Summary: In this episode, Will Richardson talks with Lawrence DeMaeyer about the realities of deep change at Peel School Board outside of Toronto, Ontario.<br> <br> Lawrence received his Masters in Education from the University of Toronto, and in recent times has lead much of the development of many of the elements of the Peel School Board’s Empowering Modern Learners initiative.<br> <br> As such he is now Peel Board's coordinating Principal of Modern Learning and guiding the implementation of the new vision for modern learning. His responsibilities include:<br> <br> implementing the new vision: Empowering Modern Learners<br> coordinating professional learning and training that aligns with Ministry of Education and district priorities<br> championing e-learning<br> supporting principals and vice-principals with technology and data-related matters<br> supporting protocols and practices to ensure that all data is clean, accurate, accessible, secure and available for integration<br> advising Learning Technology Support Services regarding the appropriateness of software and hardware solutions<br> <br> Highlights from their conversation include:<br> <br> What are the learning outcomes that you’re aiming for and how can technology play a role in helping that to really happen<br> How did you go about getting to that point where you could put a consistent definition to some of those bigger terms?<br> <br> <br> How is this new vision vision different from what the traditional experience of classrooms has been in Peel?<br> Why are we dividing our school day into 75 minute blocks or 40 minute blocks in some places and forcing kids to switch from a Science hat to a Social Science hat to a Math hat in 40 minute intervals?<br> <br> <br> Given we work really hard as educators to try and control the learning outcomes for students. We’ve predetermined what it is that they need to learn, and how they go about learning it. That’s a very teacher focused, or teacher centered point of view or perspective on a learning process. What can we do about that?<br> How do you unleash students’ ability to determine for themselves what some of their learning outcomes need to be, and how they’re going to go about building their capacity and competency to reach some of those outcomes?<br> What is the role of instructional coaches? How can they best help teachers make pedagogy and their teaching and learning, the focus of how they use technology?<br> Why it is important to provide teachers with some time to sit and talk about and work out for themselves, what a vision actually means in their school, with their community, in their classroom, and how they can leverage their own prior learning to make this happen, and where some of the gaps are.<br> The importance of having top-down predetermined professional learning, whether it’s for administrators, or for teachers.<br> Why you should be trying to get away the role, where we’ve taken away all the power and all of the voice and agency, away from the learner.<br> <br> Transcript for the show<br> <br> So, what’s it like to lead change at what may be the most progressive school district in one of the most educationally progressive places in the World?<br> <br> Hey, everyone, I’m Will Richardson, and that’s the question we’ll be discussing in this episode from season one of the 2017 Modern Learners Podcast, where we’re spanning the globe to find leaders who are setting a higher bar for relevant, sustainable change in their schools and classrooms.<br> <br> Lawrence DeMaeyer is the principal of Modern Learning for the Peel School board outside of Toronto, Ontario. A board that serves about a hundred and forty thousand students. Lawrence and his team at Peel made a huge splash last fall with the release of their long in the making new vision document titled,
