Thinking about a new hobby, now that you’ve perfected your sourdough? Why not try knitting? Join me to learn a few basics (casting on, knitting, and maybe purling, depending on time). I’ll try to point you in the direction of some good resources, and share some ideas about how crafting can help you reduce your stress level. #EDUKnits
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After a great #etmchat on March 6, I had the realization that, because of the old-school things I enjoy, I’ve been part of the open movement for a long time. In fact, I’ve been part of it much longer than I’ve known such a thing existed or what to call it.
I’m a knitter and a foodie, and those are both passions where the remix is just an understood part of what you do.
If you read food blogs, you know that reworking a recipe is what it’s all about. Writers regularly share their successes, and their utter disasters, as they play around with the chemistry of a recipe. I am a particular fan of a blog called Food in Jars, where Marisa McLellan posts what she’s done with a particular small-batch canning recipe, and then always asks what other people have done with that ingredient, and the comments are full of creative twists on the starting point.
In the Kitchen Counter Cooking School, author Kathleen Flinn chronicles her journey of giving people the freedom to experiment, to play, to taste, to see what works for them. There is always a beginning, but nothing to say that you must slavishly imitate that beginning, if you think something will work better. In her current blog, Cook Fearless, she now picks a topic a month, and challenges her readers not to be afraid, and invites them to tweak recipes to make them their own. My own recipe books are full of notations and hints, as I try different things to feed my family delicious, healthy food.
When a friend asks you for a recipe for that amazing dish you brought to the potluck, you hand it on happily, without thinking about copyright or licensing, and knowing that it will be transformed again.
Knitters have been adding their own variations to design elements for hundreds of years, and it’s rare to see two knitters complete the same pattern with the precisely same end result. One popular activity (both virtual and f2f) is called a knitalong or KAL. A group of knitters picks a pattern to knit, asynchronously but within a particular time frame. People blog and talk about their progress, share the spots where they’re stuck, crowdsource solutions to pattern errors (often with the designer gratefully helping), and eventually share the finished product. The process, and the learning that comes from sharing about it, (along with a little extrinsic motivation) is why you enter into a KAL. (My f2f knitting group is about to begin a KAL on this pattern.
Arachnid II gloves, designed and photographed by Karen Fournier via Ravelry
I’ll share photos of the finished projects to show you the kind of range you get even if everybody’s using the same pattern).
Even without a KAL, knitters love to create infinite variations on a theme. Entering the search term “hat” into the pattern database on Ravelry, a knit and crochet social media site, comes up with over 44,000 entries (no, that’s not a mistake). One assumes that a lot of those would never have happened if someone hadn’t shared a pattern. And that Rav database is incredible – it holds over 350,000 patterns, of which at least a third are free.
Once you’ve chosen a pattern, the world is your oyster. You can tweak at will – change the yarn, the colour, the stitch pattern, the collar, the sleeves. I have a favourite baby sweater and have knitted about 15 of them over the years, no two alike. I can go to any of my stitch dictionaries, and find a pattern that suits the recipient – so the friend moving out west gets a wheat-sheaf design in her daughter’s sweater, and the mom who ran our breakfast program gets a tree of life motif in her son’s.Tools like Goodreader, that let you annotate a .pdf, and track your changes, are the modern version of my grandmother’s neatly penned marginalia with names attached to each variation. If a variation works out really well, you can now easily choose to publish your pattern, for others to start from, on their designing journey.
Knitters, like other crafters, are also supremely willing to share our technical knowledge, in the hope of getting others hooked on our particular fibre-crack. A rough day at school was recently made better by receiving a text from a friend who needed to know how to do a particular stitch she wasn’t understanding. After a couple attempts, I was able to send her a link to a video, because she’s a visual learner. When I wanted to try a new handspinning technique recently, I had a variety of instructors to choose from, who had posted hands-on video. I have a student in Grade 7, without another knitter in her family, who is an accomplished knitter thanks to YouTube. What we once relied on family members to pass on, we can now learn from our extended knitting PLN, both virtual and f2f.
What am I trying to get at, in a rambling, roundabout way? That many of us come from generations of people who have been remixing the content of their lives for a long time. At a recent panel discussion I attended, one of the panelists talked about how hard it was for teachers to teach open collaboration and sharing, when they hadn’t been down that path themselves. How do we show our colleagues (and remind ourselves) that we walk that path everyday in other parts of our lives?
I’m wondering how we give people the gift of understanding that sharing their learning, and great lesson plans, and assessment ideas, and years of hands-on expertise is no different, and that the rewards that will come back to them are huge.
Not our sugar shack, but similar. Photo credit: flickr user ian.monroe via cc
As I type this, I am taking part in one of spring’s great remixes. Maple-scented steam is rolling off a new stainless evaporator, and the sap, for the first time in this bush, is being delivered by tubing. My kids, reading happily beside me, are the 7th generation of my husband’s family to make syrup on this land, and helped build what we sometimes refer to as sugar shack 2.0. It’s a process built on the open sharing of knowledge, between cultures and through generations, and the end product is all the more delicious for that.
This is a post about that guy. You know, that guy. The one that, if you’re like me, you’ve been thinking about, and probably getting angrier about, over the last couple of weeks. Those are the weeks since the Jian thing hit the fan, and then 2 MP’s got asked to leave the Liberal caucus over allegations of harassment. Yeah, I’m talking about that guy.
credit: krembo1 via cc
So who is that guy? Right now, he doesn’t work in my building, but he’s still in my professional life. He’s the one who doesn’t respect your personal space, who brushes or rubs up against you when you’re doing some silly icebreaker thing, and makes a comment that lets you know it’s not by accident, who leans in a little too close to show you something on the page or the computer, who makes no effort to hide the slow up and down he gives you when you’re introduced. The one who will offer the newest, or the youngest, or the loneliest woman in the room a ride home, and you will all try, by non-verbal communication, to wave her off, because you know that’s not a good idea. He’s the one who comes into your classroom for an observation, or professional learning, and gets much chummier with your female students than they (and you) are comfortable with.
You know, that guy.
We all know him. We give other women in our profession the heads-up about him, and when you tell a colleague a story about an uncomfortable situation you’ve found yourself in, she knows who you’re talking about before you name him, because she’s heard about him, or experienced the same kind of thing from him. We try and make sure there’s not an empty seat near us at learning events, so we won’t have to sit next to him. We work really hard to make sure our friends know not to be in a small group with him. We know he’s not safe, and we know he makes us and our friends and our colleagues incredibly uncomfortable. And yet, we don’t tell him.
I am not a shrinking violet, by any stretch of the imagination. People think I’m mouthy and pushy and opinionated. I have told women I work with to lay off the inappropriate comments about male co-workers, but I have not done anything about that guy. When he makes me profoundly uncomfortable with a touch or a comment, I may give him the death stare, and get myself out of that space as soon as possible, but I do not say anything to him. And I am ashamed of that, because it gives him license to continue to do what he does. I am also ashamed, because some of us are doing this in contexts where students see us, and we are modeling a power dynamic for them that I work against all the time.
credit: Peter Rukavina via cc
I was listening to Cross-Country check-up on Sunday evening, making dinner, and yelling nasty comments at the radio, as Rex Murphy (really, CBC?) attempted to have a meaningful call-in about sexual harassment. He was astounded at the number of women calling in to say “yes, this happens, yes, this is real, yes, we are STILL dealing with this crap.” He commented repeatedly on one caller who had impressed him with the strength of her personality, and seemed really surprised that this had happened to her. Because why, Rex? Because she doesn’t seem like an easy target?
This happens to all of us, introvert or extrovert, old or young. Part of why it happens is because we have somehow become desensitized and accepted that this is just the way it is. A colleague I talked to said we’ve put up with it for so long, that it doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to change, so why would we be the one to make noise about it, and open ourselves up to shame and embarrassment, because we’re admitting this happened to us.
So this is my turning point. I have decided that I will no longer walk away. I will look that guy in the eye, let him know exactly what he’s done that made me uncomfortable, and ask him not to do it again, to me or anyone else. If you’re as fed up, and frustrated, and tired of being on edge as I am in this context, I’d love it if you’d join me. It’s time.
This post is Inspired by the many educators who accepted Jonathan So’s (@mrsoclassroom) invitation to share the 5 defining moments in their teaching lives. Jonathan has collated them here, and they’re very much worth the read. If you wanted to see a differentiated approach to a task, look no further!
1. Influencers: I’m going to break the rules right off the bat, and say that my first defining moments as a teacher came as a learner, and that had to do with the teachers I was lucky enough to learn from. My pedagogy is heavily influenced by my Grade 13 experience in integrated studies at South Secondary in London, Ontario. This was a multi-disciplinary, scaffolded approach to learning first about our neighbourhood, then our city, province, and eventually country through as many lenses as possible. It involved many of those competencies we’re trying to incorporate today, including communication, collaboration and critical thinking. Final projects were completely passion-driven – I still have the suite of poems I created. It remains my gold standard for what an engaged learning experience can look like, and it was 1985, so it was largely engagement without the “bells and whistles”. Shout-out here to Ian Underhill and Pete Telford, who created and taught the course. Also thanks to my mom and my Grade 5 and 7 teacher, Murray Young, who helped me understand that teaching is about building a community and relationships first, and covering curriculum second.
2. Marrying my husband: A day does not go by without me thinking about how lucky my students are that I married the person I did. I married someone who cheers me on when I’m taking on a new challenge, but is also willing to call me on my need for approval, and who regularly reminds me to set my parameters of what is “enough” in terms of how much I give of myself to my job. He is my foundation, and works to help me find work/life balance, survive through my ADD and (sometimes)self-sabotaging behaviour, and always, always, work on being a better partner, parent and teacher. I am amazed at his ability to work through things patiently with our teenage kids (when I’m ready to throw things), and I often think that he would have made a far more effective teacher than I sometimes am. I would not be able to be a risk-taker in my classroom and professional life, without knowing I had the abiding love of my spouse to come home to when an activity crashes and burns.
3. Becoming a parent: Putting the impact of the arrival of Mr 16 and Mr 14 on my teaching career into words is extremely challenging. It meant that I had less time to give to my classroom, but I also had a richer life experience to bring. I learned what kind of things engaged my own children, and that helped me figure out what might engage my students. When my boys began to attend school, and I started to see the ways their teachers impacted them, I really began to understand how much effect even my smallest action could have on my students, and I became much more aware of the kind of feedback I was giving. I also know (as many of you do) that sometimes I was a less patient parent because I’d been a patient teacher all day, and I love my kids for understanding and surviving that. The boys continue to impact my teaching every day. They share positive and negative learning experiences of their own, they let me bounce ideas off of them, they keep me a little bit in the pop culture loop (I teach Grade 7 and 8). They have made me a better learner, through the things they are interested in, and that has made me a better listener, and a better teacher.
4. AIM: Until the past school year, when I finally took the leap into teaching my own classroom full-time, the only constant in my teaching schedule had been Core French. I would not have been able to do that job for 20+ years without the help of Wendy Maxwell’s Accelerated Integrative Method. When my board opened up a pilot project several years ago, it was a lightning bolt for me – a way to help my Core French kids genuinely dive into expressing themselves in their second language, without relying on machine translations or dictionaries. It also opened me up to using drama, music, and movement more in my FSL classroom than I had before. For the first time, really, in my teaching career, I was hearing hugely positive feedback from parents and students. My students were engaged, my parents were noticing, and it rejuvenated my practice. One of my greatest regrets is that the program didn’t catch on in applied level secondary French – I think it would have made a huge difference. The other big “a-ha” for me through AIM was that I was willing to take on a huge learning curve in order to really make something work. I hadn’t really known that about myself as a teacher until then – and it helped me understand my students more. Many years after that extremely well-done pilot program (un gros bel merci to the late Carole Meyette-Hoag and to Jennifer Sampson), a group of women I met in that PD are still among the teachers I rely on the most for realistic feedback and shoulders to cry on. They were, and continue to be, educational “risk-takers” when it makes a positive difference for their students.
5. Powerful Learning Practice: In the 2011-12 school year, I was given an opportunity that changed me as a learner, thinker and teacher. I volunteered to be part of a board team participating in a year-long, action-research-based inquiry, run by Sheryl Nussbaum Beach (@snbeach) and Will Richardson (@willrich45). I had never done anything like this, and I remember almost bursting into tears at the first session, because I had no idea what was going on (there was a speaker, and a backchannel, and…). I was, in Sheryl’s words, immensely “whelmed”. What I came to learn, over the course of that year, with the help of an incredible community of co-learners, is that being “whelmed” is necessary for a learner like me. I need to “get comfortable with being uncomfortable” in order to not get stuck. My experience with PLP introduced me to new ways of reflecting on my thinking, to new people to share with and learn from (a lot), to the whole framework of iterative teaching/thinking, and to really thinking about why I felt driven to effectively integrate technology into my classroom. I started to blog, I started to share my learning about these ideas with my students, I fell into a deep and lasting love affair with Twitter, and I began to seriously think about shifting from Core French to my own classroom, in order to go deeper into critical thinking, in particular. That switch came last year, and could easily be my 6th point. The connected learning I do with my students, the joy I get from my PLN, my learning opportunities attending and presenting at conferences, my willingness to dig into new learning and think deeply about how best that learning can serve my students? All of that had its genesis in my PLP experience and I can never thank the random forces that picked my name to attend enough.
This photostory was prepared by me for my PLP learning cohort.
Like Diana Maliszewski (@MzMollyTL) and Aviva Dunsiger (@avivaloca), I want to think about “what’s next?”. I’m currently on a teacher self-funded leave year, and I think if I were to reflect on my defining moments in the years to come, this may be one of them. The joy of time – to think, to plan, to write (as I’m doing now), to participate in activities that I simply can’t do, as a teacher with a full-time job – is so beautiful it’s a little overwhelming. I’m passionately interested in ways to help myself and my students make our learning visible to each other and the world, and I’m also really interested in figuring out how to make feedback work effectively, both for my students, their parents and my colleagues. Lots to keep learning about as the path unfolds before us.
Thanks for the writing prompt, Jonathan.
If you’re reading this, and haven’t written about your 5 moments yet, please join the conversation.
Last year my word was fuel. I had been inspired by a late November evening conversation (via Twitter) with Colleen Rose (@colleenkr) and Amy Burvall (@amyburvall) about people whose work kept us going, who provided light in the darkness. I realized I wanted to think consciously in 2017 about who and what fuels me, how I could best fuel my students, and how I could also fuel my relationships with other people. I felt like there were a lot of activities and people that required my time, and I wanted to work on making sure I was fuelling me enough to provide fuel for others. I also knew that I would be heading into a self-funded leave year, beginning in September 2017, and I wanted to make sure that a big part of that time was spent fuelling me for the last 5 years of my teaching career.
And it was in that process, of figuring out how to fuel myself, that I ran smack into this year’s word: expectations – both my own and others – and began to realize that I need to do some exploring of these before I can totally benefit (and pass on the benefits) from the choices I make to fuel me.
I’m a first-born child, as well as first grandchild on my mom’s side. I am a second generation teacher on dad’s side, and 3rd on my mom’s. Couple that with being a first-generation Canadian on my dad’s side, and you know, if you share any of those identifiers, that I have some experience with expectations. If you are also a parent, you know that it can be challenging to not lay some of those (sometimes difficult) expectations on your own kids. Continuing that journey of balance with my spouse is one of the reasons expectations is my word for this year, as my older son is in Grade 11 and thinking about what comes next. I want him to be able to feel free to explore what fuels him without my expectations creating a barrier.
I also want to explore how I deal with other peoples’ expectations of me. Every time I explain that no, I’m not going on a long trip on this year off, and no, I’m not pulling my teenaged children out of school, and no, I’m not going anywhere warm, and no, I’m not doing a Master’s degree, and yes, I’m doing the math PD my board is offering, and yes, I’m occasionally helping out and visiting friend’s classrooms, and yes, I can sometimes be found working on planning in a quiet corner of the board office, I shrink a little. A little bit of me feels like I’m doing my year off wrong, because I’m trying to use it to live my everyday life at a slightly deeper level. I’m trying to use it to put structures and planning in place to help my family and I weather my return to work next September. I need to do some work on why it’s hard for me to advocate for that. Why it’s hard for me to deal with the expectations many people have of what a year off work should look Iike (and trust me that I will never ask another person on leave if they’re travelling).(Check out my #selffundedleave hashtag on Instagram if you’d like to leave your expectations at the door). This is a symptom of a larger issue for me, where I sometimes feel like I’m not living up to some phantom list of other people’s expectations.
Which leads into the expectations I place on myself. I tend to do a fair amount of beating myself up for not being/doing enough. Not a good enough parent, spouse, teacher, planner, exerciser, blogger, presenter, musician, housekeeper (that’s a big one for me, and largely self-inflicted). There’s a lot of shame going on in my head about the expectations I don’t measure up to, despite the many loving people in my world who assure me that I do, and I’d really like to work on letting go of some of that. I know I’m not the only one in the profession who lives with this, and I’d love to hear from others about their struggles and successes.
All of these things of course, tie into how I work in the classroom. How do my expectations of myself affect my expectations of my students. What expectations am I putting on my students, consciously and unconsciously? And how do they feel about that? How do my expectations of my colleagues affect our ability to learn together? One of my husband’s excellent questions on this journey has been about what expectations I’m willing to let go of in the classroom next year, so that I can have a bit more of a life. I have way more questions than answers right now, so that’s probably a good place to stop.
So, onward, bravely, into 2018, hoping to let go of some unhealthy expectations, and find some reasonable ones to help fuel my journey forward.
This weekend’s bitter cold where I live had me thinking about the importance of check-ins. Everywhere I looked, there were reminders to check in: check in with your vulnerable family members and neighbours; make sure there isn’t a pipe break threatening your business (Bluestreak records flooded); don’t leave your pets outside too long.
It's really, really cold -26°C feeling like -34°C ? Put on whatever you've got before heading out today. Please don't leave your pets out for longer than absolutely necessary and check on any vulnerable friends & family. #BundleUP#extremecoldwarning#CanadianWinter#Brrrr -LG pic.twitter.com/Z17Tnbi4LQ
My neighbour, upon leaving for holiday, asked my boys to do a walk through of her house each day, making sure that the heat was on and nothing disastrous had happened. We asked friends of Mr 16 to do the same when we went away.
That made me think about how lucky I was to be able to do that. I have neighbours, and relationships with them. I have family members to check in with (shout-out to my Oma, who was 97 on January 6).
Many in our communities don’t have those privileges. I did my first volunteer shift at our local emergency overnight shelter just before Christmas (that will be another blog post, when I can manage to put it into words). I knew that many in that community would be moving from whatever warm spot they could find to another during the day, and couch-surfing or at a shelter overnight. I know that I can’t check in on everybody, but I have adopted the practice of carrying extra new warm socks in my bag when I’m downtown, and offering them to those who are asking for money on the street. I have also carried grocery store or Tim’s gift cards in the past. If you have a relationship with people in your local underhoused community, please check in, in whatever way works best for you. Make a donation of money, food or time, or just stop to make sure that someone on the street knows where the local shelter is. This article has some suggestions in the school context. I occasionally encounter former students in my volunteer work at our local meal program, and I have found that they hugely appreciate me recognizing them and taking the time to check in, without judgement (and yes, I often cry later).
So, all this thinking about check-ins made me think about those who are returning to school today (or having a snow day, if you live where I do). Brian Aspinall’s brain was running along the same lines yesterday.
As we head back to school, remember that not all kids had a fun break. Let them know you care and missed them. #edchat
And I was happy when another tweeter responded, suggesting that we remember this applies to staff, too.
I need us all to take a minute and think about how this weekend felt. Were you thrilled to have a weekend to cocoon? Knit, read, binge-watch your favourite show (or mixed doubles curling ), bake, prep food for the week? Did you bundle up and get out in the cold, like my husband and kids did, with a cross-country ski? Did you connect with a friend for a hot (or cold) beverage?
Or were you one of those tossing and turning last night, because you didn’t want to go back this morning? One who spent the weekend getting the marking and planning done that you had ignored over the last 2 weeks? One who woke up this morning, and were hit with that feeling of dread about going to work? Or were you in that completely different category, like the woman in my church community yesterday morning, who had a completely unforeseen tragedy strike her family over the break? Did you spend much of your break putting out fires for other people? Were you coping with toxic family time? Are you heading back without feeling you’ve had a break at all? I have, at different times, been in most of these categories, heading back in January, and I’m sure many of you have, too. So, of course, have our students.
Most of us are really good at checking in with our students. We have class meetings, or we start or finish our day with a quick check-in. We meet our kids at the door because we know it makes a difference. We’ve learned that along the way.
I don’t think we’re anywhere near as good at creating opportunities for a genuine check-in with our colleagues. We’ll ask the generic “how was your holiday?” or even “Did you have a good break?” as we pass in the hall, but we’re often not truly listening for the answer, and we’re rarely vulnerable enough to give an honest one. It’s not how we’ve been raised, and it’s not easy, but is, without question, worth the effort. If we know that check-ins help our students feel visible, understood and valued, imagine how extending that same care to ourselves would make us feel.
So, there’s my challenge to each of you. Today (especially if it’s a snow day, and you have a chance for a quiet moment), or some time this week, try – even with one colleague – to do a genuine check-in. Ask how things are. If you know there’ve been some challenges (and really, when aren’t there?) maybe that’s the question to ask. Maybe this is the week to organize a potluck for Friday lunch, just to give people the chance to sit down together. If you have a colleague, as I do, who’s off on long-term disability, or who is off being a caregiver for someone they love, remember them, too. They would probably greatly appreciate someone in their professional life remembering that they exist. We need to be seen and heard, just as our students do. Check in. It’s important.
2. Marrying my husband: A day does not go by without me thinking about how lucky my students are that I married the person I did. I married someone who cheers me on when I’m taking on a new challenge, but is also willing to call me on my need for approval, and who regularly reminds me to set my parameters of what is “enough” in terms of how much I give of myself to my job. He is my foundation, and works to help me find work/life balance, survive through my ADD and (sometimes)self-sabotaging behaviour, and always, always, work on being a better partner, parent and teacher. I am amazed at his ability to work through things patiently with our teenage kids (when I’m ready to throw things), and I often think that he would have made a far more effective teacher than I sometimes am. I would not be able to be a risk-taker in my classroom and professional life, without knowing I had the abiding love of my spouse to come home to when an activity crashes and burns.
