Full STEAM ahead with Blue Spruce Books

We're back from March Break and it feels as though we never left!

It's been a busy time in the school library and when I contemplated what to write about for this week, I took a peek at the photos I took. There were a lot of moments from the kindergarteners and the work they did related to this year's Blue Spruce nominees. I thought I'd highlight a few of our projects, give credit where we need to, and then get political at the end.

For the book Where Oliver Fits, the students created "pictures" using the flat shape blocks. Then, they worked with a partner. The original creator took away a piece of their picture and the friend had to determine what was missing. We all fit; we all belong.

For the book I Like Sharks Too, the students looked at a tutorial that showed them how to draw sharks. Then, after several practice attempts on mini-chalk boards, they created puppets that were "sharks on straws" and filmed them swimming in the ocean using green screen technology.

For the book The Magician's Secret, the students built a "story tunnel" using rods and connectors. Small groups collaboratively created an adventure story like the one the grandfather in the book makes, and then we programmed the Ozobot to "walk through" our story. We also drew and built artifacts for our personal group story.

 For the book Sun Dog, the students examined the illustrations and how they were created. They listed the Arctic animals mentioned in the story, selected one, and then used plasticine to make the animal and a background. They explored with blunt tools to make texture to resemble things like fur.

Credit time! Very few of these ideas came from me. Huge thanks goes to my dear friend, Peel District School Board teacher-librarian Melanie Mulcaster. Her site, Forest of Making 2019, is a treasure trove of multiple ways to explore the ideas and themes from the book in a hands-on way. I've written about Melanie before on this blog (and her Forest of Making site as well) but it deserves more recognition.

Credit also needs to go to Thess Isidro and Jen Cadavez, the Early Childhood Educators in two of the kindergarten classes. Their input cannot be underestimated. Thess was the one who thought up of the plasticine art activity for Sun Dog and she led the lesson. Being the modest person she is, in her Facebook post, the light shone on the student artists and on me, unnecessarily. As for Jen, she has been so good with extending the time for these activities into regular class time and sacrificing her own time to rearrange schedules to make completion possible. We only have a 40 minute period for media and many of these tasks take much longer. She is also the "wellness thermometer" and knows exactly the right things to say to students who get distraught when we have to leave the library and the activity isn't completed. Last year, the two of us designed some activities together for a Blue Spruce nominated book.

Here's where it gets political. The current provincial government has made some serious cuts to education. They've increased class sizes in Grades 4-8 and high school. I can't find the Facebook post that alerted people to a polling survey being used via phone that asked citizens about their opinions on how to staff kindergarten classes, suggesting that the current model of a OCT certified teacher and a registered ECE together could be replaced. Despite claiming that kindergarten caps will stay in place, there's no guarantee that kindergarten as it stands today will stay. (See this CBC article from February 2019 about potential kindie cuts.)

I could not do what I do with our kindergarten students without the help of another qualified adult like the ECEs. Even in the smaller kindergarten class at my school that does not have an ECE, often the classroom teacher will come in and permit extra time to complete these activities, working together with me as a similar type of team. Be wary of "cost-saving measures" in education. Read from many different sources about what might be axed and why. If, like me, these actions concern you, make your opinion known. This ad, produced by the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, appeared in the Toronto Star on March 16. I'll end today's blog, about programs and educational professionals who make it possible, whose jobs could be in peril, with this thought.

March Break: What I Should vs What I Want

March Break came at just the right time. I needed to recharge my batteries, take a breather, and catch up. My week was filled with activities, but I didn't approach all of these events with the same enthusiasm. Here's a chart, which is a replica of my calendar.

2 of the 3 Cosplay Sisters making wishes come true at Toronto Comic Con!
Follow them on Twitter/Instagram at @CosplaySisters

Monday March 11	Tuesday March 12	Wednesday March 13	Thursday March 14	Friday March 15	Saturday March 16	Sunday March 17
Morning = Fix glasses Afternoon = Visit Morgan & Tracey Evening = Funeral visitation / Cross Fit	Morning = Oil change / Breakfast with Mary & James / Funeral Afternoon = Lunch with Denise	Morning = Get carpet estimate Afternoon = Help Mom clean her sewing room Evening = Cross Fit	Morning = Finish proposals Afternoon = Doctor’s Appointment & Make Up Class session Evening = Teach Marriage Prep class	Morning = Finish sewing dress at sewing store Afternoon = Finish glasses for costume Evening = Toronto Comic Con	Morning = Visit carpet store Afternoon = Drop off library book / Grocery shop Evening = Movie night with family	Morning = Church Afternoon = Breakout Con Evening = Mark school assignments, prep school tasks

(Apologies if the text does not appear nicely on the web page; I had to tinker a bit with it and it didn't always fit as it should.)

There were several tasks that aligned more with things I "should do" versus the things that I "wanted to do". Funerals are never fun, but I wanted to go to pay my respects to one of my mother's dear friends, Pat Puddister. (Rest in peace, "Auntie PP".) Errands weren't particularly onerous, as long as they didn't take too long. Visiting my friends was a definite bonus.  Racing to finish my costume in time for Toronto Comic Con was hectic, but satisfying.

Tangent time: I knew I'd be going to Toronto Comic Con for a day with my son and daughter, but only decided at the last minute that I'd try to complete my cosplay outfit so that I could wear it at the convention. This costume was more detailed than many of my previous creations. I had been working on it slowly for several weeks. With guidance from my Toronto Parks and Rec instructor, Natalie, I had made my own pattern, pinned and cut out the pieces, and pinned them together. My last step was a scary one for me - I had to sew them all together. I couldn't go to Natalie, so I turned to Cathy, the lady that I purchased both of my sewing machines from at Sew Here, So Now.

Cathy had offered, once I bought my machines from her, to support me in any way I needed if I was in the middle of a project. I tried to go on Thursday morning, but she wasn't in the store. So, on Friday morning, the day of the convention, I hustled to her store to finish the dress. I even forgot my cell phone because I was in that much of a hurry to get her help. (This is why I have no photos of the final steps I took. All of these photos are the shots of me working on Thursday to cut, notch and pin the other side of the dress.)

Cathy was rather surprised to see me there.
"You can do it", she said. "Just sew it."
"I just need you near", I explained. "In case things go wrong"
I wasn't sure how to lay the material out on my sewing machine to start.
Cathy showed me how, and also showed me a new setting on my Pfaff machine that allowed me to do "stretch stitching", which she said would be better for the type of fabric I was working with for this project.
My first attempt caught the material in the bottom. Cathy came over and adjusted a few things and then had me continue on my own.

It took a while, but I did it. I finished sewing the dress.Cathy's presence gave me the confidence I needed to get the basics done. I didn't bother with hemming the bottom, the neck hole or the arm holes, because there wasn't a lot of time. I still had to go home and figure out how to make my character's visor.

Here is a photo of the character from My Hero Academia that I was trying to portray: Recovery Girl. I bought the wig, boots, gloves and lab coat (thank you Value Village for the coat!), made the dress, and temporarily skipped doing the big needle cane and the belt. The trickiest part for the costume was how to mimic those big pink things on the side of her head. I actually found a visor on the ground and covered it with purple cellophane to look like the glasses. In the end, I settled on a temporary measure. I took two juice boxes, covered them with pink foam, and slipped them over the arms of the visor.

It worked! My daughter, the regular cosplayer, didn't have her outfit "con-ready", so she wore regular clothes. My son wore his Deku costume from the anime/manga My Hero Academia. We posed for photos and got compliments from other conference attendees. We even posed with other people who were decked out in similar, My Hero, outfits. My son doesn't like posing for photos with strangers as much as I do, but he survived.

Recovery Girl and Deku, aka me and my son, at Toronto Comic Con!

(I return to my regularly scheduled blog post thread.)
So, if all of these things were tasks I wanted to do, what was it that I didn't want to do?

Two things: cleaning, and doing school work.

You can tell that I wasn't too keen on marking, because despite all good intentions, I left it until Sunday afternoon to attack. I like the results of cleaning, but my husband will attest that I do not like to clean, and my mom wasn't thrilled with the idea of getting rid of anything in her filled-to-capacity-but-never-used drawers.

What does this indicate to me? I hope no educator actually gave any assignments to do over the March Break. If I didn't want to mark them or work on them, as the teacher, I doubt any students would want to complete them during a vacation. If students chose to do things related to school, that's different from feeling obligated to work. Not everyone is privileged enough to get to travel or attend cool in-town events during the week away from school, but the antidote for boredom is not giving school-related tasks. I'm sure that once the busy post-March Break school season begins, I'll regret not using some of my "free time" to finish things, but like I said at the start of this blog post, I needed a rest, and I got it. (No knocks against some of my teacher friends who spent their whole time working on school-related stuff - I'm looking at you, Salma Nakhuda - but as long as it was your choice, I accept and support you!)

Bring the Hair Salon to School

Me after the transformation, Nicole and Alex

Last Monday, March 4, 2019 I had two special guests come to my school. Nicole is my hair stylist, and her friend Alex is a videographer. The purpose of their visit was to colour and cut my hair in front of several groups of students, as part of the students' media studies about hair.

Neither Nicole nor Alex are certified teachers, and they don't do school visits, but both of them did a phenomenal job of answering the students' questions, explaining the process in an understandable way, and keeping the students interested. I was really grateful that Alex was there to record the whole procedure. It's hard to take photos when you are the one having things done to you! Plus, while Nicole and I were washing the dye out in the sink, Alex took the time to explain what he was doing while capturing it all, from different angles and with specific shots.

Nicole's "tool kit"

 Nicki has been my hair stylist for a very long time, and I trust her with my hair because she's incredibly talented. There have been many times in the past where I've seated myself in her chair and told her to do whatever she wanted. This was the case with my "hair salon at school" session.

I've allowed my students in the past to vote on what colours they'd like me to dye my hair and I've complied. It's not that radical of a concept. Hair colour, unlike tattoos, isn't permanent. Hair can grow out, and when you have an expert like Nicki behind the bottle, chances are that even the most outrageous colour choice will turn out. (The exception was when I tried to dye my hair at home on my own using Kool Aid. Thankfully, Nicki was around to fix the disaster the next day.) I've had blue hair, red hair, brown hair, blonde hair, pink hair, purple hair, black hair and silver hair, as well as some colour combinations. The one colour I haven't done is green, and that's at the request of my long-suffering husband. He asked for no green because he doesn't want me "to look like a super-villain". This actually made for a good class discussion about how hair communicates messages.

It's been actually quite a while since I last coloured my hair.  (I checked photos, and it looks like it was the summer of 2018.) I'm surprised I've lasted this long. Usually I get bored with my current hair colour and ask for a change. I've been comfortable with my silver and white locks, despite the implied, stereotypical message that my hair suggests, that I'm "old". Changing it again, for the sake of student learning, was an easy choice.

Showing dye

I didn't give the students a choice this time on what my new hair colour would be. Part of the reason was because I didn't have time to survey all the students. Part of the reason was, despite all our conversations about how hair communicates certain messages, many young students were enamoured with the idea of my having rainbow coloured hair. I think one of the (many) things that they learned with Nicki's visit is that changing your hair colour takes a LONG time.

Close-up views of the 

Nicki decided that she would colour my entire head purple, then pull out several strands at the front, bleach them so they'd hold the colour more - this was one of the many science-related things the students and I learned about hair from Nicki - and then colour those strands pink. We began at about 1:00 pm with the Grade 3 class, continued with the Grade 5-6 students watching, and ended at 3:00 pm after a post-recess visit from the Grade 1 class and a period with the Grade 1-2 class. Some of the other classes were disappointed that they did not get a chance to see the transformation in person and asked if I'd be dyeing my hair again in a couple of weeks. I explained that it wouldn't be healthy for my hair and that, thanks to Alex, they'd get to see a video compilation of the process. I didn't expect for them to make an educational video, but I'm so glad that that's the plan.

Some of the things we learned included the role of melanin and pigment in hair colour. Nicki explained why white / grey hair loses its colour and how it often needs to be treated so that it will "accept" artificial colours. She talked about the role of oxygen and heat in changing hair colour. She mixed chemicals like peroxide and dye in front of them (safely, I promise!) and gave students a close-up view of the cap she used on me to separate the hair so she could bleach strands.

She answered a lot of questions about how she learned to be a stylist. This was a great opportunity for my students to hear about other career paths. So many of our students are pushed to study at university and we don't always emphasize the trades enough. Working as a tricologist / cosmetologist / hair stylist is truly a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) profession. Nicki showed them how she measured with her fingers while cutting and this was real-life math in action. Mixing chemicals is hands-on science.

Photo I shared on Twitter of the talk

I think Nicki and Alex were equally as impressed with our students as they were of them. One of my students asked about "ombre" hair and a Grade 1 boyknew how bleach worked. An older student asked about a Japanese chemical technique for curling or straightening hair (I can't recall which) and asked for Nicki's opinion on the process. One student described the scent of one of the chemicals as "like watermelon" and we had to agree with that unexpected observation. Despite one of my Grade 2s yelling "This is boring" (which he does in class regularly, so this wasn't a surprise), all of the students really were captivated. I can hardly wait to share the video that Alex makes (which itself will be a perfect media learning opportunity, to see how over two hours of filming gets pruned and edited to be a much shorter, more shaped experience).

Until the final video is ready and available to be shared, watch this short Facebook video of Nicki and Alex's reaction to their visit.

https://www.facebook.com/wikid.nikki/videos/10156081394073730/?t=3

If you'd like to hire Alex or Nicki, follow:

• @labmediacompany on Instagram for Alex's photography and cinematography services
• @komotria.official on Facebook for Nicki's hair salon services
• @komotria_official on Instagram for Nicki's hair salon services

Birthdays - Little Gestures Make Big Impressions at 47

When my son and daughter were little, I loved planning elaborate parties to celebrate their birthdays. We'd have a theme, and take tons of photos, and make some cool memories. Once they hit the teen years, the extravaganzas ended. Going out to dinner was enough. Birthdays aren't as big of a deal once you pass a certain age, it seems.

Friday, March 1, 2019 was my 47th birthday. I didn't have a lot planned. The night before, I went out to dinner with my husband and my sister, who is visiting from Calgary. The timing was just a happy coincidence. After dinner that night, we spent some time with my parents, taking selfies with my mother, trying to teach her how to make "duck lips" and watching funny animal videos on YouTube with Mom and Dad.

Like I alluded, I didn't expect much from my actual birthday. My parents aren't so sharp with dates anymore, so I didn't expect any phone calls. I just planned a regular day at work, some Auntie Mary's fish and chips for lunch (my favourite source of halibut) and our regular Cross Fit workout in the evening.

Well, it turns out that there was a lot more recognition than I expected, and from unexpected corners - the staff and students at the school where I work. Mrs. Isidro, one of our talented ECEs, brought me a present (thank you Thess for the journal, hot beverage mug and cold beverage cup!) Mr. Roberts' Grade 7s came down to the library as a group to sing "Happy Birthday" to me, and they drew some art on their blackboard for me. They weren't the only singers and artists. Mr. Tong and Ms. Chiu's students sang, as did Ms. Wadia's Grade 8s. Ms. Wadia's class also took time to decorate a blackboard for me. A crew from Ms. Daley's class ran downstairs after school to say Happy Birthday. There were a lot of well-wishes.

Posing near the board designed by Ms. Wadia's students

The simple but sweet drawing in Mr. Roberts' class

Then there were the kind words from cousins, colleagues and friends on Facebook and on Twitter, as well as my Sweat 60 instructor and workout buddies in person. I have to say, I was really touched by all the efforts made to let me know that I was in people's thoughts on my "special day". I know it takes little time for us on social media to see the notification and quickly type a birthday greeting, but that people take the time really means a lot. I was really taken with the Grade 8 tribute board, because hidden on the board are lyrics from songs I sang to them when they were in kindergarten, as well as the famous "media definition" that they can still recite. Knowing that some teaching of mine still "sticks", nearly a decade later, is one of the best gifts a student could give me.

Thank you everyone (I can't list them all - it was over 60 notifications on Facebook alone!) for your birthday wishes. It is the little things that can be a big deal. When my cousin Beth told me she reads this blog regularly and made a point to ask about my skinny pig, that makes me feel I matter, even when I don't get to see her that often. Keep sharing those kind words and making those what-seem-like-little gestures - you never know how uplifting they can be.