In the opening segment of the YouTube episode “New Forms of Education – Ep. 23,” moderator Virginie Glaenzer conducts a rapid “tour de table” with three panelists, asking each to state their name, role, and why they care about emerging forms of education. • Kristen Simonson introduces herself as a high‑school science teacher in Saskatchewan who teaches biology and environmental science, runs an extensive outdoor‑education program, lives on a permaculture prairie farm with her teenage twins, and has founded the Sage Creek School – an enterprise that blends her teaching, sustainable living, and land‑management experience. • Max Noble presents himself humorously as an “evil genius” who has spent 8,000 hours working with educational institutions from kindergarten to university across Asia and advising governments. He frames his passion as a desire to change the world by influencing the next generation, arguing that adults are resistant to change while children have greater potential for transformation. • Heather McTaggart, a Toronto‑based educator with over 20 years of experience, describes her nonprofit Classroom Connections (founded 1997) and her critique of the mainstream education system. She explains her current focus on an “unschooling school” model that would repurpose existing school resources, staff, and facilities to serve children in a more learner‑centred way. Virginie then links these introductions to the broader episode theme: the diversity of emerging educational programs, parents’ legal questions about their rights and their children’s rights, and the fundamental question of what is essential to learn in life. The segment sets the stage for deeper discussion of new educational forms and legal considerations.
Chapters
Before we start this conversation, let's begin as we always do with a tour de table. I'm going to ask each of you to tell us your name, what you do, and why you're interested or passionate in this topic in about a minute. So why don't we begin with you, Kristin?
Hey, my name is Kristen Simonson. I am a high school science teacher in Saskatchewan, Canada, so right in the middle in the prairie provinces. I've been a teacher in the public system for— this is year 23, so I've taught everything from biology, chemistry, general science, physics, and then Sort of over the last decade, I've specialized in just in biology and environmental science. With that, I've always been part of an outdoor education program. Most of the time that's been an extracurricular program. So we take high school kids outside, we do camping and hiking. We've been to some fairly phenomenal spots over the last a little while. We've been to watch the salmon run in British Columbia, we've been up to see the polar bears at the Arctic, and we've done all sorts of backcountry really neat experiences in some of the more remote places in Saskatchewan. As far as who I am, I have a family. I've got 17-year-old twins, and we live on a native prairie acreage right outside of a little town called Swift Current. We try and do all things about permaculture and sustainable living. We've got livestock, and so we do lots of rangeland management and water quality assessments, and that's kind of just a huge part of my life. So all these topics tend to spill over from one category to the other. It's how we live, it's how I teach, and, and then it's how I came up with the idea of our, our business, our kind of our enterprise too, which is the Sage Creek School.
Very cool. Well, can't wait to hear more about your program later during this conversation. Thank you for being here. Max, would you like to introduce yourself?
Sure. So my name is Max Noble. I am an evil genius. Okay, I help minions become masterminds. I've been doing this for about 8,000 hours now. I've logged over 8 facilities throughout Asia. I have worked with kindergartens all the way up to university and also advised government on how to adapt to the changing world. So yeah, that's me. Done. Next.
Don, next. And where does your passion come from?
Um, it comes from wanting to change the world, right? I don't like the way the world is and I want to change it. And I found out very quickly that adults don't have the ability to change in their lifetime unless they're forced into it. So starting with the next generations is far more productive and they have far more potential.
Very true. Thank you very much for being here. Can't wait to hear more about your program as well. And finally, Heather.
Thank you, Virginie Glaenzer. My name is Heather McTaggart, and I'm currently living in Toronto, Canada, and working here as well, although mostly virtually. I have been in the education space for over 20 years. I started a nonprofit called Classroom Connections in 1997 because I felt that the education system was not serving kids, and it was a lot of the same— excuse my French— garbage that it was when I was a kid, and hardly anything had changed. And so I started on a journey to try to make adjustments to that. Doesn't mean there aren't amazing teachers like Kristen sitting right here and people trying to do the right things for kids all the time, but the system itself is in the way of that. And so I have been working on different approaches to try to do something about that, and the latest, which we'll probably talk a little bit more about later, is something called unschooling school. It's not a school, it's the idea that we could unschool our current schools and use the resources and the staff and the facilities in a way that actually serves kids.
Fantastic. Great, thank you for being here. So in a previous discussion in episode 22, another group talked about how disruption is the new normal for our education system. And one thing that I took away from that discussion is that there is a diversity of educational programs available out there, yet people don't know that they have options. Some of the most asked questions from parents are What are my legal rights? And what are my children's rights when it comes to education? So before we talk about those new emerging forms of education, let's reflect for a moment on this first question: What is essential to learn in life? And I invite any of you to just jump in.
