A Quote from the June 10th Transcripts

On making the current curriculum as alternative as possible

Ann: "See, you have opportunities within your own curriculum to be as creative as you can. So you can actually start with yourself, and then there's the bigger picture of just actually having a completely alternative program altogether. So it can go from one end to the other."

Linda: "Someone that relates to that is Trudy... the English and History teacher of the Murphy Centre, she is in the process now of creating a new History text for.... I think it's junior high school students, and her and i talk on MSN all the time and we had this conversation and she said, you know what Linda, I'd really like to create an alternative World History (to the group: summarizing what Trudy said, not quoting)- something that she was interested in and she was passionate about- but instead of focusing on the two world wars, the cold war and the Vietnam war, focus on Gandhi's teachings, Mother Theresa, and all the peaceful resolutions to the conflicts in the world.. She asked me if I thought if it would work. She said she had a friend in the Dept of Ed and she was going to ask him; and I said, well from my opinion, I myself would prefer to learn that (her idea of World History as opposed to the traditional World History). So, you know, maybe if it wasn't a core subject and didn't have a public exam, maybe where you start is at the bottem and you say, "okay well, this is what i want; this is what i feel passionate about" and as an individual she took on that task. For every individual..... maybe someone else likes geography. Someone else like.... well different people like different areas. That's where you acheive individualization, and so if she wants to come up with this alternative World History course, she could offer.. she wants to offer it at the Murphy Centre. She said it might not work because it's not a public course, so maybe she won't get a good response because a lot of other people just want to do what they've got to do; and I said, well, you know, Trudy, if you do get a... if you get it written and you do go ahead with it and you are teaching it because... she has voiced that she would take the time out of her schedule to create it and the time out of her schedule to teach it. So that's two obstacles solved. So I said, you know, if people did go to this class, they enjoyed it and they had a high success rate, high interest rate, you know, perhaps the Board of Education would see that as an indication that.... ok well 90 percent of the people getting 80 percent or over in this alternative course and why are they, you know, 65 percent of them are failing the core curriculum, maybe it'll be a wake up call and they'll re-evaluate what's what and make the alternative the core. And I said to her, if you start small, you do succeed and there is interest and success, then it can build and it can grow; that's where you get the individualization and as I was saying to Ann before at the Pratt Conference, thinking outside the system, thinking... radical thinkers. And i thought to myself, I agree with radical thinking and thinking outside the box, but from talking to Trudy, I've realized that you can actually create change within the system. Trudy is within the system under the Board of Education and she has to teach certain things, but she took it upon herself as an individual interested and passionate about something, to make a change from within the system, and I think that's really important. Don't forget the valuable things you have in the system as well that you can work with."