"[Galileo's] constant focus on students has been the biggest relief because I'm not willing to work myself to death for hardware. And for things that make sense for students today is so appealing because finally someone is talking about what I want to hear about, learn about and get better at."

~Sharon Horne - High School Teacher
Golden Hills School Division

Every single kid completed at least a couple of projects which, for the two or three [lower functioning students], was, wow, that's the most work I've seen out of you this year.

The neatest thing for me at all grade levels and again particularly in this certain assignment was the transference – the ability of the kids to take those concepts and transfer it to global ideas, to current events, to other situations. For them to be bringing in issues from Afghanistan, Stalinist Russia, to Cuba and the overthrow of the government by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, they're bringing in historical leaders like this and relating it to the issues from the French Revolution. Historical and twentieth-century leaders and are they all in a way revolutionaries. I mean, we literally sat back with our mouths hanging open and goosebumps like, "How did you come up with this?"

Their understanding of all of that I mean it is just grandiose what these kids realized and if you're worried about curriculum, they nailed probably 30 points in the language arts easily.

I could never go backwards now, it would be impossible. It really would. I don't think it is a fluke. I think almost unanimously across the board at the grade levels I've taught this year every student, and I mean 99.9% of them have enjoyed this year tremendously.

I can't believe actually through interviews and other discussions with parents how happy they've been with the program at H. J. Cody this year.

~ Dave Krocker - High School Teacher
Chinook's Edge School Division

The thing that I've noticed the most is the depth of their learning: their learning goes so much deeper, their understanding is so much greater of the big concepts that we've been trying to get across to them and I think that their learning is much more personalized, they can internalize much of the big concepts such as sovereignty, regionalism, Canadian identity. They can talk about how it applies to them and why it is important.
It's amazing what they can do. My expectations for both myself and my students are higher. I think we've raised the bar. I can see what can be done.

I know a lot of people have said, "Those are great units but you wouldn't teach that way all year. That's kind of a gourmet unit plan and you'd pick one here and you'd pick one here but it's so much work and it's so hard to do that with kids that you'd only do one or two a year like that," and I'm thinking, "No, I would teach like that as a matter of course." And I would.

~ Jann Dalton - High School Teacher
Chinook's Edge School Division

"They're very excited ...I find especially with the non-academic students...they don't show a lot of pride in their work because they're not the best English students. But this way they come up with a product that is so polished that they feel very proud of it and so they are more willing to share with other people because of it."

~Karen Galandy -High School English Teacher
Golden Hills School Division

"... you notice that the kids are excited about what they are doing and they are on task a great deal more than otherwise. And they're on task through their own choice as opposed to external pressure to be on task. They are very much engaged in their learning...it was really neat to see kids in English 33 really excited about a project that was very demanding of them...as a teacher you need to find a number of different ways for kids to learn and demonstrate their learning. If you're looking for ways to get kids to take some ownership for their learning, projects involving technology, which they are actually very good at, is an excellent way of doing it. You achieve many things at once."

~Gary Reagan - High School Principal
Golden Hills School Division

"In terms of their knowledge of technology...teachers and students have come huge leaps from where they were...it has forced teachers to go back and reflect on the whole teaching and learning process...the discussions I've heard the kids having are very different from the ones I used to have in my classroom when I was teaching...But there were no discussions like they have going on such as 'What is the point we want to make here?...How can we best present that? If we put this point in can we defend it or is it a defensible point?...If somebody challenges us on this particular point how will we respond?' I don't know about you but I haven't heard a lot of those types of discussions going on in grade 10 Social Studies classes."

~Brian Celli - High School Principal
Chinook's Edge School Division

"This [Galileo] teacher started to do really fascinating work with the kids and the kids were going home and saying to their parents 'We're talking about all these phenomenal things.' And the parents would come back and speak publicly and they'd say 'You can't really be talking about Pythagorean Theorem with grade 4 and 5 kids?' And yet indeed we were...The change was so subtle at the beginning that it didn't really present itself in ways that you would think it would. And all of a sudden it looked like the whole world just lifted and shifted and we started to go down a whole different path a very positive path and one in which the work has changed dramatically in the building."

~Tony Bromhead - Elementary School Principal
Calgary Board of Education