Family Handbook 2023-24

HC-X: HAVERGAL’S INNOVATION HUB

The Digital Wisdom course is delivered over four years to students in Grades 5 to 8, with the skills developed in each grade growing in sophistication and complexity as students progress. It is an integrated program that develops alongside the growth and development of the students. This emphasis on an age-and-stage approach promotes exploration and growth through various assessments and projects and highlights students reflecting on their skill development towards the six outcomes. TC-9: The Challenge (Grade 9) TC-9 is a course designed specifically for Grade 9 students to explore, learn and take action on a big challenge of their time: it could be personal, local or global. The course introduces students to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), their targets and indicators. In this way, they learn about different problems and how these problems are impacting people around the world in different ways. Students will have a number of full days devoted to research, systems thinking, alternative worldviews and how to adopt a trans-disciplinary approach to complex challenges: learning from experts, field research and more. One of the key considerations is the framing of this course in hope, joy and optimism. This course is founded upon student interest, agency and action. The SDGs are challenges for all of us to meet head-on. Without fostering eco-anxiety, TC-9 is an opportunity to hear what the youth of today have to say about issues, discover what they want to do about it and be supported in this action. To support this approach, we are integrating systems thinking tools like the Ladder of Inference; mindsets like creative confidence; alternative worldviews such as Indigenous ways of knowing and being; and compelling, inspiring, action-based research, such as Hope Jahren's The Story of More . The course is structured as an immersive experience, where students are provided the time to integrate their learning into their project and course work and to look ahead and see where they may want to take their learning. This course is founded upon assessment for mastery and students will be assessed through a different, participatory reporting process that will be distinct from their formal report card. This course was premised on students engaging in research, action and learning—in that order. In this way, students need to adopt an innovator’s and entrepreneurial mindset, where the learning is the journey.

101