The Alberta Teachers’ Association

One of the greatest strengths of a public education system is the ability to bring together students with diverse needs and provide them with an education that acknowledges their uniqueness in a setting that is welcoming and accepting. I witnessed this strength first-hand as principal of Hardisty School in southeast Edmonton.

Before I relate my experience at Hardisty, let me begin my tale years earlier in the late 1990s when, during my doctoral studies, I took a course from the late Dr. Ted Aoki. In addition to being a world-renowned curriculum scholar, Dr. Aoki was a fabulous person, one of those who made you feel important in his presence by valuing what you thought and said. He was a world-class scholar and teacher who cared more about what you learned than what he knew.

In his class one day we were discussing the concept of diversity in Canadian society. I can remember Dr. Aoki putting forth the notion that perhaps we should celebrate the “good sameness” of our human brothers and sisters while recognizing the differences that allow for the wonderful mosaic we call humanity. He used the metaphor of a quilt, in which our “good sameness” was the backing, the batting and the binding that served as the foundation for the brightly coloured, perhaps differently shaped squares that together would represent a beautiful piece. He wondered what might happen if more communities focused on the “we” rather than the “they.” Little did I know in the moment how much that afternoon helped shape my thinking for the path ahead. 

It was many years later that I was appointed to be principal of Hardisty School which, in its heyday, had housed just under one thousand students. When I came on board, the school was struggling to maintain sustainable enrolment. Most of the residents in the surrounding neighbourhood had grown children who had attended the school. While there was some turnover to younger families, it was occurring at a slow rate.

As a result, Edmonton Public Schools decided to augment neighbourhood enrolment by designating the school as a site for the Logos Alternative Christian Program. In addition to the junior high students from the neighbourhood who were enrolled in grades 7–9, those in the Logos program were in grades 4–9. Each group comprised approximately half of the school population.

When I arrived, the Logos Alternative Christian Program was in its second year at the school and in the district. In fact, this was the first time the district had ventured into offering a faith-based program. While my colleagues had made significant progress in the first year, at the onset of my tenure it became apparent that the school was still in the process of building community within the dynamic created by housing multiple (and at first glance, different) programs in the same building.

Making the quilt

As I look back, there were some very important pieces that provided the “backing, batting and binding” that served as a strong foundation. These included

• Strong organizational structures
  We were part of Edmonton Public Schools, which had well-defined procedures and practices. We were “Hardisty School,” which allowed us to work effectively with the Logos board and our parent community. Their roles were clearly defined and they did them well. Also, all our students, regardless of which program they were in, were taught using the required Alberta curriculum. Our students participated in all of the district and provincial assessment initiatives and higher level administrative functions, such as developing our school plan and budget for approval. Our results were presented to our trustees, who represented all programs in the school.

• A supportive, caring and committed community
  There was, as author Robert Fulgham would describe it, “a right good will” to make things work. The parents of students in the Logos program seemed to be pleased that their children were able to take the program within a public school setting, and the parents of the students who lived in the area were pleased to have the population of the school increased as a result of adding the additional programs to keep the school viable.

• A committed staff
  Due to the transition of the Logos program into the school, half of the teaching staff was new to the school. Among the other half, some had been teaching at the school for many years. When I arrived, it became very clear to me that every person was strongly committed to the school’s success.

Fitting the pieces

Even with the strong foundation that was in place, it became apparent to me that, if we were going to end up with the beautiful quilt that we wanted, we would need to become a more cohesive school community. Although people treated each other with high degrees of respect, I observed that the school’s identity was centred on whether one was in the “Logos” or “regular” program both as a student, a parent or a teacher. How, then, to achieve the goal of everyone feeling part of Hardisty School first and foremost?

Enter Aoki. We made a conscious effort to celebrate sameness while recognizing the diversity or differences. The sameness we had at Hardisty was just as it is at all schools—parents want the best for their children, teachers want their students to be successful and school communities want to be good places for all to be. How then to move forward?  

First, we adjusted the physical space. In the previous year the school had been organized into the Logos wing and the regular wing, perhaps contributing to the “we and they” feeling. We changed that to locating all the junior high students in the same area of the school, organized more by subject than by program. This allowed for more collaboration for our teachers and more connection for our students. Having a large school building, we were fortunate to have an area for our grade 4–6 classes that was related more to age than program. Regardless of program, you were a student at Hardisty. Although this change required a bit of a transition at first, we started to see a decrease of the “they” mentality among our school community.

Second, we decided to look at ourselves through four frames: our school as a community, our students as learners, our parents as partners and our staff as professionals. Although perhaps simplistic, we started to look at our processes and practices through each or all of these lenses. We shared these with our students and parents and began to frame our conversations around them. This provided the opportunity for our school community to move the work forward in a cohesive manner in a way that made sense. 

Third, we weren’t afraid to recognize and accommodate the differences. We were a school community that had different programs housed within it—of course there would be differences evident between the programs. These were recognized as appropriate, carefully considering that there should be no perception of privilege or exclusion.

As with life at any other school, my time at Hardisty was like the line in the John Denver song “some days were diamonds, some days were stones.” That’s the wonder of life in a 4–9 school. However, we celebrated the good things and dealt with the challenges as a community, not from the perspective of the “Logos” or the “regular” programming, not as “we and they” but simply as “we.”

Dr. Mark Yurick is a former coordinator of the Professional Development program area of the Alberta Teachers’ Association.