A Beginning...

Welcome to The Shift.

This is a place where we hope to discover, explore and highlight the cool and forward thinking teaching practices, ideas and philosophies around the Halton District School Board.  Who knows, we might even branch out and look around the province for interesting ideas.  This is the messy beginning to what we hope may spark conversation, ideas and further sharing amongst teachers, administrators and staff in our schools.  

Here we are at the start of this project asking ourselves some big questions (mostly without answers).  Who are we doing this for?  How can we design this so that it will help to shift your practice? Are people willing to share?

Because we do want to shift people’s opinions and ideas about what school can be.  Education is changing, there is no denying that.  Knowledge, which was once the commodity we traded in, is now available for free to anyone with an internet connection.  But we can’t just tell our students to “Google it” and expect to raise productive members of society.  Now, teaching is more about showing students what they can do with their knowledge and less about the transference of that knowledge from us to them. We have to prepare our students for their future, not our past.

Time to teach for tomorrow's jobs, not yesterdays

We are still in the early days of this shift.  No one has all the answers but many people have some answers.  We believe that amazing things happen in all schools and classrooms everyday.  We also know that it’s hard sometimes to share those things.  It’s intimidating for some to invite outsiders into their classroom.  For others, it’s challenging to be away from school to visit another's class.  We’d like to be a conduit through which the great things that are happening in our board can be shared.

Let's shift this curve to the left

So who are we?

Matt Coleman

We are two high school teachers, teaching in Burlington, Ontario, Canada.

Matt Coleman is an art and photography teacher, with 12 years of experience.  He has taught at 5 different high schools in that time, mostly in Burlington and Oakville, with a stint teaching internationally in Manama Bahrain.  He has taught Ontario Curriculum as well as International Baccalaureate (IB).

Jamie Mitchell

Jamie Mitchell is a mathematics teacher who has been teaching in the Halton District School Board for 11 years.  He started teaching at Gary Allan High School in the STEP program before moving into a traditional high school.  He is currently working as the Program Leader for Mathematics and Computer Studies at Dr Frank J. Hayden Secondary School.

We both care about the “what” of each person's day to day learning  We hope you’ll join us as we go deep with the hows and the whys of truly innovative education.