Mindful Ed

This Labour Day weekend two events transpired which have precipitated this post: 1. My five year old nephew and I visited a pond together 2. I had a visit from an educator whom I admire greatly who encouraged me to share my voice more often So here I am ... on the eve before a new school year ... sharing a rather cheesy analogy that popped into my head while playing at the pond with my nephew. First the story of the pond. My nephew Ben and I went on a wee adventure to a pond close to our family cottage on Lake Huron. We spotted a snapping turtle sitting on a log and he asked, "Why does he live here "? What's better than a curious five year old? Words cannot express my childlike happiness. My primary teacher instincts immediately kicked in and we got into a discussion about what we noticed about the pond - Lots of space, green stuff on the surface of the water that maybe he could eat, sunshine, a nice big log to sit on, not many people around bugging it, etc. I la...

This past week I attended a PD session facilitated by  Peter Liljedahl   entitled Building Thinking Classrooms. Two things I noticed right away: 1) No mention of the word mathematics in the title. It's about the thinking. 2) Participants were tossed into the role of learners. It's about the students. (We were thinking about mathematics but the thinking proceeded the math) During his consolidation piece, Peter Liljedahl discussed the role of note taking and suggested that perhaps we encourage students to write notes entitled "A letter to my future dumber self" (or otherwise known as thoughtful notes). So here it goes... A letter to my future dumber self, It wasn't too long ago that you saw the acronym #VNPS and thought really?, isn't that just a whiteboard? A gentle reminder to dig deeper before forming an opinion. Vertical Non-Permanent Surfaces represent a shift in the learning environment that directly impacts the student experience. The name me...

Every year on Labour Day weekend I run to my favourite little alcove along the beach that is filled with the most wonderful rocks of all shapes, sizes, and colours. I collect a jar of my favourites for the first day of school. Each student selects a rock, writes their name on it, and says a little something about why they picked the rock they did. Each rock is placed in a glass container on our prayer table to show our uniqueness. Last year, a student said something during this activity that I will always remember (Thanks A!). She said: "Each rock glitters in its own way. Sometimes you have to pick them up and take a closer look to see their beauty." Isn't this the most relevant reminder for the starting of a new school year?  Each student comes to us with their own lived experiences, perceptions, hopes, and fears. All of these things, and so many more, impact their interactions in the classroom and school community. As educators, building relationships with our s...

Picture this: sixty-six international educators boarding the train for a weekend excursion in China. Cues forming (well, more like scrums) ready to board. Selfies snapping sporadically amongst the group - as well as a few with inquisitive onlookers. Upon arrival, unforgettable landscapes and cultural experiences await. As beautiful as the Shaolin Temple and Longmen Grottoes were,  the real story of this blog lies in the train ride . It is here that a conversation about robotics unfolded with my friend and colleague John Burke from Arizona. I had the pleasure of meeting John last year at  SFLS  and was delighted that we were both back again this summer. We had over two hours on the train, refreshments in our hands, and so much to talk about in light of our shared interest in STEM. With no time limits and no pressure, our conversation just ebbed and flowed. We talked about the previous school year - what new things did we try? What went well? What flopped? I shared o...

What "more and less" would top your list? This question has been on my mind since attending a seminar by  Liu Baocun  from Beijing Normal University during my two week experience at Shijiazhaung Foreign Language School in China. He spoke about current experiences of students and teachers in the Chinese educational system. Many of these were evident while teaching grade 7 and 8 students during the two week summer camp. First and foremost, I will note the great care that the teachers I worked with had for their students - wanting the very best for them and working very hard to incorporate new practices into their lessons. All of this with obstacles such as very large class sizes (40 - 60 students per class) and testing. This is something that I have come to find transcends borders - the close relationship between students and teachers. Our conversations, although challenging at times with language barriers, were tempered with a common love and understanding of our professi...

At her session called  The Right Question  at the Ontario GAFE summit,   Holly Clark  spoke of those 'fall to your knees' moments  as educators when something goes so absolutely right, when the learning is so tangible, that you feel like falling to your knees in pure bliss and gratitude for what you are a part of. I have learned through my experimentation with varied pedagogical approaches and adoption of new technologies, that these moments are to be treasured and are what fuels passionate educators to continue with their pursuits to innovate and inspire. For each 'fall to your knees' moment there are also moments of failure that serve to 'reflect and refine' practice. Both moments equally as important and rich with learning for students and educators. I had a 'fall to my knees' moment witnessing my Grade 7 students so enthralled with their heat design projects that time stood still and it seemed as though I was in some amazing innovation incubator ...

“Joseph-Nicholas Delisle and his nephew by marriage, Philippe Buache, were obsessed by the idea of a vast sea, connected to the Pacific in northwestern North America. Beginning in 1752, Delisle and Buache published a series of maps and memoirs describing this mythical 'Mer de 1'ouest'; some of their maps appeared as late as 1779 in Diderot's Encyclopédie. The 'Mer de l'ouest' had been a strong motive for exploration but as early as the 1740s few others dared place it on a map”.  (Library and Archives Canada) Image and except retrieved from  the Historical Atlas of Canada During our second day of Innovation Stations  a rather interesting metaphor struck me. We were discussing how as early users of this educational technology, we have a responsibility to document our learning journey, successes and failures, so that others might learn from us and to provide documentation of our thinking processes for our own reflection. Maybe this is a little like ...

I've heard it said that Twitter is like a flowing river. It's impossible to catch all the water. You reach in when you can to fill up your cup. I'm not exactly sure where I heard this, but it captures what Twitter is for me. When I first started on Twitter, I was overwhelmed by the shear quantity of information and possible connections. I developed a bit of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Slowly I began to let go of my expectations and dip my cup when I needed that re-fueling/refreshing from my PLN. This past Saturday I dipped my cup in at a rather serendipitous time. I noticed a challenge from   @mrfusco  to complete #5posts5days. I have felt the need to get back to blogging and this was just the nudge I needed. Carlo's first blog asks, 'Why blog?' and this ties in perfectly with the ideas I wanted to share today. 1/5 #5posts5days - Why Blog? https://t.co/HmJkOGFYhD pic.twitter.com/PeBIOSUihJ — Carlo Fusco (@mrfusco) March 6, 2017 Why do I blog?  I blog ...

Alright Twitterverse. You've done it. You've given me the much needed nudge to get back to blogging. It started this morning with this post and the threads that followed. How do you help ignite the passion inside of your students? @slwindisch pic.twitter.com/lh1ivpJl4J — Rolland Chidiac (@rchids) March 5, 2017 @rchids @slwindisch @korytellers @missjessweber @cherandpete @DerekRhodenizer follow up with, if this then how do we achieve and assess? — Jonathan So (@MrSoclassroom) March 5, 2017 So I visited @MrSoclassroom's latest blog post: The purpose of teaching is .... He commented on Cathy Fosnot's quotation, "The purpose of teaching is to help students learn ... however, without learning there is no teaching" . I think the quotations by  @slwindisch  and @mrsoclassroom  fit together quite perfectly. The purpose of teaching is to help students learn. But what are we guiding them to learn about? And why that? These are the questions...

My final task in the CPCO PQP 10 day challenge is to create a post summarizing my thoughts on what it means to be a digital leader. This happens to coincide with my participation at the MISA Innovation conference today in London. Rather serendipitous! In one of the open spaces, discussion centered around teacher/administration buy-in. How do we move the system forward? A key concept we kept coming back to was the idea of partnerships . - Partnerships between administrators and teachers where risk is embraced. This relies heavily on trust and both individuals taking a co-learning stance. It's about asking the 'What if...' and 'How might ...' questions. - Partnerships between teachers perhaps through demonstration classrooms or informal mentorship opportunities. - Partnerships between administrators, teachers, and students (learning with and from each other). Building these partnerships requires time and the alignment of resources with priorities. Changing t...

Last week, we visited Daniel Pink's website as a class and viewed examples of "What's Your Sentence?" responses. Students then spent some time thinking about who they are in a quest to come up with their own sentence. I found it quite incredible how much you can learn about somebody from simply one sentence. What is the essence of that person that they wish the world to see of them? Powerful!   Students then added personal reflections about their sentence to their blogs. I am adding purposeful time for meditation, prayer, and reflection to work towards the Catholic Graduate expectations. This includes providing more opportunities for students to reflect on who they are and how they wish to impact the world they live in.  As the students completed their own blogs, I reflected on my own sentence to model reflective and creative thinking. Summarizing oneself in as few words as possible is a difficult feat. Who am I as an educator, a leader, a sister, a daughter...

As part of my experience teaching and travelling in China, I was asked to respond to a few questions upon my return. Here are my thoughts ... As a professional educator, what did you learn through this experience? Prior to departing, the STEM team got together frequently to plan and organize our activities. This solidified for me the importance of collaborative planning.  Preparing for the unknown brought a whole new challenge, but I enjoyed thinking through possibilities and discussing them with colleagues. This continued when we arrived in China and we spent time gathering together in our hotel rooms, discussing how our lessons unfolded and making modifications as needed to deliver the most relevant and engaging lessons for our students. I think building collaborative cultures like we developed over the course of our planning and implementation for SFLS is something we could work on in our own schools. These are often done formally within divisions, but more informal co...