In the 1970s, Ontario secondary schools started to adopt the semester system, four courses over the day where there had been seven. With this change, a creative outdoor educator realized that one teacher could take a group of students for all four credits, eliminating the restrictions of the timetable and addressing opportunities to learn in the real world all day, every day, for the whole semester. Thus was born the secondary school Integrated Program (IP) model. Through it, the innovation that semestering provided was no doubt extended well beyond what was intended. Decades later these early steps are providing a promising avenue for secondary school reform. The model and those applying it use key learning strategies arising from many fields of education. Of particular relevance is the creation of communities of learners who support each other in engaging learning activities that, in turn, often take place in the communities in which they learn. (Contains 1 note.)