Why I am a Teacher

I'll be doing a unit on spoken word poetry with my grade 7 student this year. I'm a HUGE fan of slam poetry: poetry that's read aloud as a performance piece.

Came across the performance posted below and I think it will stimulate some good discussion about the purpose of education. I became a teacher because school doesn't have to be this way, but for me in my teenage years it certainly felt so.

Enjoy. (And beware, there is a swear word...)

Brave New Voices - "Love Letter To Albuquerque Public Schools"

Creativity

Sanford and I head out on an evening walk. The air is lukewarm, the temperature of bath water against the skin, and the clouds are tufts of white high in the sky. It has been sunny for weeks, although the morning’s chill presses the leaves to turn gold, and the first layer of autumn crunches beneath our feet.

We set out on one of our usual trails up into the bush and veer up a hill, which starts my heart pounding and Sanford panting, dusty drool streaming down from the sides of his droopy mouth; his St. Bernard mouth, splayed at the sides, red shiny gums perpetually showing like strips of bacon hanging in a butcher’s window. A gaping mouth I try, sometimes unsuccessfully, to avoid brushing my hand against on our walks.

I see a path ambling into a clutch of trembling aspen and decide to take it. A well-worn game trail, new to us, leads us to one beautiful sight after another—to a view of two rivers crossing, marking their thick “x” of aqua water beneath yellowing leaves, to fallen logs whitewashed by the sun, to a hillside of fir closing out the evening light. Just myself, a dog, and the mysterious beauty of the great outdoors.

I’ve been going through an intense bout of creativity lately, perhaps due in part to this glorious weather we have been having, and perhaps due to the ease of sticking around to do the one-room school thing for the second time. It’s like summer still lingers, and with the warmth my mind is abuzz with fresh ideas and the excitement of living. Perhaps it was being away for most of the summer, and now that I am back at home in my creative space I feel renewed and reinvigorated with outside inspirations. I’m feeling serendipitously at ease here, like my life is flowing as gently and effortlessly as a river through a wide, shallow canyon. This is a period of intense, creative calm, if that makes any sense. The creativity is flowing gently through me, in drawing, in my pictures, in my writing, and I am finally stepping aside and letting it be.

Just over a week ago I went and took a one-day workshop with an artist, Diego Samper, who lives with his wife in Langdale on the Sunshine Coast. It was an absolutely amazing day as we discussed art, photography, painting, drawing. He is an artist who works in many different medias, and he gave me so many ideas that I can use in my own practice and in the classroom with my students. Our discussion and looking at all of the beautiful pieces of art in his home made me realize that I can dabble in a number of different creative outlets because they all complement and fit with each other. In the end it’s the process of creating, of causing something to come into being, that is the same, regardless of the medium in which it was done.

It has taken over a week to let the thoughts from that day settle into my cells, and I imagine I will continue to go back to my notes, taking different messages of inspiration away each time. It was truly an amazing day. There were a couple of moments when Diego and I were talking and my eyes became ringed with a lining of tears. It was as if this was the message I had been waiting for all my life. That it’s okay to explore everything you want to explore. That you don’t have to specialize and be a “painter” or “sculptor” or “photographer” or “writer”. That you really can be all of those things. But it takes time. And patience. And dedication. And trust. In the process and in yourself for being able to commit and follow through and let go and explore. The message I took away was that if you let go and explore then you will find the essence of your creative self. You will find your process of creating, and I believe we all have a creative self living somewhere inside each of us, waiting to be let loose on the world.

I’ll write a more usable summary of the workshop with Diego as I get into photography with my students but for now you get the artsy version as my mind is still whirling with ideas and enthusiasm. Diego also does day-long photography and art workshops, and obviously I think it is an invaluable way to spend a day. If you live in Vancouver you should get in touch with him and let the inspiration seep in :)

I have been meaning to go back and go through my journals from my Fraser River trip, and I will. I suppose I’m just squeezing the last juices from the rind of summer before the sun packs it in and we are left with short rainy days. The dark is a good time for writing and re-hashing ides, and I plan on doing lots of re-examining during the season between mountain biking and skiing.

This weekend I spent a good deal of time at a friend’s place on Gun Lake. It was fabulous. An alternative view to gaze at and be inspired by. I wrote in her studio, was treated to a couple of intensive waterskiing sessions (I even got up on a slalom ski!), and picked up the guitar again and started re-learning some songs that I wrote last year. If anything the long break from playing guitar strengthened the songs, as I was able to come at them with fresh ears and tweak some things that seemed a little off when they were so bright in my mind.

I think that is what I learned from my time with Diego too: I can take a break and come back to something, and if I have been true to myself, all the other things I have done on the break will give me a fresh approach to whatever it is I have gone back to, and it will be new and fun again, and the time will be right.

Like the walk with Sandford tonight, creativity is starting out on a path with the intent of exploration on your mind. It’s being open to seeing what is right there in front of you rather than being so entranced by the view that you forget to look at the late-season lily in bloom at your feet. It’s living in the world with a spontaneous heart and letting your intuitions guide you. And that is what I have been doing.

Music in the Morning

Each morning, right after the students arrive, we start our day by listening to a song or two. It has been a wonderful way to start each day, especially in a one-room school that caters to a wide range of grades. With my kindergarten students we practice moving around space to the "beat" or "rhythm" of the song, and they listen for which instruments they can hear in the piece. With the older students I take it a step further, discussing genre, the pop culture of the era in which the song was made, etc. Then I have my grade 7 student do some internet research on the group or singer and on the origins of the song, and have her pick out some facts that she finds interesting to open up discussion about music and art/creativity in general. We rotate choices during the week so that everyone can add their favourite songs to the mix. We have even been getting some suggestions from community members!

Sometimes we dress up, sometimes we stand, sometimes we sit, sometimes we lie down and tap our fingers on our chests, sometimes we move up high, sometimes down low, sometimes we watch the video up on the SmartBoard, sometimes we close our eyes and just listen. It's an amazing way to start the day, and I highly recommend it to anyone, even if you're just having a coffee on your own at your kitchen table.

Some popular selections so far:

Bette Middler - "In the Mood" (suggested by a community member)
Norah Jones - "Come Away with Me"
Sinead O'Connor - "Nothing Compares to You"
Ellie Goulding - "Lights" (Bassnectar Remix)

We're always up for suggestions, so if you have a favourite song to recommend just run your mouse over the "no comments/comments" text at the bottom of this post to add your comment. All genres are welcome, and the more obscure or diverse the better :)

Crescent Moon over Mt. Sloan

SLLP News Coverage

Here are some wonderful articles I was interviewed for before, during and after my trip down the Fraser River with the Sustainable Living Leadership Program.

August 1, 2012 in the Lillooet News

August 24, 2012 in the Agassiz-Harrison Observer

September 12, 2012 in the Lillooet News

Much thanks to the reporters who covered these stories, as I think they did a fantastic job of portraying my sentiments and describing what the trip was all about.

Click here for a few teaser images from the trip.

Happy reading and viewing!

Calm

This photo is the calm after the flurry of activity in my life over the weekend. Do you notice anything special about the picture? The view is of Carpenter Lake on the way to Gold Bridge, looking back at the dam on the Bridge River.

Good weather is the time to be social; to get out of town when the roads are good, to get out on a mountain bike, to go for a walk, to be outside with others. This town hibernates when the weather turns and the nights are long and snowy, so a packed weekend in Vancouver and full evenings of outdoor sunlit sport are a necessary buffer to the long working days. I am looking forward to some hibernation though, as I suppose I always am when my summers are full of energetic social happenings. This will certainly be a different year for me in this place. Last year in September I hardly knew anyone, and this year I am a full-fledged member of the community, however quaint it may be.

It feels wonderful to have some roots down in this spot, as winters can become long and lonely for me if they are not balanced out with a summer's worth of visiting and chatting and planning with those around me. Fuel for the times when I am on my own with some solo time to get creative. I suppose I am a woman of extremes, so to speak. A social butterfly in the summers, but the winters, at least during the week, seem to be for me and my own dark and stormy mind.

My students are wonderful, and we have been working on some exciting things to spruce up our classroom and tap into our creative minds. I'll post some of the things that have worked well when I have some time to catch up to myself over this coming weekend.

Oh, and thank you so much for checking in and reading my rambles. I really do appreciate knowing that there are some kindred souls out there who have an interest in reading what I record on here :)

Portrait

Look up the word "portrait" on dictionary.com and what it says is this: "a likeness of a person, especially of the face, as a painting, drawing or photograph".

In the first few weeks of school I like to do lots of show-us-who-you-are activities. Such exercises are imperative for building a comfortable learning community, help me and the students learn about each other (important before fully planning for the year), and are a great way to engage learners in the thing we all know about best: ourselves!

We talked about our "likenesses" yesterday--the things we love to do that make us happy--recording them on wordle.net to create a word cloud. See mine here.

Today we talked about portraits--what they are, what they can say about a person, what a portrait can represent--how we can tell a lot about someone just from the details in their portrait: where the portrait was taken, how close the person is to the camera, what the person is doing, what we notice about their gaze, what they are wearing, etc. Then we did a bit of a portrait spoof and each donned the same old felt hat from the dress-up box and drew moustaches on our fingers. Once the portraits were shot in a location of the individual's choosing, it was time for a little editing lesson on Picasa, and ta-da!: a self-portrait for every personality.

Here are a couple of our results. We plan on posting them in the front foyer, along with our word clouds and another art project, to greet the visitors to the school. Enjoy.

My portrait is dedicated to Ms. Errin Gregory, who suggested this great 

lesson idea before I started my first year with my own class. You rock Errin!

Clouds

Hazy Sunday

It has been over two weeks since I last woke up next to the river, and I feel its magnetic pull on me weakening ever so slightly as I fall back into step with my working life. My inside life. My life of routine and to-do.

This was the first week back at school—although I was there for a few hours each day leading up to the first day with students—organizing book shelves, rearranging furniture, making welcome signs. The river is a packaged memory during the days, but at night, when my thoughts are free to wander, I visit the river in dream.

I am waking up as the sun crests the top of the ridge of the canyon on the opposite shore, painting the sandy hills pastel in the pinking morning, as shockingly beautiful as the first tulip of spring unfurling its bright red petals after a long and colourless winter. A bald eagle traces circles high above, just a fleck of open wing from my grounded vantage point. The bird is like a metronome in the sky, swaying left and right in sweeping search. The air is still, and streaks of thin cloud paint watery brush strokes across the sky.

I stretch off the haze of lingering sleep and crawl from my sleeping bag under the shelter of sky, already fully dressed to ward off the chill of a clear night. I walk the few steps down to the river, its constant path slicing the canyon into two rock faces perpetually staring across a line of separation. Across from where I dip my hands, a clutch of trees scrambles an existence out of a crack in the canyon wall. A log, its roots clumped in a balled fist, is placed high up on a ledge above like an old toy forgotten on a shelf.

This week I have dreamt of the river every night. Sometimes I cannot fully remember the sequences of my dream, but I know in the restful feeling of my waking, in the calm and steady flow of my breath, that I was on the river again.

Sometimes in my dreams I am swimming. One of the greatest memories of my time on the river is being in it, swimming, fully immersed in the sensory experience, life jacket holding my head and shoulders out of the water, listening to the scrape of silt over the river bottom below me. I remember being twirled around in whirlpools, legs trailing behind, being careful not to point them down so I wouldn’t be pulled under, swimming with Fin through rapids.

I have so much to say about the river, but time is limited at the start of a new school year. In the coming weeks I do plan on posting some entries from my journal, as well as the accompanying pictures. I have also been getting back into the activities that I love to participate in here. A few afternoons and evenings on my mountain bike with a good friend, one of my usual skiing and biking companions. A couple of long walks with Sanford. Swimming in Gun Lake and Tyaughton Lake while I can, before the weather cools and it is no longer an option. Horseback riding.

 The glassy surface of Gun Lake after an evening swim.

 Abandoned car on a walk with Sanford.

The first week of school was AMAZING! I have quite a mix: a couple of Kindergarten students, a grade 3 student and a grade 7. The Ks are amazingly enthusiastic and excited about school, and they have so much energy they have not needed an ounce of quiet time throughout the day as I thought they might. They are constantly looking for more things and saying “what’s next” and “that sounds fun” and “this is the best!”.

This past week I tried to show them how to use centres, how to play and then clean up, and then I left exploration time open-ended to see where their little interests seemed to be. Store is a big hit, as well as building with anything—blocks, snap cubes, Lego. They are very hands-on, lots of movement. They are excited, and this unbridled enthusiasm is exciting for me to watch and participate in.

We also talked about S.T.A.R., which will be our classroom agreement—how we agree to behave when we are learning together. S=safety, T=teamwork, A=accountability, R=respect. We made a chart of what all these words mean, and what “being safe”, etc. looks like, and then we cut out stars that I have been handing out when a student demonstrates the behaviours we have focused on. Each day we have focused on one aspect of “STAR”, for instance “safety” on the first day and “teamwork” on the second, and I handed out stars as students displayed behaviours that fit with the theme of the day, writing what they did on the back. It has been a big success with both the younger and older students, and they have each taken home stars to discuss with their families.

Planning for such a range of ages is obviously a challenge, but I tend to focus on thematic units where each student can approach similar topics from their developmental level. For instance our first unit will be on “Ecosystems” for the grade 7, with a focus on plants for the grade 3, and on trees for the Ks.

Another bright star in my week was when a retired teacher, whom I have known since last school year, came in to give me a wonderfully kind card on my first day back at school to wish me well in the upcoming year. She is a wonderful woman, very artistic and into arts education, and it’s awesome to have a mentor out here who is keen to help out with ideas and come into the classroom. She brought her ukulele to school this week, and we sung some great French songs with actions—perfect because we all need to move, and great for the grade 7 who will be studying French this year. Many of my great ideas will be thanks to her!

I have been doing a lot of writing as well, with a short story nearly ready for input from readers. I have always wanted to write about some of my experiences here in a different way than on a “blog”, and I figured out that writing in the third person, using “she” instead of “I”, really allows me the freedom to express myself in different ways. I no longer feel as if I am writing about myself, but instead I am writing about a character, and this character can do and say things that I normally wouldn’t. I encourage you other writers to try it, and post to the comments to let me know how it goes. I’m going to try writing in the third person with my grade 7 next week as well.

The whole novel thing is still happening in my head and in my notes, but I haven’t been doing any daily work on it. I think I’m learning that I have some ADD tendencies, as I suppose many of us do, and that I get bored of an idea pretty quickly. Hence I’m just going with daily writing, free to explore topics of my choosing and if the words want to become a longer project then great!

I’ve spent the morning planning for the week and am now off to go on a little hike with a friend to sketch a landscape scene overlooking Gun Lake. The wind has picked up here, bringing with it the first clouds all week. I suppose fall is on its way, as a few leaves lift easily from the trees in my yard, falling into the arms of the backyard pond as I write these last few lines.

Impressions Left by the River

They are smooth, these three stones that I turn around and around in my palm as they click and rub against each other, calming me with their weight. After some time I realize I have been paralyzed by thought while the water runs clear and strong from the tap. I turn it off with my free hand and place these last three, rinsed clean, along the edge of the sink next to the other stones already gathered on a faded blue towel that I ripped up for rags before I left. Rocks from the river; rocks that the river tucked away in its mouth, licking them smooth and clean before I picked them up to carry home in my dry bag.

The Fraser River. There are no words to paint the impression it has had on me. I am in love for the first time with a river, and language, as a mere representation of reality, just as a painting or photograph becomes a representation of a sunset scene, does not hold enough room to explain. Words can describe a sunset, but they inherently lack the touch of the sun’s shallow warmth on exposed skin and the movement of dimming sky.

Even still, words and pictures are what I have brought back with me to tell the story of a journey down the Fraser River, as well as a small collection of rocks to root my memories to the river when I look at them collecting sunlight in the windowsills of my classroom and hold them in my hands.

It is impossible to measure the full impression the experience has on me, because it is impossible to know what sum I arrived with, and just how much was added to that sum along the way. Life is not a mathematical equation, and so it is hard to know how experiences impact us; it’s hard to know the amount we have taken from an experience to equal a new whole.

This trip down the river has changed me though, that much I know. Just how it will manifest itself in the path my life takes is another matter, one that I will never fully understand. What I do know is that my trajectory has been altered because of it, perhaps at this moment ever so slightly, but just a slight adjustment at a launching point can cause the final destination of a rocket ship to become dramatically altered.

Sorry to be so mysterious about the whole thing. Basically the trip was so fantastic that it’s hard to put it into words. I think I’m in the process of assimilating the experience at the moment, and I feel fuzzy and turned around because of it. The words will come, and the images will spark new words, and at some point it will evolve into an explanation that is at least a little clearer than the paragraphs above. Let’s just give it some time.

This morning I started cooking a soup made from fresh veggies I picked from a friend’s garden on my way home: kale, cabbage, carrots, eggplant, zucchini, potatoes, broccoli, corn, garlic, beets, green beans, tomatoes, peppers. What a luxurious opportunity I have for locally-sourced food. I filled my car with fuel at the First Nations owned and operated Lightfoot Gas in Lillooet, where I also bought some local eggs from the Yalakom Valley, also on the path home. It surprises me how few people have this opportunity. This afternoon I will buy some local bread at the Farmer’s Market in Bralorne, and I was gifted some fish for giving a friend a ride from Vancouver, topping off my grocery list. All local and organically-grown. Even the honey in my tea is from Lillooet, straight from honey man Bob’s. I think about this as I chop through the hole in the cabbage made by a worm, washing the shards and adding them, hole and all, to the soup.

Sustainability. It has become a catch-phrase, but what does it really mean to me? I suppose it means doing more of what I have just described. Asking for local products and choosing to pay a dollar more for local eggs rather than $3.75 at the grocery store for eggs shipped from Vancouver. It means getting coffee at the locally-run shop instead of Starbucks. I suppose it comes down to choices, and making conscious and deliberate ones that support local economy. If enough of us buy local products, more will be made to appease us, the consumers.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what options we have as a society, as individuals, to change things, and I suppose what comes to mind immediately is that we need to start conversations about the direction of our society. We need to ask questions and then think critically about the answers. We need to ask where the things that we buy came from, whether we are ordering fish at a restaurant or buying clothing in a retailer. We need to start re-using things, shopping at second hand stores instead of always choosing to buy new. (Plus you save a TON of money and forgo the packaging that gets thrown out immediately. For instance I bought wonderful new chocolate brown linen curtains for my bedroom for $5 and a new blender for $4 when I could have easily spent $40 buying both new!)

The trip down the Fraser has certainly been a transformative experience. On the second day while we were still at the headwaters beside Mount Robson in the Rocky Mountains (up near Jasper) I chose an animal spirit card. The spirit I chose was “butterfly” and the message was this:

You are changing.

Emerge into your new state of being.

Honour your transformation.

It may sound silly to some, but I think it can be useful to have a reference point for thinking of life while on a journey like the trip down the Fraser. While I didn’t notice much of a “change” on the raft, now that I am home something is brewing in my soul and I certainly do feel different. Perhaps this was a period of rapid growth, a summer thunderstorm, now followed by calm sunny skies where my roots can absorb the rain that has come and gone, assimilating it all into a new self. 

A view of Cathedral canyon during the solo hike, a couple of rafting days south of William's Lake on the Fraser River. One of my favourite views, watching the river wind down the canyon from both sides. To the right of the tree, where the panorama stops, the river sweeps itself steadily down the wide-mouthed canyon.