About Us

When Ilana started kindergarten, she found herself in a new world, where the structure, bells, and the environment of instruction rather than cooperation were foreign to her. After just a few weeks, Ilana asked if she could stop going.

In 1983, the Cameron family moved to Vancouver. When Ilana was due to begin grade one, she asked her father, Brent, if he could be her teacher at home instead. As a certified educator, and after discussing it with Maureen, Brent decided to do just that.

He started a program with Ilana and one other learner. By the following spring, six learners had been enrolled in Brent’s new school.

Brent registered the Wondertree Learning Society in 1984. It operated the Wondertree Learning Centre as a group 1 independent school for 10 to 12 learners in kindergarten to grade 9. Each morning, Brent and the learners would discuss what they wanted to do that day and how to make it happen. The learners helped budget their tuition money and decided together what activities and learning experiences they wanted to explore.

One such learning experience occurred when they saw a mime busking on a street corner. They hired him to work with them for several years, mentoring the children about creativity and choice of response. Spontaneous activities arose each day that linked to culture, history, math, geology, the arts, and the then-emerging field of computer programming.

A new way of learning was born, based in curiosity and relevance and carried forward by the passion of the young learners. The evolving groups of learners, including Ilana, developed cutting-edge group projects that often put them in the public eye.

Brent’s dream — to have learners take the lead in their own learning as it naturally unfolded — became a reality and a model for educational programs to come.

Wondertree ran from 1983 to 2009. More Wondertree Learning Centres opened in Vancouver and beyond, each with one or more educators supporting 10 to 15 children as they learned and followed their curiosity.

From 1993 to 1997, the society also operated Virtual High, a grade 9 to 12 school with about 35 learners. Ilana and many of her peers who had been part of Wondertree since the early years finished grade 12 in this program.

Brent changed the society’s name to the Wondertree Foundation for Natural Learning in 1996 and to SelfDesign Learning Foundation in 2010.

SelfDesign Learning Community, the online version of our learner-led program, began in 2002. It continues today, influencing British Columbia’s personalized learning approach through its record of success in offering young people personalized learning journeys.

Although we have evolved and grown significantly over the last 40 years, the SelfDesign philosophy — conceived of and introduced by Brent — remains at the core of everything we do. The philosophy supports people of all ages in authoring their own lives and designing their own learning. Based on relationship, conversation and reflection, the approach encourages a deep understanding of ‘self’ in connection with others and it supports learners in the development of self-agency, collaboration and a sense of personal and social responsibility.

SelfDesign is a model for education that shifts and challenges the standard for how children learn at school. It approaches learning as a continuous, non-linear and spiralling process, rather than having a beginning and an end or a defined set of outcomes.

From imagining to planning, to enacting and experiencing, to reflecting and assessing, then to re-imagining…this process for learning lasts a lifetime.