The following people and organizations do some of the terrific work that inspired school.

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CIRCE champions the imagination in education. Their vision:

• serve as a “magnetic hub” for learning, teaching and educational research involving the imagination, creativity, and innovation across BC and Canada and around the world;

• foster dialogue and collaboration across professional, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries;

• showcase imagination at work in multiple forms and professional contexts;

• engage with educators in many different contexts, including public schooling and postsecondary institutions, outdoor, environmental, and experiential education, community and adult education, museums and cultural centres.

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imaginED is a blog masterfully choreographed by Gillian Judson out of Simon Fraser University to champion imaginative practices in education:

• Imaginative Eco Education (IEE)

• Imaginative Education (IE)

• Learning In Depth (LID)

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a new dimension of intelligent intuition

Innerversity educates to solve impossible. We develop methods for thinking and perceiving boundaries. Our experts utilize and build the most recent international research in various disciplines.

Intelligent intuition can be deployed as needed and its reliability can be evaluated. It is the core of new discovery and visionaryness.

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The Civil Conversations Project seeks to renew common life in a fractured and tender world. We are a conversation-based, virtues-based resource towards hospitable, trustworthy relationship with and across difference. We honor the power of asking better questions, model reframed approaches to entrenched debates, and insist that the ruptures above the radar do not tell the whole story of our time. We aspire to amplify and cross-pollinate the generative new realities that are also being woven, one word and one life at a time.

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We hope for a world in which people who have fundamental differences of opinion and backgrounds learn to work together with respect--and even joy--to realize the vibrant future we all desire for ourselves and our families. Through applying and adapting our conversational model, we hope participants will build relationships that generate understanding and enable collaborative problem-solving.

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Preparing students to participate thoughtfully in democracy - and in life.

AllSides for Schools helps educators teach essential skills in critical thinking, collaboration, listening and respectful discourse, media literacy and social-emotional learning. Our unique focus on building relationships and revealing multiple viewpoints across the political spectrum avoids the potential problems with bias and disrespecting individual beliefs.

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Dr. Barry Kort and his research into the role of emotion in learning represent a fundamental building block of school. Now Emeritus, he was Visiting Scientist in the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, 1999-2008 and continues to work on the role of StoryCraft as a traditional method of learning.

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SMALLab (Student Accelerated Multimedia Learning Lab) Learning is a classroom-sized, transformational 3D learning environment in which multiple empirical research studies have measured 86% increases in student learning and 6.7X increases in student collaboration.

Educators have described SMALLab as the “Star Trek Holodeck V1.0,” “Virtual Reality inside out,” and “the coolest classroom” they have ever seen.

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BustED Pencils; Fully Leaded Education Talk is a powerful podcast dedicated to public education, and known for its commitment to hard facts with a humorous twist.  Host Dr. Tim Slekar covers the “real” issues in education, establishing an alternative space and discussing education reform from an entirely progressive perspective.  The approach is funny, edgy, passionate, witty and gritty, and features an array of guests.  BustED Pencils explores the political and commercial influences behind education policy, delivering trending education news without the jargon.  Most importantly, it promotes a vision of public schools that all children deserve.

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Innovation Unit is a social enterprise with a bold vision: we want a world where more people belong and contribute to thriving societies. Our mission is to develop new solutions and create impact at scale. Through the way we work and the kinds of solutions we create, we help people and communities to thrive. One function of Innovation Unit is to explore and design new schools and approaches to learning in Australia, the UK and around the world. We want schools to reconnect to the lives of young people, and the economies and societies they will graduate into.  

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The Fab Foundation is a US non-profit 501(c) 3 organization that emerged from MIT’s Center for Bits & Atoms Fab Lab Program. Our mission is to provide access to the tools, the knowledge and the financial means to educate, innovate and invent using technology and digital fabrication to allow anyone to make (almost) anything, and thereby creating opportunities to improve lives and livelihoods around the world. Community organizations, educational institutions and non-profit concerns are our primary beneficiaries. 

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The Children & Nature Network believes that nature has the power to make children healthier, happier and smarter. The US-based nonprofit leads a global movement to increase equitable access to nature so that children–and natural places–can thrive.

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EL Education is a leading K-12 nonprofit helping to build great schools in diverse communities across America.  For over 25 years, EL Education has been bringing to life a three-dimensional vision of student achievement that includes mastery of knowledge and skills, character, and high-quality student work. It was founded by the Harvard Graduate School of Education in collaboration with Outward Bound USA based on the belief that learning and achievement flourish when teachers and students are engaged in work that is challenging, adventurous, and meaningful.