Our Future: The MIC Learning Village

In May 2017, 10 years after our first Futures Visioning Workshop, we held our second one and all members of the MIC community were invited

There is something amazing that happens when a group of like-minded, passionate people comes together with an open mind and a shared vision for the future. There was true alignment across all of the discussion groups and, under the guidance of futurist Dr Sohail Inayatullah, the outcome of that workshop a clear and universal theme: the MIC Learning Village.

The adage “It takes a village to raise a child’’ and the understanding that learning opportunities come from a broad range of experiences, not just formal curriculum, was a common thread across the discussion groups.

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Our community recognised that we need to plan for a future of accelerating change and increasing complexities as new technologies, discoveries, innovation, entrepreneurship, and the arts radically transform the nature of businesses, jobs and the workforce. Accordingly, we knew our community needed to embrace change so that real-life connection and multidimensional learning remains relevant, engaging and meaningful. It was an extraordinary moment at the conclusion of the 2017 workshop when everyone in the room realised they were on the same page.

We recognised that we must be open to change and that we must value and share the wisdom of all generations, hence the concept of collaboration with the creatives within the Sunshine Coast community as well as businesses to enable mutual opportunities.

Montessori has always been about integration with the broader community

While Montessori has always been about integration with the broader community – our students participate in student-led ‘Going Outs’ to support their studies and they participate in real-life projects and community service work, this vision for a Village of Learners is much more than that.

It’s about truly living our core values – interdependence, deep collaboration, autonomy, continuous transformation and social responsibility – which are so deeply embedded at MIC.

It’s also about exploring new opportunities – such as having community members on campus sharing experiential wisdom. It’s about helping us build our sense of place through past, present and future stories – including those of the Kabi Kabi people. And it’s about building our growing connection to the natural environment.

But it’s not just about inviting the community here to visit now and again and otherwise keeping them quite separate from us. It’s about truly integrating valuable community members into our MIC village so that our students build relationships and experiential learning opportunities they would never have had otherwise.

For more on that workshop watch this video below (approx. 3.5 minutes):

Next: Demonstrating our Learning Village Vision