00:14 JAMES GAMAGE, HOST:
Welcome to Responsible Disruption. I'm your host, James Gamage, Director of Innovation and the Social Impact Lab at United Way of Calgary area. Today we have a very special guest, Margeaux Montgomery, an educator at the 2School program in Calgary. 2School is an innovative school program that brings the classroom to vibrant community settings, challenging students to think differently about their city and their role within it. We're excited to dive into Margeaux's work and learn more about how 2School is inspiring the next generation of urban thinkers and problem solvers. So let's get started. So Margeaux, welcome just to kick off, I'm really intrigued by the whole concept of 2School. So can you maybe give our listeners an idea of your role within it and how you got involved in facilitating the school to school programme?
01:05 MARGEAUX MONTGOMERY, GUEST:
Yeah. Thanks for having me, James. So I think when we talk about 2School, we really have to start with talking about Campus Calgary Open Minds, which is an educational program that has been around for 31 years. It started with a Calgary Board of Education science specialist, Jillian Kidd, who wanted to have students be on-site for longer than just one day. She, along with the teacher, had the very first week-long field study at the zoo, which eventually ended up being called Zoo School. And so, from that, 31 years later, we have 11 different sites all over our city under Campus Calgary Open Minds—from the Science Center Science School to City Hall School to Jubilee Jump School and my program, which is 2School and Urban Experience.
We are out of the Calgary Board of Education. I, as a Calgary Board of Education teacher, brought my study to Museum School and then a couple of years later to the 2School program. It completely opened my eyes to how experiential learning could be done, how curriculum could live in the community, and just saw the learning that happened with students, with the parent volunteers that came, and how it just changed the way they saw themselves in the community and connected to the learning. And so, here I am now, so grateful to be able to be the 2School coordinator and just appreciate all of the opportunities that it provides me. I love this work. I've done my master's research in experiential learning, land-based learning work, and am pursuing my doctorate in it as well. So, just completely life-changing.
03:07 JAMES: Yeah. So I mean, it clearly has had a profound impact on you as a person. Tell us a little bit more about it might have changed your view on education for children.
03:23 MARGEAUX: I think about John Dewey in the 1920s, talking about how schools are microcosms of communities, and I remember so vividly having these learning experiences on field trips and connecting with people, whether they would come into the school or we would be out in the school. It was just so wonderful, being able to learn in this way. I think that with these programs, what they do is bring to life the community that we have in our city, which is amazing. They allow students to see themselves in these spaces, in these places, and to connect with experts, land, and place in our community. This helps them have a sense of ownership, care, and rootedness in where they live, and to see learning in that way.
04:24 JAMES: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's great to hear. I mean, I know from my own education experience which was a lot of years ago now, more than I care to remember it. I don't remember a lot about the classroom, but I do remember times when we left the classroom and actually we learned stuff out in community or on field trips or the like. And that really resonates with me. So give me an idea of what a typical day or a typical week would be like for a student at 2School. I mean for a start, how many kids would you take through the programme and are they from different schools or from individual schools?
05:06 MARGEAUX: Yeah, that's a great question. So typically, in a year, I'll have around 26 classes that participate, and we really do look at it as a year-long project. Students and teachers arrive at our sites with a question that they are curious about, that they are excited about learning. We will meet with the teachers probably four to six weeks prior to them arriving on site and then connect their question to different people, spaces, and places to help them try and answer it. It really is very much a curious, iterative process that students and teachers engage in throughout the year. Finally, this week-long field study arrives, and we're really diving deep into it. No week looks the same because all of the classes that come arrive with a different question. For example, I had grade nines a couple of weeks ago, and they were looking at who our spaces are designed for and who is excluded. We were able to meet with some urban planners, and they got to walk around this community to see the thoughtfulness and thinking around how these communities are designed for whom. The next day, we looked at the environmental chemistry of soil in Devonian Gardens, which is the largest indoor park in Canada, and then looked at flood mitigation and native plants along Saint Patrick's Island, which is an outdoor park with this old-growth balsam poplar forest. So it's very, very different, very personalized, and depends on the questions of students and teachers, and we really want to be responsive to that.
07:20 JAMES: Yeah, I love the way that you basically mold the program based on the question that they're aiming to solve in the in the 1st place. So that's fantastic. So how did parents sign their kids up for this or how does that work?
07:36 MARGEAUX: Yeah, that's a really great question too. We have an application process. Each year, at this time, teachers apply to our program, and we try to keep it as simple as possible. We want teachers to tell us what they and their students would like to come to understand through this week-long field study and to tell us about the school. It’s open to public schools—Calgary Board of Education, Calgary Catholic, and independent schools can apply. We wish we could take everyone, but unfortunately, we just don’t have enough spots. Each year, we are consistently oversubscribed, which is a good thing because we know that teachers and students want to do this work. So, yeah, we really struggle to figure out how we can accommodate everyone. We would love it if we could.
08:47 JAMES: Yeah, yeah, fantastic. This podcast is about designing the social impact sector, so really interested in just probing a little bit about how design and design thinking plays a role in the week that the students will experience.
09:01 MARGEAUX: Even just talking about the design of the week—teachers and students really are designers of their week. Their questions always begin with curiosity and empathy. Being on site downtown allows them to connect with the community, with land, places, and the people who can really help answer some of these questions and connect to their big question, which often leads to other questions. So now that we know this, it leads to another question. Again, just being part of that iterative process of thinking. And then, when their field study is done, they are really left with, "What now? What do we do now that we know this?" And having that feedback loop—you know, we learn one thing, and we learn multiple things during the week, and then how do the things we learn inform new learnings? So, now that we know, we often think, and journaling is a really big part of our week. Students document it, go back to their learning. We have a journal strategy that I really love: "I used to think... now I think..." And so, how has our learning changed based on our direct experiences with people, with places, with what we know, and where do we go from here? I think design thinking always starts with empathy, always starts with questions, and this really just leads so nicely into it.
10:58 JAMES: Yeah, I love that. This seems like a great example of design in practice, and you know, building in the iteration feedback loops, having clear outcomes—it's fantastic. And it clearly helps the students learn differently. How does play or fun, how do you incorporate that within the week?
11:22 MARGEAUX: Yeah, I think there's lots of fun and play incorporated into our weeks. For students and teachers, getting to be in different spaces where everyone is learning and sharing in those experiences allows us to see each other differently and build relationships that are very different from those in a classroom setting. We always say it's still a classroom setting; you're just moving your classroom to the community. Being able to learn through experience with each other and having students walk from one space to another allows for informal conversations and lets them be in different contexts while still in a learning environment. Seeing what exists in the downtown community, such as a giant teeter-totter at High Park, enormous Bird of Paradise plants that make you feel small at Devonian Gardens, and 55-year-old koi fish at Devonian Gardens, adds to the sense of discovery and fun.
Just parks they’re not expecting because they don’t necessarily expect students to also live downtown, even though we know there are many children who do. So I think there’s lots of play and fun involved, with these surprise elements—like looking up at a historic building and seeing gold leaf on the ceiling. We really enjoy these surprises.
13:35 JAMES: I mean, play and fun are such important parts of creativity and the design process. So it’s great to hear that they’re incorporated. What does this say to you about the next generation of designers in our community and the kids you work with? Has there been a revelation through the process about how kids can get involved in their community and build design into their learning?
14:03 MARGEAUX: Yeah, absolutely. I think that kids are so curious and want to understand how things are done and why they’re done. They’re great at asking questions like, “Why is this happening?” and “Why do we have to do this?” This challenges our own ideas about how things should be done. Kids give us the opportunity to question, “Does it always have to be done this way?” Students are really concerned with well-being and making our cities welcoming and inclusive for all citizens. One of the things students have done is engage more with the city’s call for citizen input. Even though many students, from grade one up to grade 12, are unable to vote, they’re still being asked to contribute their voices. They can speak up about how they think our city should look and whose voices should be heard. This involvement shows that students are taking on the responsibility of making changes in their community and city.
15:43 JAMES: Yeah, that's fantastic. I love that answer and I love the way that you seem to be able to open the kids' eyes to what's in the city, you know, and the memorable moments they might have during their week. I think about some of the outcomes and the challenges that a group of kids might have come into the program with and where they ended up. Do you have any great examples of projects or weeks that have explored interesting topics?
16:17 MARGEAUX: Yeah, absolutely. Something that comes to mind is a group of grade 5-6 students who were exploring what needs are met when designing an urban space. One of the students used a power wheelchair, and as we moved through different spaces in the city, her experience highlighted the lack of mobility in certain areas. While some spaces were really thoughtful and accessible, others were not. This led to advocacy for improving these spaces. After their week, the students wrote letters to various locations, explaining that some areas were not inclusive, even though they were labeled as public spaces. This initiative sparked ideas around empathy walks, where students would consider what it might be like to navigate the city as someone in a power wheelchair, a teenager, or a parent with children in a stroller. These empathy profiles were then adopted by the City of Calgary for their parks planning over the next 30 years. The city even created a kids' zone on their website featuring these profiles, allowing all students and children across the city to use them to examine and re-examine our public park spaces.
18:24 JAMES: Yeah, that's a great example. And thank you very much for sharing it with us. Over the last 20 minutes, you've talked a lot about different places you've been and the partnerships or community experts you've connected with. Tell us about the role of those within 2School— the partnerships you need to create and how those people have helped bring the experiences to life.
18:49 MARGEAUX: Absolutely. So we always say that we're doing this together. We can't do it alone, so our partners include our sites, our funders, and the education districts—the Calgary Board of Education and the Calgary Catholic School District, who have supported us from the very beginning 31 years ago. We are incredibly grateful to all of those people who support us in this work for students. Additionally, the connections we make in the community are invaluable. I am so grateful for the vast majority of people we work with. When we reach out, a lot of it is via email or personal connections, and people are so willing to help students connect with the community. They want to share their passions, their journeys into their work, and how students can use their voices to create change. So, you have to be careful when you're at a party with me because if you mention something, I’m always thinking, "Do you want to work with students?" We are deeply appreciative of the community’s support for kids and the future of our city.
20:26 JAMES: Yeah. And presumably you get feedback from them afterwards. The partners afterwards about what they get out of it to tell us a little bit about that.
20:35 MARGEAUX: Yeah, I know that Chevron, which is the main founder of the Open Minds sites such as Zoo School, Science School, and Museum School, conducted a social return on investment analysis of the impact of Campus Calgary Open Minds. The data collected in 2018 showed that for every dollar invested into the program, the benefit to the community averages about $3.79. This figure is monetary and does not account for all of the heartfelt...all of the other amazing things, like seeing students light up in these contexts and knowing that they care about our community and the people who are helping make our city a great place. They also realize that they are part of that process, making it a reciprocal experience.
21:41 JAMES: Yeah, that's great. And I have no doubt that’s the case—that they probably get more out of it than they put in themselves. You’ve mentioned that some of the major partners are the school districts, specifically the CBE and CSD, which are public education bodies. Why do you think experiences like the 2School experience are crucial in the public education system?
22:09 MARGEAUX: Absolutely. We know that these experiences for some students are really critical, and they may not get these opportunities outside of school or in their day-to-day lives. With public education, one of CBE’s values is that public education serves the common good. We welcome all students and include everyone, regardless of income, religion, or culture. So, it provides opportunities for everyone, and that extends into society. When we have all of these opportunities that everyone will get, it extends into society. So I think those are the biggest values.
23:18 JAMES: Yeah, and giving that opportunity to as broad a group as possible is obviously crucial in the education process. So you've talked a lot about Calgary and the City of Calgary in this. Can you talk about cities more broadly and why they're such significant places?
23:24 MARGEAUX: Absolutely.
23:38 JAMES: And the growth of our youth, it also made me think about outside the city. Do you have a venture out to rural areas surrounding Calgary or even more remotely in the work?
23:51 MARGEAUX: Yeah, that's a great question. My site, the 2School and urban experience site, is located in the Beltline community of Calgary. So we do tend to be mostly in and around the downtown area. I think that being able to have cities—well, actually, maybe I'll frame it differently. I think that cities are really, really important. There are so many, I mean, we have a city that has 1.4 million people. We have these enormous areas of diversity. And so I think it's really interesting for students to be able to come to a space where you have so many collision points with people who are different than you, and how can we learn from that? Because I think that with cities, you know, I think that cities, isn't it supposed to be one of the greatest migrations in our time, where people are moving to cities? So all of a sudden, you have all these different people living in one area. Granted, it is spread apart, but being able to have students from all over the city come downtown and experience the downtown that has all these people from all these different communities gathering together, colliding together, and being able to experience that, I think, is really, really valuable. You know, even for students to experience people experiencing homelessness and our vulnerable population. I think, you know, we talk a lot about the difference between feeling unsafe and feeling uncomfortable, and I think that those feelings of discomfort, they lessen and you build empathy when you experience and are around people that are different than you. And so I think that that's really one of the really valuable things about having students come downtown, where there are just more people in a space in general. And then I also think that being downtown...
One of the questions that has been really interesting is whether downtown has nature and how we connect to nature downtown. Is there ecology downtown? For our students who don't necessarily have opportunities to go to the mountains or outside of the city, I would argue that you don't need to do that to connect with nature. Having students on Saint Patrick's Island, around these old-growth poplar forests, and close to the river, near the confluence of our rivers, or experiencing Nose Hill and Fish Creek, we have these incredible spaces where we can access nature very easily and in meaningful ways. I think that has been one of the really amazing learning experiences, being right in downtown and yet touching the rivers and trees.
27:48 JAMES: No, that's fantastic. Yeah. I do think that if you stop and look around, there is a huge amount of nature and the natural world, even in cities. I think that's a great insight. It also struck me when you were talking about, you know, we live in a multicultural city of 1.4 million people, but cities can be quite isolating as well. Actually, some of our suburban neighborhoods are more homogeneous than probably is healthy. So bringing students out of their own home neighborhoods and into the city, which is more heterogeneous, if I can use that phrase, is such a positive thing. So yeah, I love that. I love that. So we're coming towards the end, but I want to talk to you a little bit about the future of the 2School initiatives. Do you have any future plans? Is it changing in any way? What are you excited about for the future of the school?
28:49 MARGEAUX: Yeah, I think that one of the things that was really fascinating with COVID was we ended up doing 5-day field studies in the school communities because students were not able to be on site. I would meet virtually with the class, and we would look at a concept. Then I would send them out with a map to explore and examine that concept through journaling. So we did 5-day field studies in school communities. It was terrifying initially because you suddenly had to get to know other communities, which was also so exciting and completely opened my eyes to all these really incredible communities that we have in Calgary. That year, I worked with 13 different school communities, and it brought me so much joy. We really realized from feedback from students and teachers that they loved it. They loved being able to get out in their community. That’s when we learned about, for example, "Duck Park," which is named after a statue, and where a student’s dog loves to go. We were able to discover that this work really does matter, no matter where you are; you don’t need to be downtown.
We’re also thinking about how sustainable this approach is. You don’t need a bus or extensive logistics; you just leave your school and go. The Calgary Board of Education has a walking field trip form where you don’t need all the usual paperwork; you just notify parents 24 hours ahead of time. We wanted to harness the idea that communities, no matter where you are, hold intergenerational knowledge.
They are sites of wisdom, and curriculum lives everywhere. So how can we get teachers to feel comfortable and confident getting out into their local school community? After COVID, we designed a full workshop for all teachers participating in our program, where we walk through different communities. On the surface, these communities might seem boring or inactive, but there’s actually so much happening, whether it's geological landforms, native plants, animals, types of housing, parks, or art. For example, the Beltline has exploded with incredible murals. What kind of art is being shared in other communities? This approach has been a real change in how we take these field studies and transfer them into local school communities. Students are noticing, observing, and documenting their community as well as the downtown community. This helps build care, place, and love for their own community and the broader community of Calgary.
33:05 JAMES: That's great. Exciting future. So last question, we always leave the sort of turn over the last question to you. Is there anything that you'd like to share with our listeners or anything you think we've missed in our discussion that you'd like to leave our listeners?
33:20 MARGEAUX: Just that idea of slowing down and revisiting spaces that we think we know really well. It’s easy to just move through our lives and be really busy, but when we slow down and sit, notice, and explore different communities in our city, we see what is the same as our community and what is different. We discover what we love. There are amazing things all over our city that we don't realize exist until we get out there. I think that’s probably it.
34:10 JAMES: Perfect. No, that's great. I mean, slowing down and getting out there is a great sentiment. Even in talking to you today, you’ve shared with passion about what goes on in the community and the kind of things you can see if you just take a little bit of time and get out of your normal routine. I think that's a great insight to leave our listeners with. So, thank you so much, Margaret. It’s clear that you and the 2School initiative are doing fantastic work in our community, building the next generation of urban thinkers and problem solvers. Thank you for joining us today. And to our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share it with your friends and family. We’d love to hear more of your thoughts and feedback as well. Thank you very much again, and until next time, goodbye.
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That's all for today's episode of Responsible Disruption. Thank you for tuning in and we hope you found the conversation valuable. If you did, don't forget to follow, rate, and share wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on future episodes and show notes, visit our website at thesocialimpactlab.com or follow us on social and until next time, keep on designing a better world.
