Members of multiple legislative committees recently climbed aboard the “school bus” for an educational field trip to our neighbors to the North. Following two convenings of the “Constitutional Players”* in June and September, 2022, the presiding officers of this interim’s Education Interim Committee, Education Interim Budget Committee, and Legislative Finance Committee organized a visit to Bishop Carroll High School in Calgary, Alberta, on November 3^rd, 2023. Bishop Carroll serves 1,200 students in grades 10-12 and has been a pioneer in personalized, self-directed learning since the 1970s (see Bishop Carroll’s “Five Pillars of Self-Directed Learning”).

Bishop Carroll High School is a publicly funded Catholic school within the public education system of Alberta and within the Calgary Catholic School District. This CBC news story provides a brief overview of the history of separate public Catholic school systems in Canada.

Both the Legislature and the Board of Public Education have taken official action to encourage Montana K-12 schools to pursue a learner-centered, proficiency-based, and personalized approach to education, and the purpose of this trip was to help more state policymakers better understand this approach and see it in action and at scale. Representatives of the other constitutional entities were invited to accompany legislators on the trip and many joined.

Bishop Carroll differs from a traditional high school in a number of ways:

Layout

Rather than classrooms for individual teachers, Bishop Carroll has large spaces devoted to subject areas split between “resource rooms” and “seminar rooms” with teacher offices adjacent. The resource rooms provide a place for learners to work, with access to one or more teachers for help when needed. The seminar rooms are where group instruction takes place, perhaps 3-4 times per day. Teacher offices provide the space for each student to meet with their “Teacher Advisor” at least weekly.

Schedule

There are no bells delineating a 7-period day at Bishop Carroll. Students check in no later than 9 a.m. and remain until 3:15 p.m. unless they are approved to leave for an experiential learning experience outside the school, but how they spend their day is up to them to determine in this self-directed learning model. There are graduation requirements and progress expectations, but students are allowed to learn in the manner that suits them and at their own pace. That does not mean students work in isolation – as one teacher emphasized to the group, “Self-directed learning is not learning alone!”

The absence of a class period schedule does not mean there are no schedules. The content-area resource rooms are staffed on a schedule and seminars covering specific lessons or units are delivered at set times for students opting to join. This freedom fosters responsibility and ownership of one’s own learning trajectory and learning preferences. Some classes, like band and drama, do occur at fixed times during the day due to everyone needing to practice together, but the flexibility in all other courses allows everyone who desires to participate in these classes and activities to do so.

Relationships

With time being less of a constraint, teachers and students at Bishop Carroll have more opportunities to interact and build relationships. Teacher advisors (TAs) are allocated nearly 7 hours a week to work with 25 students who they meet with individually, helping students chart their learning and monitoring student progress. The TAs and students are matched when a student starts at Bishop Carroll and typically remain matched throughout a student’s three years. Individualized help within the resource rooms is another way that students and teachers build relationships within the school day.

Bishop Carroll embodies many of the characteristics of a learner-centered model that Montana policymakers have been encouraging: personalized, proficiency-based, open-walled, rooted in relationships, and committed to student (and teacher) agency. Members of the group were impressed with the positivity of the teachers and students they interacted with. Teacher recruitment and retention concerns seemed nonexistent. A student in the hallway approached one of the small touring groups simply to tell them “This is the best school ever!”

Principal Cheryl McInnes let the group know that it was not always “rainbows and unicorns” but was deservedly proud of the school. She also shared her perspective that “customer demands” for education have changed and especially since the pandemic; families and students are looking for more flexibility and individualization.

The group had a number of questions following the visit. Does this model work for every student and every age? Is Bishop Carroll’s success in part due to its uniqueness and being one choice among many within a larger school system? What are the incremental steps Montana schools could make in moving towards this radically different approach to high school?

There was discussion among the group about the need to reconvene the “Constitutional Players”* this interim. Stay tuned.

* Entities sharing governing and administrative roles for education under the Montana Constitution.