Torch - Spring/Summer 2020

Feature Story

regardless of what problem we’re trying to solve.” As one example, Pounder cites Grade 12 Social Science classes in which students learn about the Rwandan genocide. “Whether they’re in Politics, Economics, History or Law class, every course looks at the same content,” he says. Through this, they uncover overlaps and learn transferable skills. “They also realize the different perspectives these different disciplines take on the same topic. Politics might look at the nature of the government and why the civil war was happening, law would look at what international institutions could have become involved, geography may look at how overpopulation contributed, economics might look at the role of coffee prices, history could look at the colonial legacy. Each of these lenses offers a different set of tools that, regardless of what you go on to do in the workforce, you can leverage in different ways.” In another Grade 10 History project, for which Pounder and Upper School History teacher and Havergal graduate Lori Buchanan 1994 won a Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Teaching, students learned to appreciate different perspectives by comparing their own relatives’ stories about moments in Canadian history to official narratives. Though the idea of future-proofing might first evoke technology and STEM studies in particular, Head of Arts Miriam Davidson says the value of the “mental agility” social sciences and the arts help to develop cannot be discounted. “In art, there are no real answers as there might be in other subject areas,” she says. “That’s why, if you go into a classroom, and every piece of art looks the same, that’s not good.” Instead, Davidson says Havergal’s Art curricula are designed to teach students to become careful observers and to draw on other sources and information to connect the dots. She recalls how when one of her Grade 12 students wanted to design her own fabric for her year-long

What this looks like in practice is creating opportunities for students to tackle more complex and ambiguous scenarios—both in and out of the classroom. Whether it’s open-ended, self-directed learning units or an extracurricular blockchain “hackathon,” where students were presented with a global problem related to UNESCO’s sustainable development goals and then spent three days researching, designing and pitching a solution based on blockchain technology, a Havergal education isn’t about being spoon-fed. Rather, it’s about teaching girls to use what they know—and to identify gaps in their own knowledge, skills and resources—to define the problem and design a plan to achieve their desired outcome. “All of our classes have a lesson question to which there’s not a definitive concrete answer. We employ various thinking skills—political thinking skills, legal, geographic, historic—to deepen students’ thinking about the problem,” says Adam Pounder, Head of Social Sciences. “For example, we ask ‘why’ questions a lot in history—why did this happen, or why did this event affect the future. Those aren’t simple answers. “We don’t want students to just say it happened because X or the consequence was Y. So, to help the students dig down in more nuanced ways, we’ll give prompts like, ‘Are there political causes, are there social causes, are there economic causes? How are they interrelated—does one cause the other, for instance? If you took away a cause, would that thing still happen?’ This helps give them thinking routines

self-directed art project, she came upon some roadblocks. After having several conversations with teachers and classmates about her challenges, the student arrived at the idea of using a laser cutter newly purchased for her Communications Technology class to create a highly refined stamp, which helped her achieve her goal. “It’s exciting when things like this happen,” says Davidson. But she thinks it’s also important when students’ art projects don’t go well. “What’s the worst that can happen? You make a bad work of art, you let it go, you start again.” This helps make students more comfortable with risk and failure. It also imparts a sense of perseverance Old Girl Mostin Hu says has been invaluable since

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