Deeper Learning Canada: Full Schedule

Save The Date! July 2nd - 4th 2026

You will be able to validate your attendance (Check-In to sessions) using your personal schedule.

9:00am PDT

Deep Dive - Community Design Lab: Solving Real Problems Together

Friday July 3, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am PDT

In this immersive Deep Dive, participants will solve a real problem for an actual Chilliwack community partner, experiencing firsthand the power of authentic learning. This is not a simulation - participants will work with real stakeholders facing real challenges, using design thinking and place-based exploration to develop tangible solutions.

What Participants Will Experience:
• Morning: Meet community partners (local businesses, nonprofits, or organizations) who present genuine challenges they're facing. Participants engage in empathy interviews and observation, practicing the art of understanding before solving. It would be great if we could do this at partner offices or off site, but we could bring them to us, if necessary.
• Midday: Take the problem outdoors to a natural area in Chilliwack. Use nature as both metaphor and method—exploring how natural systems solve similar problems, engaging in reflective wandering, and allowing ideas to emerge through movement and connection to place.
• Afternoon: Return to rapid ideation and prototyping using design thinking protocols. Community partners remain engaged throughout, providing real feedback and co-designing solutions with participants. This creates authentic iteration and demonstrates learning with real stakes.
• Exhibition: Participants present their prototyped solutions to stakeholders AND reflect on their metacognitive journey. They will ask questions of themselves like, "What did we have to learn? What disciplines emerged? How did authentic learning change our engagement?"

What Participants Will Learn:
Participants will directly experience the three Deeper Learning Competencies:
• Integrated Disciplines: Real problems demand multiple ways of knowing like biology, systems thinking, communication, design, empathy, and more naturally emerge when solving for real people.
• Collaborative Care: Working with actual community stakeholders builds authentic relationships, empathy, and accountability. Co-design with partners models true collaboration.
• Inspired Authentic Learning: When learning has real consequences and real audiences, engagement transforms. Participants feel the difference between simulated and authentic work.

What Participants Will Take Away:
Educators will leave with:
• Direct experience of being the learner in an authentic, high-stakes scenario
• Understanding of how to build community partnerships for real problem-solving
• Protocols for design thinking in educational contexts
• Insight into place-based learning that integrates outdoor environments
• Metacognitive awareness of how authentic learning feels different from traditional approaches
• Confidence to replicate this model with their own students and communities

This Deep Dive models exactly what participants can create for students: learning experiences where the work matters beyond the classroom, where community members are partners, and where students become "solutioneers" for real challenges.

Speakers

Adam Haigler

Facilitator, Consultant, & Coach, WIELD

Adam Haigler is a Design Thinking facilitator, consultant, and coach, and the founder of WIELD, an agency that works across sector to solve problems that impact people and planet. With over 15 years of experience in experiential education, Adam specializes in helping organizations... Read More →

Friday July 3, 2026 9:00am - 11:30am PDT
Imagine High - Room 141

Deep Dives & Advisory

9:45am PDT

Workshop - Cultivating Anti-ableist Practice: Possibility and Pride

Saturday July 4, 2026 9:45am - 11:15am PDT

Imagine High - Room 141

Leah Kelley is an author and storyteller, who invites educators to consider how our view of disability shapes our practice. She weaves lived-experience as an educator and researcher who identifies as Neurodivergent and otherwise disabled, and parent of an Autistic son (now an adult), with the ideas of disability studies. Participants will explore how we might engage and navigate conversations about practice and pedagogy, when we see and consider disability as a normal part of the full range of human experience.

The influence of ableism, the importance of the language we use, and various models of disability (Medical Model, Social Model, Identity Model, etc.) will be discussed and examined, as lenses and perspectives that shape our approach, understanding, and response to people with disabilities.

In this session participants will explore and consider opportunities to guide and support students with disabilities/disabled students in embracing pride, cultivating advocacy and self-understanding, and ask: how might we welcome students as being fully and perfectly who they are, in this moment… and then build from there?

Speakers

Leah Kelley

Neurodivergent Author and Education Consultant, Independent

Dr. Leah Kelley (she/her) is a Neurodivergent author, educator, activist, and education consultant whose work bridges the worlds of storytelling, advocacy, and inclusive practice. With over 25 years of experience in public education—as a classroom teacher, inclusion resource teacher (K–12), and SEL/Mental... Read More →

Saturday July 4, 2026 9:45am - 11:15am PDT
Imagine High - Room 141

Workshops & Den Talks