Claire Amos

Thomas Haney was the last school visit on our US/Canada whistle stop tour. It was also the last of the four Canadian schools we have visited that are part of the Canadian Coalition of Self-Directed Learning. Whilst the previous three schools represented a kind of progression along the continuum from self-paced to increasing self-paced and self-directed, Thomas Haney represented a bit of a detour, as a school who had revised the self-paced model to suit the needs of their learners. Thomas Haney is a co-educational public school in Vancouver, Canada. It is 21 years old, having been founded in 1992 and designed and built to meet the demands of a self-directed school. This means it has a number of large open learning commons, referred to as the "great halls", each housing a different learning area. Around these are a number of more traditional classrooms. For many years I believe the school followed a similar model to that of Westmount, Mary Ward and Bishop Carroll, where by st...

Canada greeted us with most unfriendly weather, zero degrees and snow on the ground. This however could not have been further from the warmth and generosity we were greeted with on arrival at Wesmount. Westmount is the first of four Canadian schools that we are visiting, all of whom are part of the Canadian Coalition of Self-directed Schools. These schools range from Catholic to secular, old to new, high decile to low decile, large to relatively small, all however are defined by their desire to deliver self-paced and increasingly self-directed learning programmes for students. This means students, by and large, are free to design each school day, choosing where and when they complete their school work through a system of daily or weekly planning under the watchful eye of a learning advisor and then work through units of work at their own pace in the space that best suits them. Having seen two of the four we are visiting, I suspect each school sits in a slightly different place on the...