It's not a model I think I could make work in another school environment, but it's a really good fit with my current context. And given the fact that that I have 8 preps (8 different course codes) this semester, having a no-writing course gives me a bit of balance.
I genuinely love this course and the opportunities we co-create to build oral communication and deeper reading skills. I also love how open students are to going deeper with a text when the demands of having to write about them are taken away (I run it as a seminar, no writing).
In Book Club class this week, we studied three essays not written in this century:
* Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal"
* E. Pauline Johnson's "A Strong Race Opinion: On the Indian Girl in Modern Fiction"
* Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"
The conversations were so good.
I'm really missing the educator community I was part of at the other place. I've been thinking about that a lot in the last little bit.
Any other human barometers really feeling it today?
Happy Janet Jackson Appreciation Day for all who celebrate.
So... is Vance's "flow of drugs" from Canada to the US all the prescription drugs that USians cross the border to buy because they're outrageously expensive at home?
I’m teaching a course on 2SLGBTQIA+ histories of Canada this semester.
If you/someone in your life is in Toronto & 16-21 & looking to finish school & want to increase learn about communities that have come before you, we’re still enrolling for semester 2.
Send me a DM for details!
My Semester 2 classes start tomorrow!
G12 Uni English
Gr 11 College/Uni English (focus course on First Nations, Metis, Inuit creators)
G10 History/G10 First Nations, Metis, Inuit History
Grade 12 Canadian History (focus on 2SLGBTQIA+ histories of Canada)
Book Club
Writer's Craft
I'm excited.
If your first reaction to reading the previous skeet is anger that I will be "indoctrinating" students, rest assured that my role in this is to provide information and answer questions so young people feel confident to choose leaders who best reflect their own values.
Provincial election on the way?
I just scooted over to @civixcanada.bsky.social site & signed up my school for Student Vote.
We'll have lots of info sessions over the next month so they feel prepared to vote next month.
If you have students who are/will be 18+, what are you doing to get them ready?
It’s okay to be annoyed when people’s expectations of your time are entirely unreasonable.
Even when they’re teenagers who aren’t yours.
We can literally save lives just by acknowledging how overwhelmingly awful this can feel.
It takes a bit more time, yes.
It’s 100% worth it.
The level of stress teens are feeling this week as they navigate exams & finalize culminating tasks is off the charts.
Take time. Check in with them. Determine what they need. Be open to offering needed supports EVEN IF they don’t have an IEP. Let them know you’re here to support them through this.
Cookies for supper is sometimes essential.
I am total garbage at writing exams.
Right? I've been wanting one of his pieces for a while, so when he opened his store in September, I jumped on the chance to get one of these prints.
Photo of a colour print of green flowerpot with three chompy red and white plant heads and several tendrils done in more of a Woodland style. Bright blue background with white edging.
I was really hoping I’d ordered fast enough for a pink background, but the blue is still wonderful. I still need to get it framed, but that’s not a today job. Artist: Blake Angeconeb.
I took some students to Toronto Archives today, and it was such a great experience. If you teach history, check out your local archive to see if they do tours and educational programming. Being able to engage with history in a hands-on way is such a gift.
No. My students haven't given me consent for that. Do I occasionally ask someone for their opinion on a sentence or paragraph, especially if I'm wondering if there's been academic misconduct? Yes, without disclosing anything about the student. But actual evaluation? Never.
I made it through my first day back after medical leave. My students and colleagues are lovely as ever, and I am fall-down tired. I managed to make supper, and that's as far as I'm getting tonight.
Whew.
I know that things could have gone in a very different direction, and I am so grateful they didn't.
There is no shame in having do deal with collection agencies, for the record. I am just fortunate that this wasn't part of my path to get here.
That I can now make payments without having to decide what to do without in order to do so makes this feel like a success story.
My student and commercial debt (a whole other thread) are significant, and I will likely have both paid off just before I retire, but I have no regrets.
I use my ENTIRE education in my current position, my kids never went without what they needed, and I have never had to deal with collections.
... and I worked 3-5 jobs at a time for the first year after I graduated.
But! It really didn't take me that long at all to secure stable teaching work once I was hired to a board, and I have been a contract teacher since 2017.
My kids are now adults, and I am finally able to pay down my debt.
I'm so bad at instability, so before that job ended, I started to think about what might come next. I decided to apply to become a teacher -- sure, some instability in the initial years, but I was confident I could figure it out.
I collected more student loans between 2011-2013.
Late that year, I secured a full-time healthcare policy job in Toronto, so we packed up and left Ottawa for the hope of a new, stable opportunity.
Alas! So many of these jobs are based on grants, which means there's never a certainty that the job will continue to exist.
And yet, even with these credentials and the experience I had before I had kids, I still had to work three part-time jobs once I finished school because I couldn't find a single full-time position to cover our expenses.
I graduated w/MSW in 2006. in 2009, I accepted I'd have to move to find work.
So, I did a certificate in technical writing, and followed that up with a Master of Social Work. This gave me solid skills in policy writing and analysis, built on my pre-existing community development experience, and gave me some solid counselling skills.
The third option made the most sense:
1) full-time school is still only about 20 hours in-class;
2) if I had to miss a class, I could get caught up at home;
3) when the kids were old enough for full-time school, I'd have bankable skills for well-paid work.
