Food Unites Family

 I can't believe we've already had two weeks of school! This week, I attended a pair of events, one personal and one professional, that combined food and family perfectly.

Back to School Staff BBQ

On Friday, we had the most delightful lunch at school. Our wonderful caretaker, Jan-Michael, was the Grill King and coordinated, along with our principal, a Welcome Back BBQ for our staff. Michael personally marinated all the pork skewers himself for days. There was so much food - pork and chicken kebabs, veggie burgers for the vegetarians, green and potato salad, and watermelon and cake for dessert.

Can a school be a family? It sure felt like it at this event. All of our staff members were invited. We had our vision itinerant and social worker attend, as well as a teacher on maternity leave. We even had "extended family" come by - principals from neighbouring schools. They couldn't pass up a free lunch, especially one as delicious as the one served at our school!

I know my school board wants to recapture that "family feeling". This is why TDSB has, once again, renamed its internal organizational structure. No longer are there four learning centers and nearly two dozen learning networks. Now, we are in Ward/Family of Schools 21 in Learning Centre 2. You can see this post explaining the new configurations. Here's a map showing all the groups.

You can't just assemble people, call them a family, and expect the unit to operate like a family. You need to bond over shared experiences (or good food), care about each other, and have some kind of relationship. Easier said than done, but our BBQ really helped to connect us all in a comfortable, casual, social way. 

Visiting Cousins

My first cousin, Julian DeRyck, and his wife Ingrid, live in Arizona. They came up for a wedding this week and so his older sister (Helena) arranged a gathering at her son Mark's house. My husband and I attended and we enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Ingrid hadn't been in Canada for nearly twenty years. 

I remember Uncle Julian and Auntie Ingrid (there's an age gap between us, so often in West Indian culture, one uses the "Uncle" and "Auntie" labels more fluidly) so well. My mom used to like to muss up Julian's hair and Ingrid was such a beautiful bride. My sister and I had our ears pierced at Uncle Julian's house by a family friend, Joey, at the same time that their daughters had their ears pierced. I tried to find a photo of Julian and Ingrid's wedding, but the best I could do was a photo I took of their family at a different wedding from 1991.

I saw first cousins of mine that I also haven't seen for many, many years. Here's a photo I took on Saturday night of me and my first cousin Terrance. (He's 75 and I'm 52. First cousins in large families can have big gaps in ages - we almost look the same age; he looks great!)

It was funny how many family members said I was the striking image of my mother. When Terrance and his older brother Brian saw me, they greeted me with a wink and a "Hi, Gloria!"

Once again, the food was huge in quantity and scrumptious in quality. The location for the gathering was perfect. The weather cooperated so groups mixed and mingled outside and inside. There was no animosity in the air - only great stories and shared laughs. I appreciated hearing my relatives talk about their fond memories of my parents. Someone said my parents were very close to each other, "like batty and po". I know this expression but when I tried to find the exact meaning online, these were the closest definitions I found:

• be as close as batty and po (or batty and bench) be bosom companions (batty being the Caribbean English folk term for buttocks).

("Wind can't pass between them" - i.e. they are very close.)

We used to have large gatherings like this in the past, but they became fewer and fewer. There are many reasons why they aren't as frequent. Families get bigger, live further away from each other, find it hard to have a location to fit/suit everyone and/or the "glue members" (the ones who seem to tie everyone together) die, leaving no one to arrange these rendezvous. I am thankful that we were able to gather like this, instead of at a funeral. As we departed, the common refrain was "We should do this again sometime."

Actually, it was at both events that everyone kept saying, "We should do this again sometime." True, true.

Quiet Quorum

 Another first week of school has come and gone - my 28th as a full-time teacher. This year felt different for a few reasons. The most striking difference was how much quieter it felt. My teaching assignment this year is half library, half ESL support. Last year, I was almost all prep, so I saw entire classes from the get-go. Part of the role of the ESL teacher is to conduct individual assessments with students to determine what STEP (Steps to English Proficiency) level they are at to help shape programming decisions. In my school board, the assessments consist of an oral interview, then first language reading/writing sample, then a picture response, followed by either a early literacy task or reading/writing assessment, and after that an initial mathematics assessment, ending with an initial assessment summary and next steps. All of these must be done one-on-one. This translates to a lot of quiet moments, as many of the students I will be servicing appear to be at A1 or Step 1 for Listening and Speaking.

The library wasn't quite ready for recess visitors yet because I wasn't there in either July or August to help tidy it up. It became a bit of a dumping ground over the summer - how did I end up with 5 HEPA filters? - and so I scratched out some time when I wasn't evaluating students to try and clean things up. I made some changes to the layout to accommodate the ESL students. I wanted to make sure that these students have a space they can call their own, apart from the library space. My amazing caretaker renovated an old white board easel for me to use and it looks a lot more open. I didn't take any before or after photos because it's a work in progress.

I took the opportunity to wear some of my newly bought Fluevog shoes this week at school. I think I'm soon to be at my limit. I now have 19 pairs of Fluevogs and barely enough space to store them. I nearly forgot how to take shoe selfies. The library is a great place to pose for these pictures, since you have the book shelves as a colorful background.

Day 1, with Malalas

Day 2 with Pilots

Day 3 with Astas

Day 4 with Baroque Cortanas

I'm sure things will get noisier as the weeks go by. Wish me luck as I learn this new role!

Go Big Then Go Home

 I composed this blog post on an early morning flight from Calgary to Toronto. Usually, I write my reflections on the weekend but it was impossible to complete since my laptop was in Calgary and I was on a ship near Vancouver. I'm coming home. I just returned from my very first cruise, a wonderful trip to Alaska.

The theme for this contemplative essay leapt immediately to my mind after a few days of this travel experience. Before I explain, I need to thank my sister, Mary, for inviting me on this adventure. Alaska was not in my plans at all, but several months ago, my sister contacted me to ask if I might be interested in being her travel companion. Her hard working husband had just acquired a new job and was unable to go with her on this trip. She offered this proposal: if I was willing to get myself to Calgary, would I be interested in an all-expense-paid trip with her to Juneau? The dates worked for me, as they fell on the last week of August and I was still on summer vacation, so I happily agreed to go.

Everything was so BIG. I had never sailed on a cruise ship before. I was told that there are bigger vessels than the one I was on, but to my novice eyes, the Celebrity Solstice was massive! The line-up to check in and board was also huge, but it was very orderly and proceeded quite rapidly, considering that three separate ships were coordinating the boarding of their respective passengers on August 25 when we first set sail.

The meals on the ship were absolutely delicious and would satisfy the biggest appetites. The all-you-can-eat buffet at the Ocean View Café (on Deck 14) offered so many choices; yet, I was only able to eat a single plate for each meal. There were no second helpings for me because the first round filled me adequately. My sister and I ate at the Grand Epernay restaurant for dinner each night; this location had the advantage of reserved seating, which we appreciated because the buffet could get busy at peak hours. Once again, the meals were incredible. Shout-out goes to Rahul, our attentive waiter/server who took care of us so well.

There was a t-shirt I saw for sale that said something like, "If you thought Texas was big, you should see Alaska". This is true. Alaska is the largest US state in terms of land mass. We visited three cities in Alaska during our cruise: Icy Strait Point, Juneau, and Ketchikan. Even though there were many wonderful moments, there were three highlights I wanted to focus on for this blog post that loom large in my memory and are also enormous in their own rights.

Hubbard Glacier

On Wednesday, August 28, our at-sea destination was the Hubbard Glacier. You'd think seeing a big piece of ice wouldn't thrill, but it was incredible. The Hubbard Glacier is 7 miles wide, 76 miles long and 600 feet tall. It is North America's largest tidewater glacier. My sister had booked a room with a balcony, so we were able to witness this huge natural wonder from the comfort of our own cabin. 

My cell phone now contains dozens and dozens of photos of the glacier. At one point, a small piece of the glacier broke off. It sounded like a huge thunder clap. Our ship's captain should get a lot of credit for skillfully navigating us through the fog so we could get a clear view of the Hubbard Glacier.

Humpback Whales

My sister is an experienced traveler, so she booked two shore excursions for us. When we were in Juneau, she arranged for a luxury whale watching tour. Initially, I was a bit nervous about this portion of the trip. The last time I went whale watching was with my friend Denise Colby in Newfoundland and I was violently seasick. However, this time, I had no need to worry. The water in the north Pacific was calmer (as the name Pacific implies) than the choppy north Atlantic, and we were aboard a yacht with six other passengers and a capable crew consisting of Shannon the captain and Savannah the first mate. We saw SO many whales. Humpback whales are enormous. There's an art display of the actual size of the tail of one of the regular humpback whales seen in the area, and it is humongous. Not only did we see their backs and tails as they rose for air and descended to feed, we actually saw one rise out of the water. Photos are really difficult to capture. Our guides advised us to take video instead. One of our fellow explorers, Alan from Miami, shared these stills he captured.

I consider myself doubly lucky. The next day, as we went from Juneau to Ketchikan, I was quietly saying my rosary as I gazed out on the ocean. (It was part of my effort to reinvigorate and re-establish my spiritual routines, reactivated after my July visit to Fatima, Portugal.) Right in front of me, a humpback whale breached even higher than the one we saw on the whale watch. It was an incredible sight to behold and completely unexpected.

Alaska King Crab

While in Ketchikan, my sister and I enjoyed a lumberjack show and afterwards had a bite to eat at the Ketchikan Crab & Go. It was my first time eating Alaska King Crab. Readers of this blog will know that I like to eat crab (and my trip to Baltimore at the beginning of August proves this) but usually I eat Dungeness crab or east coast crab already assembled into crab cakes. Thank goodness I got the "kids portion" of the Alaska King Crab. My sister chose a single jumbo leg to eat and, as you can see by the photo below, it was incredibly large.

Ostensibly, this blog is about teaching and education. How do all these things link to learning? I can say that, for the first time in what seems like forever, I didn't have any "back to school" dreams like I usually do around this time. My mind was too preoccupied with this last hoorah of the summer, this incredible trip. I'd also suggest that, although bigger isn't always better, this (and other) extra-large experiences can really make an impression on our minds and hearts. I picked up a few things to use with my students to help integrate Indigenous knowledge more into my teaching practices. The impact of climate change is made so much more immediate when I learned from Milos, the resident science lecturer on the ship, that there are some other glaciers that no longer exist. Making a big impact can make lessons more "sticky" and memorable.

Today is Labor Day, the last day of summer vacation. Tomorrow is the first day of school. I really hope that this year will make a BIG, positive impression on the students I am honored to spend time with, and that year 28 of my teaching career will bring with it great joy.