What To Highlight at the Open House

 I realized as I prepared this week's blog post that it has similar themes to last week's prose about our visit from the Ontario Deputy Minister of Education and our board director. Both moments were about presenting and promoting the best things that happen in our school. However, the focus is a bit different because the audience is a bit different. If you are savvy in media literacy, you'll recognize that this idea is part of a key concept: that audiences negotiate meaning. 

Thursday, April 25, 2024 was our Open House night for the families of our students. It is an opportunity for our school community to check out all the different kinds of learning happening in our classrooms. It is NOT meant to be a "dog and pony show", i.e. something that is outside of our regular daily practice that is meant to show off. It is a more informal chance for the significant adults in students' lives to get a glimpse at some of the projects or assignments the learners have been working on so diligently.

I deliberately chose not to host a book fair in the library at this time, even though it would probably be a huge money-maker, for two big reasons. One: I run a book fair during Curriculum Night and it is a huge endeavor. Two: I want parents and guardians to see the library as a place for cross-curricular learning, not simply a spot to borrow books or buy books. 

This year, I deliver a lot of prep coverage. I teach social studies to Grades 1-4, drama to Grades 1-2, drama/dance to a single Grade 3-4 class, and a myriad of subjects, mostly arts-based, to all the kindergarten classes. I deliberated long and hard about WHAT exactly I would display that would demonstrate the learning going on. Some of my artifacts are ... <chef's kiss> and others were, in my opinion, a bit "weak sauce". Let me elaborate and defend/explain myself.

Grade 4 Social Studies

I was most pleased with this display for several reasons. It is based on the most current activities we are doing at this time, so it's fresh and new. It is visually appealing and accessible to adults who aren't familiar with the curriculum. (The front table has pictures that the students drew of ancient people, places, or things, that they had to sort into the correct civilization of origin.) The display also contained objects that the visitors and students could interact with - my chain mail armour, which I wrote about on this blog last month. Parents and students who weren't even part of the Grade 4 cohort came to touch the heavy shirt and even try it on with assistance.

Grade 3 Social Studies

For the Grade 3 display, there was a bit of artificiality involved. All the students created a "City in a Box", but as the description sign correctly states, this was from last term. I knew I would not have enough room or space to show all the Grade 3 projects, so I invited a few students to volunteer to have their work highlighted in the library. I provided extra time for these eight students to polish their project a bit more than they were able to when they first worked on this assignment in January and February. They quite enjoyed getting some extra time to "fancy up" their boxes and seriously depleted my stock of glue gun sticks in the process!

Grade 1 & 2 Social Studies

This was the trickiest group to promote and the one with which I was least satisfied. I will be doing a glorious inquiry project with the students in a couple of weeks. The problem is, we haven't started the big inquiry project yet. We've done a few mini-projects that are collaborative Google Slide Decks, but not all the children have completed their designated slide. It takes a long time to establish some of the content required in social studies. Therefore, I thought it was most realistic to offer for display their social studies folders, which contain their work samples. It's very paper-centric, which I didn't really like. It's not very photogenic. However, it gave those parents who did come by a chance to see the marks that will eventually shape their final report card grade. It's not pretty, but it's practical. The purpose was for the families to see student work, and this is the work I had available to show.

Kindergarten Dance, Drama, Music and Media

Many of the things I do with the kindergarten students are experiential. We play pretend, move to music, sing and dance. Thankfully, my primary means of pedagogical documentation for these activities involve photographs. I took the pictures I captured from February until April and combined them into a huge slide show that I projected on my interactive white board. For instance, in the photo above, I spread a blue and yellow top sheet on the carpet and we pretended we were at the beach. This group grabbed some storage container lids to pretend to be in boats on the ocean. Having actual photos of the students being active really helped me feel like I was giving an actual glimpse of the kindergarten learning that really happens in the library.

There were some absolutely PHENOMENAL other classrooms with fabulous examples of student work. A few I want to highlight here are:

• Ms. Pillai's multi-disciplinary project with her Grade 4-5s that combined visual arts, oral communication, reading, and writing. Her students read about Black Trailblazers from history and used mixed-media with watercolor paints to reveal the people they researched. Varshinie even helped them create QR codes that, when scanned, led to an audio recording of the students reading a passage about their famous Black Canadian.
• Mrs. Commisso's Grade 2-3 work samples that combine art with math with writing. On her students' desks were stories that they wrote based on pictures they made and drew using 2D wooden geometric shapes. They also had these adorable flower gardens that had math (fractions or addition facts or something really neat - I can't recall exactly what).
• Ms. Daley and Ms. Wadia had their intermediate division rooms filled with all sorts of incredible work. Their history projects took center stage but they also had other kinds of work, such as intricate art pieces (in the Grade 7 room, it was Japanese Notan art and in the Grade 8 room, it was pleated dual perspective social justice drawings). 
• Mr. Malisani's kindergarten room was filled to the brim with all sorts of incredible objects that the students had created. In fact, when I went in their classroom to take them away for a dance period, they had so many things to show me that we never left! They were very proud of their plasticine artwork that they created, inspired by Barbara Reid. They wrote about their art work and had photos of them in the process of creating the art. Their finished products were on tiny easels that their teacher had purchases specifically for this purpose. They had plants that they are growing in the window and a cityscape that takes up an entire table. They had books that they were able to read that related to all of their inquiries, and they had activity stations that Matthew, their teacher, had set up so that the grown-ups could experience some of the tasks the students do in class, from math games to more plasticine art centers.

I really hope that the parents and guardians appreciated the evening. Even though it's not supposed to be "fake", everyone spent a great deal of time tidying up their classrooms and making everything "just so" for our guests. 

Put Your Best Foot Forward

 Last Thursday was an important day for our school. We hosted some very important visitors - the deputy Minister of Education and the director of the Toronto District School Board.

Our admin team wanted to impress our guests. Our superintendent recommended our school as the location for this gathering, and we were selected for the honour, so we did not want to let him down either. (The poor man actually fell sick on this day and was unable to attend.)

How did we get ready? We had LOTS of meetings to discuss the agenda and the flow for the tour. My usually relaxed principal was anxious and very concerned that everything go well. We reviewed what to say. We collected artifacts. We wandered the school, checking that everything was in tip-top shape. We had to determine how to deliver our message to recipients that possessed very different levels of familiarity with education. (We couldn't oversimplify but at the same time, we couldn't use too much school terminology.)  I asked our amazing adult helper, Pat McNaughton, to come by and tidy the shelves. We plotted and planned. We were also prepared to be flexible.

Good thing flexibility was part of the plan. Due to uncontrollable circumstances, we were twenty minutes off schedule. My principal pointed out that none of the things that Colleen or Kate saw were staged; these were all typical things that happened in the classes we visited. One of the communications team members from TDSB was there to take photos (like the first one from this blog post, taken from Colleen Russell-Rawlings' social media post) but I snuck in a few of my own. Here's a quick glimpse.

This is Krisha from Communications. She and the strategic advisor to the director were there before the others, so Connie Chan and I talked to them a little bit about the Board Games Club they saw taking place in the library as they entered. They even had a chance to play one of the games our Board Games Club loves the most - Buildzi. Usually Krisha is behind the camera; I'm glad she got to reverse roles a bit.

Here are Colleen and Kate talking with Diana Hong, our Grade 5-6 teacher who is also a K-12 math coach. Diana is a big proponent and supporter of Building Thinking Classrooms. The students are so used to having adults come to observe that they continued doing their work without a second glance at the extra bodies.

This is a photo of Farah Wadia, Grade 8 teacher extraordinaire, with Kate Manson-Smith, the deputy Minister of Education, checking out the art that incorporated social and eco-justice and perspective taking.

There's always things we wish could have done differently. I wish we could have seen all the classes in the school. As it was, we went to five classes. I wish there was a way to introduce the entire staff. We had to cut short our explanation of how we addressed one third of our school improvement plan, the section on belonging, joy and well-being. We covered it in other ways as we shared tales from the academic/achievement strand and the Indigenous education / future success strand, but it's a shame we didn't delve more into how our PLCs help drive our actions. I am filled with admiration for our TDSB director; she is brilliant and perceptive. (I said as much last year when I saw her at Unleashing Learning 2023 - Unleashing Learning 2024 was the very next day after her visit to our school.) I wish that we had time to answer some of the questions Colleen posed about percentage discrepancies and adult support. There's no need for regret. At our post-visit debrief, our admin team agreed that the event went quite smoothly, even with our most unpredictable of students - the kindergarten learners enthusiastically welcomed the grown-ups and after a hug from a little girl, Kate exclaimed that she was not used to getting affection like that as part of her daily work. 

Thank you to everyone that played a part in making the visit such a success. Next week will be a different kind of busy, with Track and Field, Open House and Jump Rope for Heart on the agenda. It's time to put our best feet forward again, this time for our families and school community. (It won't look quite like this, but I just had to share my polka-dot ensemble to end this post!)

Surround Yourself

 I was driving home late last Thursday night and was listening to The John Tesh Radio Show. During that broadcast, Tesh mentioned that your IQ is an average of your five closest friends. I thought that sounded interesting so I did a little investigation. It turns out that this is a controversial assertion, with articles supporting and debunking this claim. Whether or not it's true, it got me thinking about people I spend time with and how they enrich me in different ways.

Moses

On that specific evening, I had the great fortune to reconnect with a friend. We estimated that it had been about eight years since we had last been in touch. The conversation bubbled and percolated like a tasty, nourishing soup and we talked for hours. It's a shame we didn't take any photos together, but we were more focused on catching up and discussing some really meaty issues in education, rather than documenting with photos. He is, in my eyes, a brilliant pedagogue and every time we chat, I leave feeling smarter, with more insights and suggestions into improving my teaching practice.

James

My husband James is fantastic. I'm so lucky to be married to him. One of his many traits that I find so appealing is his keen mind. He is intellectually curious and reads voraciously. For today's blog post, I was trying to determine the narrative path it would take, and through our discussion, he helped me see how it would proceed without feeling forced. This is neither the first time, nor the last time that James will help me with my work. He's not a teacher, but he understands teaching, so it helps me get out of my echo chamber.

Me and my boys

Mary at the wheel

To be honest, my entire family helps me grow. I admire my daughter Mary for the way she has achieved such a healthy work-life balance; she is much more mature than I was at her age! (One of my former principals even said as much about us, and this was when Mary was a teenager!) Her cosplay outfits are so creative and she's introduced the family to new restaurants and foods. She's thoughtful and brave and tolerant. My son Peter continually impresses me; I consult him about all sorts of tech and pop culture issues (from memes to video creation [Peter edited our Family Feud audition tape last year]). He is turning lemons into lemonade - instead of despairing about how hard it is to find employment, he is using his time to grow his YouTube channel and it is paying off. (Please watch or subscribe to his channel if you are interested in gaming and modern media production in general.) 

My 2024 birthday dinner at The Prague

Renee

Do you have a "work wife"? According to a Newsweek article, a quote attributed to Marilyn Whitman and Ashley Manderville,

"Simply put, a work spouse is one's 'go-to' person, a confidant, one who knows you better than anyone else at work,"

Although the usual reference involves a member of the opposite sex, my "work bestie" is a woman. Renee Keberer and I have worked together on and off since 2004, when we joined my current school. We are physical opposites but collaborate extremely well together. If you search my blog with the keyword "Renee", you'll find pages and pages of mentions, often describing how our conversations lead to new perspectives and helpful rethinking. Her strengths are where I have room for improvement and together we are better. (For instance, I'm all about the big ideas and she has a firm grip on the "nitty gritty" aspects. She is great with numbers and I am good with words.) We are the team that designs the school yearbook each year and we are also running the Board Game Club together. This is her last year in the profession, as she is retiring in June. Many people have asked me how I will cope without my "other half". I reply that I've had a bit of practice; Renee  left in 2011 for a central position in our board. I cried torrents of tears in the car the first day we had a staff meeting and she wasn't there, but I know now that we don't have to be constantly together for our friendship to survive.

So what's the point? Even if this IQ idea isn't true, it's valuable for students, teachers, and people in general to surround themselves with others who will help them stay positive, encourage them, and provide intellectual stimulation that will let them consider different perspectives and allow them to think and grow. Good influences - that's what we need!

 

Easily Eclipsed

 I wasn't going to write about today's solar eclipse. Western news and social media outlets are gleefully sharing all the hubbub surrounding this astronomical event. People are travelling to certain cities to ensure they get the best view. The city of Niagara Falls will be under a state of emergency because of the immense number of visitors expected to descend for this occasion. 

In the end, I had to acquiesce. Something like this that happens so infrequently yet so spectacularly (the last one that impacted Canada was in 1979) that I couldn't ignore it. There are lots of things happening in the world that should probably have more attention paid to them. However, the "novel" can easily overshadow (dare I say, "eclipse") the "mundane".

A similar phenomenon occurs in education as well. The special events get more attention, more photos, more yearbook page space. I just went through all the photos I took from January to now to select some for my annual school scrapbook. It's more interesting and flashy to select things that are out-of-the-ordinary, such as the students skiing at Albion Hills, hosting the first Rubik's Cube Club meeting or building joysticks during Robotics Club.

This post is a reminder to me that I need to give equal time and attention to the boring but necessary tasks that are part of day-to-day teaching. I'm making a point of writing down on my to-do list these chores so that I don't ignore them. It's things like 

• evaluating the social studies classwork completed by the Grade 1s and 2s
• recording marks on my spreadsheets so I'll be ready for report card writing
• planning an assessment for the Grade 3s and 4s mid-way through to see if they understand the concepts already presented
• documenting the library recess visits so I can include the numbers in my annual report

We need special days to spice things up once in a while but it's the routine tasks that help us function. Trust me, I'd rather devote my time to something "sparkly" (like crafting my IMLRS presentations) but we need the basics done first. 

I don't have any plans to view the solar eclipse live. Toronto isn't in the direct path, and I don't want to risk injuring my eyesight. I'll peek at photos online after the fact. Students aren't in school, for safety reasons. I'll be at school, working on student class placements for next year, student recognition procedures, tidying the library, making new signage for the shelves, and choosing new books for the guided reading room. It's not solar-eclipse-level glamorous, but it's necessary for us to function smoothly. Kudos to STAO and the public libraries for sharing information or free viewing goggles so that people can safely enjoy this big moment. Use caution, everyone!

Let the Clubs Commence!

 Happy Easter and Happy April Fool's Day! I don't have the energy or inspiration to create a fake post (although I'm sure there will be plenty online; save them if you want to teach about lateral reading and verifying information). 

The topic for today's post is based on how I've noticed some additions have crept into my schedule. "Crept" probably isn't the right verb to describe it, as I'm the one that's inserted them.

There are only three months left in this school year and I am about to launch several new spring clubs. A couple of other clubs are relatively new as well. I peeked at my blog and saw that I ran similar clubs in 2019 before the pandemic blew everything out of the water.

Here's a list of the clubs that are just about to start:

1) Ukulele Club

My first attempt to run Ukulele Club was last year. I'm not an expert by any means. I was fortunate last year to have several Grade 8 students with a lot of ukulele experience and they helped a lot. This year, we have a smaller number of students signed up but I'll have a second adult with me - the kind and talented Mrs. Thess Isidro. She is self-taught, thanks to YouTube videos, and she even owns her own ukulele! We will see if we learn enough to compile a song for the spring concert in May.

2) Rubik's Cube Club

I have never run Rubik's Cube Club ever before, and for good reasons - I have no clue how to solve a Rubik's Cube! However, I offered to organize and supervise it as long as I had help from a fantastic fan. Andy graduated last year from our school. He is in Grade 9 at the local high school and told me that he'd be willing to help students learn about the techniques for solving this puzzle cube. We had 34 students indicate interest and 12 bring back their permission forms. Andy and any of his high school friends that he brings to assist will earn volunteer hours for their time and effort.

These are the clubs that just started recently that I'm involved with:

1) Board Game Club

I love playing board games. When I ran a version of this club in 2018, each group only had a month (or four sessions) to gather and play. Heck, staff members enjoy playing games too! This time around, this club was formed by invitation-only, for reasons related to our Specialist Teacher Professional Learning Community focus for the year. My partner in crime Renee Keberer and I co-run it with ten participants in the junior division. We've met twice so far. During our first session, we played The Game of Things. In our second session, we played Imagine. Here are some photos from our recent Imagine game. I was really impressed by the players. One is of the topic "Jobs" and the other is "Art and Literature". Can you guess what the visuals are supposed to represent?

(The answers are "plumber" and "Moby Dick". Yes, some of our students know about Moby Dick.)

2) Primary Robotics Club

Matthew Malisani and I started this club in February. He deserves all the credit for what goes on during these Mondays at lunch. I offer the space and support. He brings the robots and plans the activities. We average about a dozen regulars from Grades 2-3 who have built their own joystick controllers with Makey Makey circuit boards and programmed with Dash robots. Take a look at some of these photos that I took of our little engineers in action!

These are the clubs that I have not yet started but will begin once I'm done with all of my Forest of Reading chats. (For the record, I conducted 65 chats in January 2024, 91 chats in February 2024, and 64 chats in March 2024. I want to try and exceed my "score" from 2023, when I held 239 chats in total. I beat my January and February numbers, and fell short of my March 2023 number by 3. I'll need to keep up my chat count if I want to surpass last year, as April 2023 was my highest figure.)

1) Forest of Reading Quiz Bowl

We already have nine schools signed up and a location selected! My school won the non-fiction competition last year, so they are eager to try and make it two in a row.

2) Red Maple Marketing Team

A team from my school also won this event last year as well. Two of the Grade 8s have already read over 30 of the titles from this year's Forest of Reading roster, so until we launch the Red Maple competition, they are helping to do some chats (under supervision, so they aren't handing out signatures on Forest of Reading passports too freely). 

Why is there such a plethora of new clubs? I can suggest a few reasons. The end of the year is within sight, and many of us want to squeeze in some extra opportunities for our students before the school year ends. As I alluded to earlier, our Specialist Teacher PLC is focused on how extra curricular clubs and teams can benefit our students. We are forming some of these clubs with specific goals in mind. The primary and junior division students do not have as much clubs available for them to join as the intermediate division students do. Part of my efforts is to alter this inequity. For reasons I won't elaborate on here, fewer staff members are able to run clubs at our school. Some of the educators who do run clubs regularly have very time-intensive clubs they operate, so it's hard for them to add to their plates. (Some of the other clubs that occur at our school include, but are not limited to: Crochet Club, the Huddle Up Crew, Eco-Club, Recycling Team, Student Council, Fitness Club, and the Swifties Club.) It's important to remember that clubs are optional for teachers to run. It's not part of our designated duties. (I like the quote I saw online recently that said something like "Teaching is the only profession that if you do exactly what you are contracted to do, that counts as job action.")  Whatever the reasons, whatever the clubs ... I hope students enjoy these offerings coming up!