​Maples Met Wins National Innovation Award

The EdCan Network recognizes the Maples Met School’s "Met Innovation Centre for Entrepreneurship (MICE)" — where students’ entrepreneurial enthusiasm leverages local expertise from A-to-Z — as first prize winner of the 2019 Ken Spencer Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning.

The Ken Spencer Awards for Innovation in Teaching and Learning was established with the generous contributions of Dr. Ken Spencer to recognize and publicize innovative work that is sustainable and has the potential of being taken up by others; to encourage a focus on transformative change in schools; and to provide profile for classroom innovation within school districts, schools, and the media.

The EdCan Network is an independent, bilingual, non-partisan organization of over 75,000 educators renowned for developing knowledge tools that bridge the research-implementation gap. Our role as an indispensable intermediary connects K-12 education systems across the country by producing and disseminating authoritative and evidence-based, yet accessible content that is trusted by educators, parents and policymakers alike in a world where fact-based information is increasingly difficult to decipher.

The MICE program provides learners with internships to design their own start-ups – alongside the mentorship of local entrepreneurs – that cater to real clients. Students develop solid business concepts related to app development, clothing lines, social enterprise, robotics, and renewable energy while gaining critical skills for a rapidly changing, increasingly complex labour market.

"Thanks to these remarkable community partnerships with local entrepreneurs, students achieve their learning outcomes at their own pace instead of at the usual mandated school timeline," says EdCan Network Director and Awards Jury Chair Chris Kennedy. "This is a completely different stance towards how we evaluate learning and I’m excited about its potential to spread."