If you could change anything within the school system what would you change? This is the question that I asked myself throughout the course of this project. What would I do to create schools that have a better learning environment? My answer; To create more engaged citizens through schools we need a systemic change that promotes a less complacent, proactive mindset towards student life through a systemic change that leads to the discovery/support of new opportunities.
unlike previous projects this answer came easy to me as this is a question that I think about from time to time. however to help refine my answer over the course of this project keystones and discussions with my peers, parents, and community members played a major role.
something that also helped while thinking about answers/products to present at the exhibition was how much of a bubble we are in with PLP. Everyone in PLP chooses to be in PLP and often if not always the people in PLP are those people who want to get something out of it. one of the main keystones that I would like to mention would be the first keystone. for the keystone we had to interview people on what they think the purpose of school is and create a summary. over the course of this keystone I found the discussion I had with several people lead to a direction that is the opposite of the project itself. the problem is not necessary the school, while changes can help it is ultimately up to the students. like I have been told my whole life by my parents is that the only way to get something out of school is to put just as much as you want into it. and in my eyes this goes back to an even deeper level, one that could be a discussion point of another post. and so the creation of this pitch that I had made was supposed to be less about a difference in the content at schools but more as how we can shift it to a different perspective to get students to care. And to help achieve this I decided to restructure and rewrite the careers curriculum.
Through the restructuring of the careers course and curriculum students are able to have a more refined, personalized, and most importantly an engaged experience. This would happen by connecting students with professionals in the fields of interest. This leads to students getting personal experience such as a job or internships. Think of it like a co-op program at a university. The connections between students and professionals would be facilitated by whatever level this is implemented at, so this could be from a school, district, or provincial level. This would be mutually beneficial for the businesses and the students. The businesses look good for taking in students to educate and lead them in their future career path but it also create more knowledgeable workers for the next generation, leading to more opportunities along the way and a better workforce. to help summarize all of this information I created this poster to have displayed while at the exhibition
as happy as I am about the product that I created and the feedback I got on it during exhibition night, I think that with the broadness of the idea the success and attainability while on paper would be a good idea in practice it would have a high chance of failure. another thing that adds to the difficulty of executing most if not all of the ideas presented is the students willingness and support to make a change. if students don’t care about school why would they go the extra distance to make a change that ultimately they wont care about.