Stop Cuts To Home Learners by Sophia Pallister

This is the speech I made to the Vancouver School Board trustees on April 12, 2016.

Good evening, members of the School Board, thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight. My name is Sophia Pallister and I would like to speak to you addressing the proposed cuts to the Staffing of the Home Learners Program.

I am 11 years old. I am in Grade 6 of the Home Learners program and I have been in Home Learners since I was old enough to get an education. I started in kindergarten in Home Learners with Shannon Hobson, (the teacher who founded the HL program) as my teacher, the year after the program was founded. She has been my teacher now for 7 years. Ms. Juliana Lee has been my teacher for 6 years, so other than Ms. Hobson, I am the person who has been in the Vancouver Home Learners program the longest!

I like having close relations to my friends. In Home Learners we are more like a family than I think a regular class would be. My understanding is that the proposed budget cuts would allow for only one of our two teachers to continue. At this point I find that news very upsetting. It's really nice knowing your teachers and having the same teachers over, and over, and over.

Our two teachers are very different from each other and they collaborate together really well. Since we have a more flexible schedule we feel more flexible which means sometimes we get out of hand and I don't think that one teacher could manage all of us for an entire academic year!

At Home Learners you're not just learning what you're learning in school, you're also learning at home, so that means every single member of the class has an entirely personalized learning plan. In a regular classroom, the teacher prepares one single curriculum for the entire class, and that works because everyone's the same age and grade, however in our classroom alone, the teacher has to work on 5 different grade levels and curriculum.  If you ask a teacher how difficult it is to think of one big curriculum for a whole class, multiply that by 38! Our teachers also have to manage all the different allotment money requests for the 16 students in my class that meets on Tues & Thurs, plus the 22 students in the primary class that meets 2 other days a week, and I think that's too much work for only one person to handle.

I want to also tell you what a valuable program Home Learners is, and how special I think it is. I think it is one of the best programs the Vancouver School Board has, so I think you should be doing things to make it stronger, not make it weaker. Taking away one of our teachers would mean we might to have to shorten our school days, which means less learning opportunities. 

One of the best things about HL is that it is a mixed age class. Being in a mixed age class has been good because differences don't stand out as much, because everyone is different. That decreases the potential of bullying and members of the classroom start judging people less on their age and more by their abilities and potential, and more negative differences start to disappear.  When I was in kindergarten I was very tall and I was advanced for my age, but because I was in a mixed age class, I could do more advanced learning. Right now, there's one person in my class who struggles in certain subjects, and sometimes he goes around the class and gets inspiration or asks for help from other people. In a normal classroom situation that would be called cheating. In Home Learners, and to quote Sir Ken Robinson, in the rest of the world, it's called collaboration. 

In Home Learners, we also have the ability to choose what kinds of schooling and topics we do at home, within the given curriculum. It sort of teaches you the art of Creative Learning, and then you catch on and continue doing it all the time. You start to learn on your own. Creative Learning requires creative teaching and sometimes it's hard to think outside the lines that you were taught in, which is why it requires collaboration, which is why I strongly suggest you allocate the money to allow two teachers to continue to collaborate, as they have done so beautifully to foster this program to be the best it can be.

I strongly urge you to discontinue the cuts to this program. 

Thank you for your time. Good night.