I recently attended a book launch open house where my friend Rob Dunlop celebrated the culmination of four years of work on his book STRIVE for Happiness in Education. Rob is totally on the right track with this book. In a time of such significant upheaval on multiple fronts, his book serves as a balm.…
"If we want to live wider and deeper lives, not just faster ones, we have to practice patience -- patience with ourselves, with other people, and with the big and small circumstances of life itself." M. J. Ryan Have you ever felt frustrated? Exasperated? I think those are pretty natural feelings to experience occasionally but…
My tongue was a different colour every other day for more than two weeks that summer. The day I saw that jawbreaker I knew I had to get it. It was HUGE! Talk about bang for your buck or quarter as the case may be. I was so excited when Mom let me get it.…
The biggest challenges students in kindergarten right now will face when they graduate is a rapidly changing work environment so being flexible is essential, and flexibility requires confidence. Confidence is the by-product of strong emotional intelligence and it will be necessary to successfully navigate the work-world of the future. Social-emotional intelligence ensures students are self…
I have been considering what word would best encapsulate my goals for 2019 for quite some time now, and one evening during Christmas break, as I sat contentedly knitting a shawl from Norwegian yarn brought to me as a gift from a friend, I had an epiphany. My word was right in front of me…
Hurting from the Before Mental Health and wellness supports need improvement throughout the province overall. Stigma, lack of education, long waiting lists and "band aid" solutions - including lip service without the necessary backing - riddle positive progress. The situation in Indigenous communities as shown through this chapter are even more abysmal. Isolation may be…
Katie Martin's thoughts on tweaking learning experiences and the way we do things resonated with me this week, particularly as I am in the midst of doing just that. A couple years ago I asked my grade 11 English students what could be improved or changed in the course. What did they love? What impacted…
The cry of every child rings in our ears bringing sweet remembrances of days long past when we too eagerly ran out to play with our friends. But times change, we grow older, and we don't play so much anymore. Unfortunately, a decline in play doesn't only happen because we get older. In the last…
"The Long Dark Days of November" was actually an agenda topic at our most recent staff meeting. The general conversation surrounded how many of us, especially our students, may be feeling at this time of year. My principal outlined a couple things to think about - it's midterm so many students may be disheartened because…
As teachers we all learn about Bloom's taxonomy and want to push our students to attain upper levels of thinking - analyzing, evaluating and creating. If we apply the SAMR model we want students to also attain the upper levels - modification and redefinition. Yet we also have to take into consideration the needs that…
