On Becoming a Teacher

While perusing through the mass of emails that my inbox netted today, I stumbled across an article written by a young woman who is attending the same module of the teaching program that I graduated from back in 2010 at Simon Fraser University: the Indigenous Perspectives Teacher Education Module (IPTEM). Much of her words resonate with my own beliefs about education--that it needs an overhaul, and that we are all responsible in part for re-invisioning an education system that works for the communities in which we find ourselves.

I'll let you read the article if you're interested before I ramble on a rant that is fuelled more by sleepiness and baked-potato filled tummy than actual in-depth thought. Here's the article. Let me know what you think.

I have lots to say, but I'm going to disentangle my thoughts in a word document that can be read tomorrow before it gets posted.

On another note, we made our own kites today, and they worked wonderfully! I was half-surprised, really, as I seem to be whenever things work out seamlessly. A good way to finish off the Monday of the last week of school!

 Pippa and her Dad flying kites.

Pippa and Liam flying their kites. There wasn't much wind, but 

running was enough to keep them up in the air.

On Wednesday I'm hosting a year-end tea at the community club, where I will hand out some certificates of achievement and plaques to our graduating grade 7s who are off to the high school in Lillooet. I wrote a little speech about the year, and one for the grade 7s farewell, with some parts that people hopefully laugh at. I did make up a list called "Ten Signs that You Live in the Bridge River Valley", and I was laughing at my own ideas, but unfortunately that's never a guarantee since sleep-deprived teachers tend to laugh more easily than the general population.

This weekend was a good one as well. More mountain biking, followed by a big annual party that I was invited to where we played "Redneck Olympics" beside the bonfire late into the night. Events included a cabre toss, which is throwing a log and trying to get it to flip end over end, and rock put, which was throwing a rock as far as one could. It was quite entertaining, and I did pretty well considering it was the first time I have ever actually done either of those things. It also rained up here like it was North Van on Saturday night, but in typical fashion it only lasted an hour, and if you dug the toe of your shoe into the sandy soil it was still bone dry just an inch below the surface.

After work today I finished pulling up wads of grass from what was once a dirt flower bed, but hasn't been tended to since the folks who own the house moved out, almost a decade earlier. The dirt underneath is still fresh and dark--shipped-in dirt, certainly not the kind you could just go and shovel into a pail from the forest up here. I know because I have had my eye out for just such a dirt stash since I moved here in August. Nope. Here it's lava-ash sandy, and I'll probably be in the ground myself before a fallen tree around here will become absorbed into the earth. Not like the rain coast forests, whose moisture disintegrates old logs into dirt in as little as a few years.

I'm making a little garden with some heirloom tomatoes and pepper plants that a friend grew from seeds that she started last year. I'm hoping to start a little greenhouse at the school next year that I will heat with a wood stove in the winter. Gardens are amazing tools for science and math, and I think it's part of my responsibility as a teacher to talk to kids and get them thinking about where their food comes from. There's something immensely satisfying and confidence-booning about growing your own food and then feeding yourself with it. And cooking with kids is another great way to tie in a bunch of social skill practice, team work, time management, and math, without them even realizing it!

A recent hike in Lillooet with my wonderful tomato/pepper growing friends Mindy and Kathleen. I thought the big Douglas Fir tree deserved to be in a picture.

The view from our pre-designated stopping point, "the rocks" that we could see as we edged along the trail through the gap-toothed trees.  Lillooet is in the background, and the muddy river is the "mighty Fraser", filled with effluence from the northern mountains, all the sloughing off of the winter swelling the river cold and murky. Eyeless sturgeon gorge themselves on the ruins of a season in the darkened depths. They are such cool fish, and can live for hundreds of years. Prehistoric fish, relatives of the Jurassic period. I have applied to raft down the entire Fraser River, a three week trip starting in August at the river's birth, Mount Robson in the Rockies, and ending as it reaches the Pacific Ocean in Vancouver. I should find out if I get to go on it this week sometime, so I'll let you know more info if I am part of the ten who will be embarking on the journey. Should be amazing, so wish me luck! Oh okay, if you're just dying to know more check out the link here. Doesn't it sound amazing? It's been exactly 10 years, this September, since I have spent three solid weeks out in the wilderness, and therefore I think I'm past due for a repeat! If not this trip then I have a secondary plan to head out on horses for a few weeks, so it's a win-win. Gosh life is good!

The rain this weekend caused a lot of flooding, and the road up to Tyax Lodge has washed out, meaning tourists have to travel through the Marshall Lake road to get there. There were major forest fires up here in 2007 I believe, and much of the area along the road was burned up, meaning the water just runs off in a slew of muddy debris since there are no thirsty roots to suck it all up. That and the mosquitoes are out with a vengeance. They are tiny buggers, but they swarmed my shoulders as I was climbing to the Carl Creek trail on my mountain bike on Saturday, and my shoulders are now covered with a chicken pock-like blanket of red bumps. Thank goodness they haven't been around much until now!

The darkness is just arriving, and the crickets are out chirping--my cue to scratch out a couple of pages in my journal to empty my brain before sleep. I'm hoping to look through some of my writing to submit some pieces to short story contests and such over the summer. That's a more manageable goal than trying to write an entire novel while holding down a demanding fuller than full time job. I am still working on it though, slowly, day by day, sometimes a little each night before bed, and sometimes I don't tap into an inkling of it for a week or two. No rush though. One thing at a time.

Tomorrow the students and I are off to visit the students in Shalath (at Sk'il' Mountain Community School) for some hip-hop lessons with a pro and some peer-aged social interaction, and then there will just be two more days of school left (with students) and one day of administration before I am freeeeeeeeeeeee...