Making the Causes Visible

At the provincial grad symposium today, my Director of Education stated, what I believe, the most authentic bit he’s shared since taking the job. He reflected that perhaps (and I’m paraphrasing here) it isn’t graduation rates educators need to be focused on improving. He wondered if graduation rates were perhaps a symptom of a bigger problem. Perhaps our work as… (read more)

Maybe The Trees

Since I started teaching throughout each term and at the end of the year I’ve been asking students to think about and to share their ‘take aways.’ A take away is a complex notion. It is more than the one thing a student has learned; it is more than the one thing that will resonate with a student tomorrow, in… (read more)

Piano Stories

“I tell stories not to play on your sympathies but to suggest how stories can control our lives, for there is a part of me that has never been able to move past these stories, a part of me that will be chained to these stories as long as I live,” (King, 2003.) ~ Mid-morning Saturday, a friend sat at… (read more)

Opening Doors

Stories Matter. Lately I’ve been studying the work of Thomas King. He asserts, and I agree with him, that once a story is heard, it cannot be unheard. Yet there is more to the ‘cannot be unheard-conversation.’ Certainly, in King’s work he digs deeper. In classrooms, however, though stories are heard, they are often made silent or kept hidden. I… (read more)

Nothing Left Unsaid

I have been thinking about trust and loyalty. I have been thinking about my Dad. I have been thinking about family spaces. Snuggled on the sofa last night with Jess, my daughter, we shared about my Dad, Albert, and about family spaces. This story is for you, for Jess, for me, for Alec & George, for my Dad, for the… (read more)

Greg’s How? – A Guest Post

Friday was my last bus trip with the senior basketball team. Greg, the grade 3, 4, & 5 teacher at the school, is the coach; I just kinda tag along because, although we are a ‘senior boys’ team made of two schools and many kids, hence the ‘need’ for both a male and female supervisor.  I’ve miss coaching basketball this… (read more)

Verb? Chatting with Zac

Stories are complex; “They are beautiful” (Lugones, 1987). Recently I was chatting with Zac Chase. During our conversation for #LearningGrounds he asked a few questions. I stammered while I answered some questions, yet others I answered well enough. However, when we were done chatting, I had the feeling that I had sounded like a text book. I don’t like jargon,… (read more)

Stories Need Attending

A month ago I wrote about a poem I had previously shared with my grad-writing group and had received little feedback. Later, an instructor, suggested, “It is an interrupted narrative that metacommunicates about its own limits and explodes conventions of pedagogy by falling silent at the very moment a conclusion is expected” (Ellsworth, 2005). Though I feel she was being… (read more)

Conversations: A Curriculum of Lives

Last week was exam week. I teach students in the senior English Language Arts. I don’t assign traditional final exams. Around here, we have conversations. Don’t get me wrong. Students in my classes still learn the necessary skills. They know how to write essays, craft solid topic sentences and weave together persuasive arguments. These are skills. We practice skills often… (read more)

Stories to Live By (Stories to Leave By)

Every other Tuesday I attend a writing/story group. Attendance isn’t a requirement of my graduate work, but yet I feel it is a useful space to share stories with other grad students who tend to have a relational narrative way of living and being with the world. Along with my instructor, there are six of us. Everyone shares.   Last Tuesday… (read more)
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