Dr. Selma Wassermann: Chapter 2 - Encouraging Growth

One of the earliest expressions of this spirit was an almost spontaneous initiative conceived by the Head of Professional Development Center and later Dean, John Ellis: the Creation of Learning Environments. He was concerned that the Faculty's progressive, off-the-book philosophy might be misunderstood across the province. John proposed something ahead of its time, which was to take their innovative ideas directly to communities. A trailer truck was loaded with handcrafted charts, tape recorders, and visual displays, then driven from district to district. School gymnasiums became temporary exhibitions where teachers and parents were the audiences and could experience SFU's philosophy firsthand. It was a direct process of public pedagogy and it also signalled that SFU Education was not an "Athens on the mountains", distant and inaccessible, but a Faculty obligated to foster dialogue, transparency, and community engagement.

As the Faculty matured, Selma's teaching innovations grew increasingly ambitious.

Dissatisfied with traditional lecture-based instruction, she designed “The Delicious Alternative” (EDUC 483), a sixteen-credit course that upended conventional hierarchies of teaching and learning. Students moved through interconnected learning centres focused on children, interaction, curriculum, and the teacher as a person. Selma and her team worked at the margins, often observing, consulting, and supporting, while students took responsibility for inquiry, reflection, and teamwork.

The physical space mirrored the ingrained philosophy. Learning spilled outdoors and classrooms became visibly social and deeply human. Visitors often asked, "Where's the teacher?" The answer was simple: everywhere and nowhere at once. Enrolment poured in, and former students continued to reach out throughout the decades, recalling how the experience reshaped not only their teaching, but their understanding of learning itself.

Innovation extended beyond the scope of the university. Working with then-Dean George Ivany in the 1980s, Selma co-led “Teaching Science Thinking”, a two-year initiative. This project transformed the model of elementary science instruction from lesson or presentation-based delivery into a more inquiry or inquisition driven exploration. Teachers were supported in their own classrooms, learning how to nurture children's curiosity and questioning. The project eventually gave rise to long-term practices that influenced science education across British Columbia.

Selma turned her attention to secondary education through the “Case Study Project” during the early 1990s. At Centennial High School, teachers got together to write original social studies cases grounded in real-world dilemmas. They later published a collection admired by Harvard educators. This project restructured the practice of student assessment, shifting the gaze away from mere grades toward performance, participation and reasoning.

Selma collaborated with Sylvia Ashton-Warner, an educator from New Zealand, who came to SFU to lead a multi-year classroom study with primary teachers. Sylvia used a key vocabulary approach to emphasize meaning and individuality in early reading. Years after the conclusion of this study, Sylvia encouraged Selma to publish a book chronicling their process and findings. Educational philosophies and effort in bridging the continents turned into a published record — one that must have been a great addition to libraries across the world.

Teaching was not about control or transmission, but about trust: trust in children's capacities, trust in teachers' judgment, and trust in learning as an interactive process. This principle remained constant across SFU Education's innovations. Many of these practices later became mainstream, but at the time they were acts of quiet defiance.