Newsletter April 2012
Awards, grants, talks, workshops, actions, reactions, expansions, and so much more is happening with the IERG. We invite you to glimpse some aspects of our work via our latest newsletter.

IERG wins a SSHRC “Outreach Grant”
Led by Dr. Dan Laitsch, a group of IERG members have won a SSHRC Outreach Award. They will receive approx. $77,000 to disseminate knowledge about, and promote implementations of, our Learning in Depth program. The grant will be used to prepare materials and other supports for teachers interested in implementing the program.

New IERG Associate Director
Dr Laurie Anderson has kindly agreed to become an Associate Director of the IERG. Laurie is the Executive Director of SFU Vancouver, and has been a elementary teacher, principal, District Principal, Director of Curriculum, Associate Superintendent and Interim Superintendent of Schools for the Vancouver Board of Education.

Kieran Egan receives a 2011 Upton Sinclair Award
The Upton Sinclair Awards is an innovative search for the heroes of American education. The focus is always about who is doing what for the children and youth of America and around the world. Other notable recipients of this year's award include Sir Kenneth Robinson and Pasi Sahlberg.

With deep regret we note the death of Milton Wong.
Dr. Wong had honoured IERG by agreeing to become a member of our Advisory Board, and he met with us a number of times, giving us valuable advice and inspiration. He had been consistently supportive of the IERG during the time he was Chancellor of Simon Fraser University.

LiD in Action
Shannon Shields, a school principal, has written an interesting account of the Learning in Depth program in her school.

Workshops, Workshops
The picture to the left is of Gimli, Manitoba, where Gillian Judson and Kieran Egan delivered two and a half days of talks and workshops to the school superintendents of the province in late Nov. 2011. This event was one of a series that has been continuing year by year in provinces, states, countries, and, it sometimes seems, planets across the galaxy.

Learning in Depth: A simple innovation that can transform schooling
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press; London, Ontario: Althouse Press) is now available. It will also soon be available in Vietnamese from : Ho Chi Min City: Hoa Sen University Press. Dr. Lee Shulman, President Emeritus of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching said of the book: "This is a fascinating, provocative, utterly visionary and courageously speculative imagining of an educational future that is simultaneously elite and egalitarian, deeply intellectual yet utterly connected to passion and identity."

Charter School astonishing success!
Corbett Charter School was ranked #3 in the Nation among American public high schools by The Washington Post in May of 2011. This is an absolutely astonishing achievement for a public school in the US. Corbett practices IE in an exemplary fashion.

First, we take Romania!
During the summer of 2011, Annabella and Joeri Cant delivered a large number of over-subscribed workshops to teachers all over Romania. What started as a plan to teach a few workshops to a few groups who had expressed interest in Imaginative Education quickly got out of hand.

IERG and Lady Ga-Ga
The British Guardian Weekly recently published an article about teenagers’ emotional engagements with pop stars like Lady Ga-Ga and what it can tell us about how their emotions might be engaged in the contents of the curriculum. Throughout, the author references Kieran Egan’s work on “Romantic Understanding.”

LiD in Tehran
The Learning in depth project continues to spread around the galaxy ...

Mark your calendars!
British Columbia Teacher Professional Development Day October 21, 2011. The Imaginative Education Research Group will highlight some of the features of its work that have proven very successful in engaging students’ imaginations in learning, (and teachers’ imaginations in teaching). The results have led to greater satisfaction for students and teachers and much improved test scores across the board.

Imaginative Education in Romania
IE continues to expand in Romania, as in a number of other eastern European countries. Annabella Cant has delivered workshops in many places in Romania to thousands of teachers, and, in addition to the book to the left, she has written about implementing IE in regular classrooms.

IERG makes more connections in Europe and Asia
During the first week of November 2010, workshops on Imaginative Education and Learning in Depth were presented in England and Hungary. Workshops and discussions were held with the Kestrel Education group in England, and the Vineyard Foundation and the International Step-by-Step Association in Hungary.

A New Approach to Ecological Education
Gillian Judson’s new book, A New Approach to Ecological Education: Engaging Students' Imaginations in Their World, has just been published by Peter Lang, New York. Gillian is a director of the IERG and is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University. The book offers a major critique of current ecological education programs, and offers an imaginative alternative.

Congratulations to Corbett School
Corbett School, long associated with IERG, has just been named by Newsweek Magazine as #5 among 27,000 public schools across the U.S. This is Corbett's 3rd consecutive year in the top 100, and 2nd year in the top ten. This is an amazing achievement, as demonstrated by the fact that no other Oregon school has ever made the top 300. Outstanding!