, and the 鈥�2鈥� as how many of these units we have. I like to use analogies, so I start by asking them, 鈥淚f you travel 2 km and then you travel another 400 m, how far have you travelled? In other words, what is 2 km + 400 m?鈥� Early high school students generally (correctly) answer 2.4 km or 2400 m without hesitation. 鈥淕reat,鈥� I respond. 鈥淗ow did you figure that out?鈥� We explore how they put the two quantities into the same units first; that is, they rephrased the question as either 2000 m + 400 m = 2400 m or 2 km + 0.4 km = 2.4 km. 鈥淚t turns out,鈥� I might say, 鈥渢hat when you have a fraction, the denominator is kind of like the units, that is like the km or m.鈥�

Let鈥檚 take the addition problem $$$\frac16+\frac23$$$ and write it out this way: 1 sixth + 2 thirds. Here, I am deliberately using letters instead of numbers for the denominators, to highlight the analogy with our distance addition, 2 km + 400 m. As with the distances, we can鈥檛 directly add 1 sixth + 2 thirds because the two terms have different units. But, we can do this:

1 sixth + 2 thirds = 1 sixth + 4 sixths = 5 sixths, more conventionally written as $$$\frac16+\frac23=\frac56$$$.

Now, we sometimes get into a slightly more inconvenient situation with fractions. Let鈥檚 return to our original problem of $$$\frac23+\frac32$$$. We can write it out as 2 thirds + 3 halves and recognize that we need to do a unit conversion. However, it鈥檚 not very convenient to convert between thirds and halves. With km and m, we have that 1 km = 1000 m, and with thirds and sixths we have that 1 third = 2 sixths. But with halves and thirds, well, 1 half equals how many thirds, exactly?$$$鈥�$$$ It鈥檚 in these types of situations, where the two units in question are not nice multiples of each other,  where the common denominator comes in. To keep our numbers nice and clean, our best bet is to convert both units to a new unit. It would be unnecessary to convert both our km and m to cm, but here we have to bite the bullet and do it. Choosing the best common denominator can be a separate lesson (it turns out to be the least common multiple of the two denominators), but for starters we鈥檒l just use the rule of multiplying the two denominators: when the denominators are 2 and 3, we鈥檒l convert to the unit of sixths because $$$2\times 3=6$$$. Here we go:

2 thirds + 3 halves = 4 sixths + 9 sixths = 13 sixths or $$$\frac{13}{6}$$$. Hooray!

Now, students are very capable of memorizing a set of steps for performing mathematical operations, so the triumph here (if indeed one exists) is not that we can now add fractions. Rather, it鈥檚 that students now have an intuitive understanding of why we add fractions the way we do, and will never again be tempted by the allure of $$$\frac23+\frac32=\frac55$$$. Indeed, we wouldn鈥檛 add 2 km + 400 m = 402 kmm!

鈥� In fact one half equals 1.5 thirds, so you could say 2 thirds + 3 halves = 2 thirds + 4.5 thirds = 6.5 thirds or $$$\frac{6.5}{3}$$$. This is not technically incorrect but opens a can of worms that we don鈥檛 want to open at this point in the lesson.

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This distinction is a powerful lens with which to view the modern pedagogical movement that decries memorization or emphasizing knowledge in favour of critical thinking skills. The importance of critical thinking skills is not contentious; that said, I believe knowledge is also essential, but it must be rooted in understanding rather than, as Feynman points out, just names. Our education system鈥檚 emphasis on names may have given knowledge a bad reputation. Let鈥檚 consider examples from two different domains, geography and biology. 

Capital of the Netherlands? Amsterdam. Capital of Japan? Tokyo. Capital of Venezuela? Caracas. Does this remind you of high school? This is a geography lesson in knowing names. Knowing these capital names is a nice-to-have, but not essential (it is also rather boring, and hence demotivating, for students). Students would benefit more from knowing facts like the relative sizes of these places, their respective importance in modern geopolitics, or the architectural marvels of these capital cities. Both are forms of knowledge, but the former is simply a matter of names or labels, while the latter is knowledge about the cities themselves 鈥� knowledge which paints a picture of these places and their unique characteristics. 

Biology is a classic memorization-heavy discipline in both high schools and universities. If you ask me what I learned in high school biology I might say, 鈥淢eiosis and mitosis are the two types of cell division, the pyloric sphincter is part of the digestive system, and plants make energy from sunlight via photosynthesis.鈥� In short, names. What I would struggle to answer are questions like, 鈥淲hat were the evolutionary pressures that led to two distinct types of cell division?鈥� or 鈥淲hat could go wrong in the human body if the pyloric sphincter were defective?鈥� or 鈥淗ow does photosynthesis in a plant compare to the solar panel on my roof?鈥� I learned names but lack an understanding of how it all fits together.

So, how does all this philosophizing manifest at 乌鸦传媒? As one example, our Science teacher and our Grade 8 students recently studied the . Paloma recorded some student discussions, which you can view . In the video, the students wonder whether the sugar in the Coke is necessary for the reaction (it isn鈥檛!) and start inquiring about whether beer, which is quite foamy, contains sugar. The soda geyser is an example of a physical reaction rather than a chemical reaction. The students left class knowing this terminology, but much more importantly they know something about the phenomenon itself.

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At 乌鸦传媒, a big part of the answer comes from a seemingly unexciting statistic: teachers at 乌鸦传媒 have 100% to 200% more 鈥減rep time鈥� compared to most other schools. Prep time refers to the hours in the school day when a teacher is not in the classroom. The majority of BC teachers are in the classroom for close to 90% of each school day. This leaves them with only a few hours per week for everything that needs to be done besides teaching: staff meetings, emails, assessing student work, lesson planning, writing report cards, etc. But where then is the time for creating new and innovative lessons, or interdisciplinary projects in collaboration with other teachers? These tasks would have to be done in the evenings and on weekends, if they are done at all. Even the routine non-classroom activities may well seep into one鈥檚 personal time. This is not an attractive proposition for teachers. Not only does it result in the stressful and demotivating sensation of running on a treadmill month after month without truly moving forward, but what inevitably falls off the plate is some of the most fun and meaningful work teachers can partake in: innovating.

By providing 乌鸦传媒 teachers with significantly more prep time, we allow our teachers the breathing room to step off the treadmill and start finding (and creating) more inspiring paths to great education. There is time to think big, to consider the latest technologies and their impacts on society, to collaborate with other teachers in designing projects, to learn new skills, and to meet with partners in the community. Prep time doesn鈥檛 sound exciting, and perhaps this is why it鈥檚 rarely talked about. But adding prep time is the fundamental shift that enables many of the most exciting opportunities at 乌鸦传媒.

Of course, prep time affects the bottom line: if teachers teach less, we need to hire 20-30% more teachers and this increases our biggest expense, teacher salaries, by approximately 25%.鈥� But we believe it鈥檚 the most important area where we can allocate funds, along with student financial aid (I hope to write a blog post on this, too). If an independent school in your neighbourhood has a sports stadium costing 8-figure amounts and their teachers are given hardly any prep time, I encourage you to question the priorities of that school. And I do not mean to pick on sports either 鈥� even as a STEM school, I would say the same for a $10 million science lab. Yes, having that science lab would be amazing (and I hope 乌鸦传媒 does one day!), but I鈥檇 rather have teachers with the space to do their best work. Our priorities are set by the commitment statements on our website, one of which is to support our teachers in doing work they are proud of. Innovation, collaboration, and pride in a teacher鈥檚 work are good things. And good things take time. 

鈥燪uick calculation: if teachers teach 70% of the school day instead of 88%, then 88/70=1.25 or 25% more teachers needed.

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