Bannock!

It's been a busy back-to-school time. Report cards are going to be due soon and I will have many different presentations happening. I wanted to write about my recent work with the primary division students on one of the Blue Spruce award-nominated books as part of my library program.

There are a lot of nuances in language in the library world recently and it's useful to be able to understand the differences. For instance, our school board is no longer advocating / prioritizing resources for the Forest of Reading program in the same way that was done in the past. It has to do with a policy on selecting resources and understanding community needs. This doesn't mean that we are prohibited from running the Forest of Reading program; it means that individual schools will be responsible for registering and purchasing the specific books. It can cause a lot of confusion when terms like "we are no longer supporting the Forest of Reading" are shared. "Library collection development activities" can also be a perplexing turn of phrase, but I digress.

I have switched up the way I run the Forest of Reading program for my older students. We don't have the budget to buy multiple copies of the same titles, so this year, instead of having it as an open activity that all students can dabble in, students had to apply to be in the reading club and we placed a cap on the number of students that could participate. Yes, it does mean that not everyone can be involved, but my hopes are to a) raise the percentage of students who are qualifying to vote (thereby increasing their "reading stamina"), and b) by its exclusivity, encourage students to want to join (FOMO?) instead of committing half-heartedly. Instead of using up all my lunch hours to conduct Forest of Reading chats, I have reserved Wednesdays at lunch for students to read and converse about the books. That way, I can run other clubs on separate days (such as K Pop Demon Hunter Club on Tuesdays at lunch. More on that in another post.)

My Blue Spruce program is mostly unchanged, although I will be using it more more thoroughly with the ESL students in addition to the K-3 classes.

Last week, a wonderful supply teacher was in for me and read Bannock in a Hammock to some of the classes. She emailed me afterwards to note that some of the students had requested that we make bannock in class.

When there is a request like that, how can you refuse?

The recipe that Masiana Kelly, the author, includes in her book uses lard. Even though that is the method that some Inuit people use to make their bannock, I chose a simpler recipe that substituted oil.

The students loved it! Here are some photos, followed by some tips if you choose to do this with a class. These photos are just the ones that don't show student faces. I took dozens more of the students in action.

1) Have another adult with you!

I was very lucky to have "Ms. Christine" present. Christine is the grandmother of one of our students and she has begun volunteering once a week in the library. At one point, with the kindergarteners, we had four adults in the room helping - and it was necessary! Christine monitored the oven and was the regular presence while I cycled different groups in and out of the staff room.

2) Bring more than you need!

I ran out of flour TWICE! The first time, I flew over to the neighbourhood store to buy more. The second time, thankfully other teachers had some in their rooms that I could use to powder the tables so it wouldn't stick as much.

3) Be realistic with your time.

I tried this with two classes on Monday, seeing them for 70 minutes each time. Then, I replicated the activity with three classes on Tuesday, seeing them for only 40 minutes. I would have loved to have done so much more with the teaching possibilities. Only once or twice was I able to:

• discuss why lard would be used in an Inuit recipe for bannock (think what's available in the local environment)
• have students examine equivalent fractions with the measuring cups
• have students do every step of the preparation themselves
• slowly read the recipe instructions (which Christine copied for me on chart paper) so students could consult the directions independently
• still have book exchange as part of their library period

4) Give students something to do while they wait their turn.

Little kids get restless. The best thing I did was spread flour on the table in front of them and ask them to touch it. The primary purpose was to avoid the dough sticking to their fingers but a secondary benefit was that they were preoccupied with playing with the flour.

5) Accept that it will be messy.

Christine and I cleaned the staff room on Monday but we still received feedback from the staff that it was insufficient. Flour, water, baking powder, salt and vegetable oil are incredibly hard to remove from surfaces. On Tuesday, I think we cleaned the table tops at least three times with a variety of different cleaning tools. 

The expense, and mess, and work was worth it. I know this because the next day, a Grade 2 student passed me a bannock cake she made at home with her older sister! She used melted butter instead of vegetable oil and it was tasty! We are also working on Indigenous education as part of our school improvement plan related to the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It can be challenging to have students understand cultural practices and traditions that are not their own, but books such as Bannock in a Hammock as well as concrete activities such as cooking food convey information in a way that does not appropriate Indigenous culture, centering the voices of people from Indigenous communities through books they've authored. 

Overly Attached

One of the great things about being a teacher is that you get to develop connections with students. When you are a classroom teacher, you "belong" to your students, and they in turn, "belong" to you in a special way for that year that you are together. I've heard that some educators are reluctant to become specialist teachers because they fear that they will not have bonds as deep or as meaningful with students that they don't see every day. If any of you reading this blog house this worry inside you, let me reassure you that you can have meaningful connections with students who are not your primary responsibility. In fact, today's blog post considers the downside of having super-strong student-teacher relationships.

A goal for education is to allow students to develop social skills such as respect, collaboration, responsibility, resilience, initiative and independence. Sometimes, when students become overly attached to a teacher, they become dependent on their presence. When faced with other adults that aren't their preferred leaders, students can be rigid and resistant to taking directions or other ways of doing things. Decades and decades ago, when I first began teaching as an occasional teacher, I encountered this. As a supply teacher, you aren't surprised to hear the chastisement of "That's not the way OUR teacher does it!". Twice this week, there were incidents at school where students wanted to be in my class instead of elsewhere, and it let to some emotional outbursts. It's lovely to be loved, but how might I support these students in a way that helps them see that spending time with me isn't the sole answer?

Just as I've been in the shoes of both the adult that was wanted as well as the adult that wasn't wanted, I can also relate to the perspective of the students who really like working with a specific individual. I have to try hard not to become dependent on help from people - but it can be hard! For instance, I needed some assistance with a collaborative teaching unit for the Grade 7s in the Grade 7-8 class related to coding. (I mentioned it in this post from December.) My son initially helped me but I wanted to explore using Lego Spike Prime - the programmable robots we used for our First Lego League Robotics Team. (We just finished competing last month.) I turned to Matthew Malisani for help. Not only did he help me figure out the tasks that the students could do to lead up to using Spike Prime (he recommended to go from Scratch to Blockly Dash and then to Lego Spike Prime), he came and helped me teach the lesson! He even did a mini-lesson with the students on writing effective code. I scampered around, quickly taking pictures of the code they wrote and the Dash robots following their Keva-Plank tracks, so I wasn't useless, but I was impressed with how seemingly effortlessly Matt shaped the lesson and reinforced the concept of control structures (sequencing lines of code, repeating lines of code (loops), or selection to execute or not execute specific lines of code (conditional statements).

You'd think that I'd have an answer to becoming more independent and less reliance on the help of specific individuals because I'm experiencing it myself. Sadly, I don't. There are no nuggets of wisdom at the end of this blog post, just observations.

• I'm grateful for the affection and devotion shown to me by students.
• I promise to always keep it professional.
• I'll remind myself that no one is irreplaceable (You might be a student's favourite this year, but next year, they might not even say hi to you in the hall! Feelings change.)
• I will continue to build relationships with others / I will build communities of care involving many different people instead of a single entity / I can "diversify my portfolio", so to speak (this fits with advice I provided when I was recently interviewed by the wonderful Manjula Selvarajah for CBC Radio on what parents can do if they think their children are turning to AI chatbots for companionship - tune into your local CBC radio station to hear the short clip)

1st Post of 2026, New Word Included

 Happy New Year! I hope people who have had time off enjoyed the rest and rejuvenation. I've tried to combine my Christmas obligations with relaxation, while still devoting time to preparing for school and work - not an easy task!

Every year, since 2016, I've come up with a new #OneWord to use as my focus, instead of selecting a New Year's Resolution. The past words were:

• 2016 = continue
• 2017 = forgive
• 2018 = seek
• 2019 = enough
• 2020 = push
• 2021 = well
• 2022 = watch
• 2023 = lift
• 2024 = savor
• 2025 = refresh

My refresh goal went well. I wanted to continue doing some of the things I often do, but with renewed purpose and altered approaches. My ESL lessons improved, thanks to co-teaching with Connie Chan. My library space got a huge refresh with new furniture and a couple of indoor "trees". I didn't moisturize as much as I should have, but there's still time to take care of my skin.

My 2026 word was inspired by my upcoming obligations, as well as an argument I had with members of our school's First Lego League team! I'm not sure if the students were serious or just pulling my leg, but the students kept using the word "presentate". I guess they thought that if, in a celebration, you celebrate, then it goes to reason that in a presentation, you "presentate". No, no, no! It's present - PRESENT! Therefore my word of the year for 2026 is

PRESENT

Present is a wonderfully playful word to use. First of all, I can use it to mean to give a presentation. Between January and June, I will present eight times at five different conferences. I am going to spend a lot of time in 2026 presenting.

Present is also a synonym for gift. In 2026, I want to get presents and give presents! These presents don't have to be things bought in stores. They can be the gift of my time, talent, or treasure. I have a feeling that some people are having a rough go of things, and hopefully I can be the present they need.

Present also means being here, right now. It's neither the past nor the future. It's also the opposite of absent. I will try to be more present with others. I'll try to mindlessly scroll less on my phone when I'm at home and be engaged in conversations, even when the topics of discussion are hard to follow. I will try to keep my mind from wandering to plan for a pithy reply so I'm focused on what people are saying to me at that moment. I'm going to try and revise how I spend time with my parents, because with their dementia, the immediate present is all that they have. I suspect that my own children might have seismic shifts approaching and I want to be present for them and enjoy the present, before things change and I don't have access to them in the same way as before. 

So, wish me luck on my Word-of-the-Year.

P.S. Back in 2023, I deadlifted a personal record (PR) of 220 pounds. On Monday, December 29, 2025, I broke my record and lifted 225 pounds. It's not a huge improvement, but even slight gains should be celebrated (but not "presentated"). LOL

From The Work Of Your Own Hands

 This is the last post of mine for 2025. I wanted to combine reminiscing from the previous couple of weeks of school with some memories of this year's family Christmas celebration. At the risk of repeating the theme of a post I wrote in July of this year (called "Rediscovering the Joy of Creation"), I wanted to focus on the extreme satisfaction you can achieve when you build or make something by yourself.

The Rods and Connectors Duplex

During the last two weeks of school for 2025, people were getting sick left, right, and center. Usually, we are fortunate enough to have sufficient occasional teacher coverage, but we were overwhelmed with absences. To ensure teachers did not miss their preparation time, I took two classes simultaneously in the library. Supervising over forty children  at a time (although less because of illness) meant that my regularly scheduled programming had to take a back seat. Instead, the students were given rods and connectors and asked to build a structure, together. The first three images below were from the first afternoon we started.

The students loved this project! Some would start on their own and then join their cube to someone else's. They saw how powerful it was to combine forces and resources, and they got excited to see how large it became. It grew... and grew... and grew! It grew so large that students needed to stand on chairs to reach the top. It grew so large that students would inspect the foundation to ensure things weren't getting loose. It grew so large that we had to dismantle the rods and connectors furniture others had built (i.e. a table, chair, and TV) because we ran out of rods to add to the walls. 

The students were sad to take it down, but thanks to Mrs. Ngo's Grade 1-2 students on the last day of school, we carefully dismantled it.

The Garlic Pork

As I've mentioned before, I'm not a cook. However, I try my best to continue a cultural tradition my parents passed along to me - the preparation of the Christmas garlic pork. It's tedious, and a bit smelly, and the end product is definitely an acquired taste, but I'm proud when I taste the results and it's edible. I guess it's more meaningful for me because it takes so much effort and this is outside my area of expertise. I cooked it on Boxing Day this year.

The Cross Fit Canuck Snowman Workout

Every year around this time, our "box" (the term for a Cross Fit gym, often because it's in a warehouse-like boxy space) has a workout that gets the participants to build parts of a snowperson using equipment found in the gym. This was our contribution in 2023. The picture below was the snow person we made in 2024. (It's not posted anywhere else, so I had to immortalize it somehow.)

There must be something conditioned in my psyche - since my muscles are quite conditioned yet! - that readied me for this challenge, because a week before we had this same workout, I dreamed of how we would build our snowperson at the gym for this year! Don't tell my coaches, but it helps make the workout less painful. My husband and I were partners and we ended up making two snow folks for 2025.

(Big thanks to Coach Ann for taking this photo of us below with our "main" snowman and posting it to the Cross Fit Canuck Facebook page.)

It's goofy, but I have fun building a snowman with gym equipment. It exercises those creativity muscles as well as the physical ones I possess.

My Sister's Modified Song Lyric Gift

Christmas was special this year because my sister and her husband traveled all the way from Calgary. The last time Mary Carol was in Ontario for Christmas was 2020, but that doesn't really count, since the pandemic forced us to keep apart. The last Christmas we actually spent face-to-face was in 2017. She stayed with us for a few days beforehand, while her husband drove way up north to see his family. Mary made her special fudge, which I seem incapable of making. Delicious!

On Christmas Day itself, we wore matching PJ pants and custom-made shirts that Mary and Donald specifically designed for every member of the family. 

Mary goes all out for Christmas, and even had a theme to her gift purchases. (Cue the teacher in the movie "A Christmas Story" announcing that she wants her students to write a theme.) This year's theme was "food". In addition to her many, many gifts, Mary wrote us a song, to be performed at Christmas. Her song this year was to the Billy Joel tune, "We Didn't Start the Fire". If she's able to, she will send me a digital copy of the lyrics so I can share them here. I was going to type them out but it's four pages long with seven verses!

ETA - Here's the song!

1

Baking, frying, boil, saute, 

Roasting, grill in any way

Poaching. stir-fry. 

Marinating. Deep fry

Cranking up the barbeque

Simmering the beef stew

Sous vide, dry heat, 

cooking up a storm

2

sour, tangy, salty, sweet

Bitter, spicy, lots of heat

Carbohydrates, protein

Fats, and Oils, Omega-3

Oyster, Tarter, hot sauce

Salad aids in weight loss

Loading up on toppings

There’s no need for stopping!

CHORUS

We didn’t start the fire

It was always burning

Stomachs always churning

We didn’t start the fire

No, we didn’t light it

but we’re trying to fry it

3

Skip the dishes, uber eats

Order in, delivery

Food trucks, truck stops

Snacking on the go

Sample, bigger portion size

Buffets, super size my fries

Full plate great taste, 

Going back for more

Drive in Diner, dining scene

Dennys got a winning team

Coca-cola, sugar sweet

Processed foods and packaged treats

Kraft dinner, cracker jack

Fried spam, Big Mac

indigestion, never learn

trouble with some heart burn

CHORUS

We didn’t start the fire

It was always burning

Stomachs always churning

We didn’t start the fire

No, we didn’t light it

but we’re trying to fry it

4

Happy hour, breakfast, lunch

Cocktail hour, tea and brunch

Beer time, red wine,

Lemonade and lemon-lime

Feeling full but not full yet 

Eating faster, meat sweats

Muffin top and gaining weight

Skipping meals and eating late

5

Nitrates, beta carotene

Sorbates, Yellow dye 13

Citric acid, aspartame

Slowly making me insane

Hydronated fatty oils

MSG and so much more

Stabilizers by the Ounce

Chemicals I cannot pronounce

CHORUS

We didn’t start the fire

It was always burning

Stomachs always churning

We didn’t start the fire

No, we didn’t light it

but we’re trying to fry it

6

Elevated glycerides

40 percent BMI

allergies 

mini stroke

Cancer causing it’s no Joke

Acid reflux, heart disease

Vitamin deficiences

bloating, sleepless,

sweaty hands

Shortening your life span

Inflammation, excess fat, 

Diabetes, heart attack

Sickness rising every day

What else do I have to say?

CHORUS

We didn’t start the fire

It was always burning

Stomachs always churning

We didn’t start the fire

No, we didn’t light it

but we’re trying to fry it

7

Rolaids, Zantac, leptin meds

Drinking water before bed

New trick, ozempic

Losing weight real quick

Protein, fibre, fruits veggies

Bariatric surgery

Eating slowly, smaller plates

Throwing up what you just ate

Yo yo diets, Exercise

Keto, Atkins all are lies

Eating healthy, salad bowls

Setting realistic goals

Rising prices, groceries

GMO imported cheese

Shrink-flation at the store

I can’t take it anymore

We didn’t start the fire

It was always burning

Stomachs always churning

We didn’t start the fire

when the oven’s on

It will still burn on and on and on and on

We didn’t start the fire

It was always burning

Stomachs always churning

We didn’t start the fire

No, we didn’t light it

but we’re trying to fry it

We didn’t start the fire

You can blame the nation

For rising inflation

We didn’t start the fire

Though we’re smarter buyers

Prices are much higher

It took Mary a long time to work out the lyrics to her song. She had to listen to the original song over and over to remember the rhythm and cadence. Could she have had Generative AI create the song? Probably? Would it have been quicker to complete? Most definitely? But it would not have been as rewarding. I don't want this to be an anti-AI rant, but I desperately hope that technology does not take from us the willingness to make or do things that are time-intensive. Let us draw and write, sing and dance, not always because we have to, but because we want to. Did you see this article from December 19, 2025 about a singer having robot back-up dancers? What's next?

Thanks to everyone who has made 2025 a good year for me. Stay safe and we'll see you in 2026!