While I pressed the various buttons on the machine, the near-lurker kept remarking incredulously about how everything was closed today.  

"Even you can't get a bottle of wine!", he exclaimed, clearly perplexed.

I mumbled something about the obvious; it was, after all, Easter Sunday, so naturally everything was going to be closed.

"Even the banks are all closed!"

"Well, yes..." I said again, done with my own banking now, and slightly annoyed at this person's sheer stupidity.  "It's Easter Sunday.  Everything is closed.  It's Easter!"

"Everything?" came the fellow's response, in a dubious tone, as though he simply could not believe that a bottle of wine was not to be gotten this day. "Banks, too?"

Next he wanted to know if I could help him use the bank machine; he'd hitherto always done his banking in person. 

After ascertaining that he knew his PIN, I obliged.  He wanted to withdraw $100; we managed to extract $20, his balance being exactly $33.47.  He marveled at how easy it was (the machine even knew his name!), thanked me for my assistance, and we parted ways.

As I walked the dog along the lake and back to our home, I pondered what had just transpired.  I considered that -- incredible as it was to me that someone could not know that of course everything would be closed on Easter Sunday -- perhaps it was just as inconceivable to someone that a day could exist when every shop was closed, even the basics (hehe) like liquor stores and banks!

As my girlfriend reminded me, when I later recounted the tale, she herself had been in Canada many years, and not until she met me did she truly have an understanding of and remember that there were significant days in our religious and cultural calendars that indeed businesses shut down completely.  While some of us prepare for weeks on end for these days of celebration and remembrance, others just happen to focus on other priorities in their daily, weekly and annual cycles.  Different priorities, perhaps, but, equally important, and certainly no less valuable by sole virtue of their difference.

When we make assumptions about other people's understanding of the world and hurry to judge interpretations that differ from our own, we expose our bias, and worse, our ignorance, that the world is not one way to all people.  And in so doing, we miss all the bits and pieces the world and its diverse people have to offer.

I am appalled at the mediocrity of my writing.  Once inspired, and at times even funny, my blog posts have become average at best, mundane in actuality.

Even the quagmire of mediocrity through which they wade is a sham, the tired if apt phrase stolen from other writers, me being too uninspired to craft my own unique insult with which to describe my miserable work of late!

Why, tho?

It used to be the case, when I was swamped with students and the endless marking, lesson planning and social problem solving that accompanied them, that I felt constantly inspired.  Exhausted, yet excited about my work, I was frequently eager and somehow found the time and energy to share my various classroom experiments. 

The world before and after school also seemed more blog-worthy, somehow, and the words found themselves more readily in my mind, and worked their way more effortlessly onto the keyboard where they danced together to form ideas reasonably worth crafting so that others, too, could be inspired while reading.

Whereas I used to easily spin out a blog post several times a week, I am hard pressed now to find the time or inclination to write and post something more than once a month at best.

Is it because I am no longer a classroom teacher, then, that I feel a loss of material worth writing about?  How so?  The world has not changed so much as my place in it... surely even if I feel my contributions are less directly valuable than they once were, there is still inspiration to be found in the world outside of work...?

Or has the world changed, and is that the cause of my inertia? 

One thing I have noticed is the sheer abundance that colleagues and strangers produce: Before the age of twitter, instagram and facebook, before snapchat was ubiquitous, before in order for something to count, it had to have three hashtags and at least 250 likes, before followers were virtual and strangers were "friends", back at the dawn of the internet, when I was one of the few teachers in this country who had a blog, and by the very virtue of its existence, I was considered tech savvy (ha, ha, ha!) and my colleagues and students thought I was famous (tee hee), it was easy to get motivated to write.  Without competition, I felt the urge to get out there and self-publish!  Teachers needed me!  My dashboard showed they were searching critically important key words on my blog, and I had so much more to tell them about those themes and ideas!

But now, now there are a hundred thousand plus people who can say it better, with greater clarity, and with more awesome photos than I can. 

It seems as though every educator has a blog, a TPT acct and a social media following that rivals the Kardashians.  What can I say that hasn't already been said, and with greater eloquence and more recency?  And not just about teaching -- so what if I went to Cuba and spent two days off-resort with my kids?  A gazillion other travelers have beat me to it, and described it with breathtaking verbal imagery and panache. My recently-begun Salsa class is also nothing to blog about -- unless people are interested in a blog post about two left feet.  (And even that has been done and overdone.) So what if I periodically fly airplanes? #girlswhofly has 12 656 posts on IG. Even #queerparenting has over 1000, and I can tell by the pics that those parents are better looking, healthier, cooler and happier, and that their kids are all way more well-adjusted than ours!!!

It feels like I have nothing to offer the world, and that everyone out there on the internetz has me beat in every category.

My kids are becoming teenagers, but I'm the one suffering the adolescent existential crisis!

The superfluous content with which the world seems virtually stuffed, and the speed with which the it produces said content, is overwhelming.  To be honest, the pace at which I feel called to keep moving makes me question my ability to discern quality and authenticity in any form of content -- mine or others!  And I find myself not only lacking the inspiration to write, but often also the mental and emotional energy to participate at all.

If I stop to think about it, I have to wonder whether my writing, once a hallmark of my skill and imagination, has been replaced with other forms of creativity. Perhaps my ability to orchestrate six people's summer plans harmoniously across two or three households, or to coordinate a group of educators and policy makers by leading from behind is less public and glamorous than a well written blog post once a week but equally impressive and important.

But I sure would like a way to continue to develop these new skills while simultaneously growing as a writer. 

Perhaps a mindfulness exercise I will endeavor to undertake will be to notice small things worth writing about, and then to capture them in a few words.  Longer than a tweet, but shorter than the diatribes I used to write. A focused lens, an appetizer rather than a meal, a verbal salad.

Stay tuned.

I find myself with a renewed interest in rubrics.

Some years ago, when I was still married to the idea of a rubric (having been introduced to the concept as a first-year teacher years earlier by a particularly enthusiastic instructional coach), I was rocked into reality while attending a literacy workshop where a "Ministry Person" joked about the "over-rubrification of Ontario". 

Initially shocked that there might be another way when it came to assessment for learning, I eventually became a convert to the idea of Learning Goals and Success Criteria, and have been working on mastery of using these with descriptive feedback to improve student learning ever since.

Lately, however, I find myself wondering about how an amalgamation of the two might better support both student learning and teacher workload.

"Learning" Goal as Step One

Essential for both a quality rubric and the development of effective success criteria is the defining of an initial goal.  What is it that one wants the students to learn, in accordance with one or more overall curriculum expectations, and taking into consideration the student interests and affinities in a particular class?

As a classroom educator, I might express such a goal as, "We are learning to..." followed by some overarching description of the intended learning from the curriculum.

As an Education Officer with the Ministry of Education, I find myself pulling out these skills when considering the ideal candidate for a writing project. As my colleagues and I recently pondered while preparing a memo and call for writers, what, specifically, were we looking for in a group of writers? From this overarching vision, a set of criteria emerged, as they do when we consider how best to describe a curriculum-grounded learning goal.

From Success Criteria to Rubric

Assuming one has developed a clear learning goal, the set of criteria  that is developed (or ideally, co-developed with students) to describe said goal are used to provide descriptive feedback to students as they work though the learning.  This same set of criteria, once firmed up (criteria may evolve during the formative part of the learning) will also be used by the teacher to evaluate student learning for reporting purposes later on, in the summative phase of the assessment and instruction cycle.

Since we currently still have a leveled (or graded) report card system, it is crucial that success criteria be further developed into gradients of achievement, then.  That is, one must clarify (for oneself and the students) what different degrees of performance of each criteria look, sound and feel like. 

This is helpful both for the students and their families as they consider their development along the way, and for classroom educators, who ultimately have to make a judgement based on the evidence of student learning, and then assign that collection of evidence a mark on the report card.

In order to practice our own skill with this, and to develop an example to use in an online workshop , a colleague and I recently used the rubric maker tool on the VLE to co-develop a rubric to assess and evaluate participation in our online workshop.

We thought about what each of our success criterion might look like at each level, and then used this to flesh out a continuum of achievement, thereby creating in essence a rubric.

So, for example, we agreed that one criterion that would be essential in demonstrating our learning goal (active participation in an online learning session)  would be the contribution to collaborative online spaces such as google docs, a Padlet we planned to share, and so on.

A participant who was just beginning to develop these skills might access the spaces (which we could assess for example by noting their presence in a shared Google doc), but might not yet contribute any posts. Another participant, one who was progressing well towards our goal of active online participation in the learning, might contribute many relevant ideas, whereas a participant who was participating to a higher degree would not only contribute relevant posts, but would also build onto the ideas of others, perhaps by contributing a relevant link, or a photo of someone else's ideas or questions in action.

By taking the time to flesh out each criterion, we built a rubric that could ultimately be used to grade participant's attainment of the learning goal, were we to use this sort of evaluative tool in an online AQ course, for example.

Descriptive Feedback: A Formative Rubric

Although Growing Success (2010) tells us in no uncertain terms that feedback is an essential component in supporting student learning, we also know that feedback itself is not enough.  John Hattie’s research tells us that in some cases feedback might even be detrimental. Or, as Stiggins says, “It’s the quality of the feedback rather than its existence or absence that determines its power.”

So it’s important to have an understanding of descriptive feedback as a tool for supporting learning. Positioning feedback within the assessment process, and basing it on the criteria one develops (or co-develops with students) to describe an already-established and public, curriculum-based learning goal ensures that we are using feedback effectively to support student learning.

So how, then, can a rubric leverage the power of descriptive feedback?

The use of descriptive feedback can go hand in hand with a rubric being used for formative assessment, that is, in the middle of the learning rather than at the end. 

For example, a student currently demonstrating "level 2" in terms of online contributions in the isolated row of the sample rubric above should not be left (as my own poor students were 20 years ago when I was first messing around with rubrics!!) to puzzle out their own feedback from some random circles or check marks on a page.  Rather, the feedback that accompanies such a statement could be something like this:

​Once again singing the praises of the rubric maker on the VLE (why didn't I know about this thing when I was in a classroom??!!), this can all be pre-populated for a class in a rubric, and can still be customized for individual students where appropriate.  Better yet, photos (of exemplars) can be included, AND feedback can be audio-recorded if some students are more inclined to listen than read!

A little short term pain in terms of time commitment for the teacher in setting up the rubric for long term gain (being able to use it effectively when assessing and evaluating later on).

Feedback AND Marks?

We know from Dylan William's research that just throwing a mark on a page (even it's virtual!) doesn't move student learning forward, and yet we are still currently (in Ontario at least) stuck with a reporting system that requires grades.  My best advice, then, is to slim it down to four levels, quite possibly removing even the numbers, and replacing these with descriptors like "getting started", "almost there", "progressing well" and "progressing very well", or something to this effect.

How to interpolate the data gathered on a rubric like this and use it to inform final evaluation, or assessment OF learning, is a topic for another blog post. For now, suffice it to say that this method is one way to balance the desire to support student learning with the need to prepare for "marks" or "grades" later on.

Don't Wait Until the End!

When using a rubric for formative purposes, i.e. to provide feedback along the way, timing is key.  Don't wait until the end of a learning cycle to provide students with feedback.  It's too little, too late then.  (Just this week I saw evidence of this in my own household, where I found a small rubric in the garbage in my kids' room.  Clearly, one of them had received this "feedback" on a final assignment; the location of the rubric indicated its value!)

It was with considerable reluctance that I jumped (was hauled onto?) the Twitter bandwagon this past year... but I finally succumbed, and -- with a little help from some very persistent colleagues, I created an account, and even gained a few followers.

Increasingly, I am discovering the benefits of Twitter as a professional learning tool: Depending on who I choose to follow and how much time I spend clicking links in my feed, I am exposed to a wide range of personal perspectives and professional articles on a host of topics from assessment to digital learning to educational leadership and Indigenous issues, to equity and well-being in education.

And today, I participated in my first ever Twitter Chat!

Four of us were interested in a chat on deepening school change and, as three of us were working off site, one colleague set up a teleconference line.  Having multiple people who already knew one another on the phone (or conceivably, in a physical room) together really enriched both the dialogue on the topic in general and specifically as it relates to our work.  

As all four of us had varying degrees of familiarity and experience with Twitter, we were also able to support one another’s learning in real time as we navigated this relatively new (to us) professional learning format.

A more seasoned tweeter in our little group suggested the use of "tweet deck", which allows a user to see activity in multiple customizable columns.  This meant I could follow the hashtag for the Twitter chat while simultaneously monitoring likes and/or responses to any comments I posted.

Lucky me, I got to return to the warm, hospitable island of Cuba within 365 days of my last adventure there!  This time, we brought Tats and Rick, so the flavour was a little different than my visit with just Alex and Simon, but as a result, we were able to take some photos (Tats brought her old phone).

It had been a busy few months at work and at home, and I was desperately ready for a vacation, so I was very excited to spy the snow-free, fertile ground and beach-lined ocean below as we descended beneath the clouds on arrival!

Also, I must say that while I generally enjoy exploring new places, there is something kind of special about returning to a familiar spot.  I could tell that the boys were as excited as I was to settle in, grab a bite at the buffet, and head to the beach for a swim in what we already knew to be a warm, delightful stretch of ocean on a spectacular beach.  It was fun, too, to introduce Rick and Tats, who had not yet been to Cuba, and had never visited a resort, to the whole lay of the land and watch their enjoyment of this break from the regular routine back home.

Something New

This year, we elected to take up a few of the outings on offer at the resort, which we had not done last year. One afternoon, for example, we all went snorkeling off a catamaran at some nearby coral, surrounded by about a dozen other small boats of fellow snorkelers from different resorts.

An entrepreneurial type out in the water had his own catamaran set up, along with several bottles of fish food and an underwater camera with which -- for a (negotiable) fee -- he would take photos of your group underwater, and arrange to have them delivered on DVD to your hotel later that night by a "sister" of his.  We went for it, wanting to capture this special moment.  (Neither Rick nor Tats had snorkeled before, and for the boys, it was only the second time.)

I was very impressed with the systems they had in place for this sort of thing.  True to his word, the photographer's colleague was at our hotel to meet us in the lobby at 7:15 that evening.  (She was scouring the lobby, looking for familiar faces, since she had never met us, and the only photos she had were of us wet and in our swim suits!) 

The woman showed us the collection of images on her device, we gave her $20, and within seconds she had the photos transferred to a CD-ROM and thrust into our hot little hands.

Horse-Back Riding

Another afternoon, a fellow came by the beach chairs and asked if anyone might be interested in horse-back riding.  On offer for a small fee was a pick up in the lobby of our hotel with a 1950s car, followed by a 45-minute ride along the beach closer to town.  Tats and I took him up on it.

We rode with a French couple who had brought their camera (it was quite rainy, so Tats had left hers back at the resort with Rick and the boys), and they promised to send photos, but at the time of writing, we've not yet received an email.

Jeep Safari

One of the full-day outings offered by the tour operators on-site is a so-called "Jeep Safari" in which up to four people travel by Jeep through Matanzas and around the country side, visiting a coffee plantation and various other sites.  Snorkeling, lunch and a swim in the caves is included.

Tats and the boys were eager, so off they went!

It was nice to have some downtime back at the ranch while the "youngsters" sought additional adventures! (In addition to finishing a great book I was reading, Rick and I also availed ourselves of the free kayaking and did a little spin in a double ocean kayak before lunch.)

Dolphins, Camels and Pelicans

Closer to home, we wandered next door to see the Dolphins.  There also seemed to be two camels which were grazing in a field between our resort and the Delfinario.  I wanted to pet one, but Tats advised against it!  The pelicans were, as always, eager to participate in the fish-eating part of the dolphin show.

​Havana

In addition to having a home base at a Varadero resort, we also  visited Havana again, staying in the same, central apt I had booked for myself and the boys last year, through Air BnB.

While a seaside resort has its own merits, I feel like traveling to a place like Cuba, and not availing oneself of the rich opportunities for at least a little authentic cultural immersion, constitutes a real tourist crime!  Part of the inherent value of travel is expanding ones cultural horizons, and a city like Havana is the perfect place to step outside ones comfort zone  a bit and learn something new.

​Like last year, we booked a one-way transfer on a big, comfy bus through a tour operator at the resort in Varadero, but this time we spent a little more time in Old Havana on our arrival, Simon and I scoping our possibilities for lunch while Alex joined Tats and Rick at the Museo de la Revolucion.​

Once we had found a decent lunch spot, Simon and I  wandered over to Parque Central, and pulled out a deck of cards I had brought with me.  Playing cards on a park bench turned out to be a sure-fire way to avoid tourist harassment; people seemed to assume that anyone comfortable enough to just sit around playing cards in the park must be a local!

Simon and I played for a bit, and mused about what it would be like to live in Havana for several months.  (We both agreed that while it was an interesting city, a Cuban lifestyle might be more readily enjoyed in the countryside rather than this noisy, busy and somewhat stinky metropolis.)

We soon wandered back from the museum to pick up the others and head over to our appointed lunch spot, which turned out to be a tremendously delicious choice with tasty dishes, including the drinks, and -- despite its location in tourist central -- not outrageous in price.

Rick had picked up an excellent map of the city, so after lunch, we easily navigated the route to our host's house on foot to check in.

It was really nice to see some familiar faces so far from home, and I was happy to introduce Rick and Tats to Irena and her son (and later, her dad).

The old metal, spiral staircase was as rickety as ever, and the view from the rooftop as awesome as I remembered it -- literally, you could just stand there day or night and take in the scenes from the street below.  (Which we did, the next morning.  Caught the local "Tim Horton's" lineup at the lady's house across the street -- she must make some awesome coffee!  But were too slow with the camera to capture the red car that pulled up out front, and the two guys that got out, walked around to the back door, and hauled out a giant pig carcass!!!  In fact we were so mesmerized with the proceedings that we did not even get photographic evidence of "phase two", when a third guy came out of the building with a giant platter, and the first two guys, having presumably unloaded their raw pork into the house/shop, returned, unlocked the trunk and proceeded to unload intestines, liver and other delicacies onto the large plate!!!  As Rick's guidebook said, "In Cuba, expect the unexpected.)

Once we had checked in with our hosts, we decided to check out the city a bit.  I had made dinner reservations at nearby La Guarida (Amazing spot, super yummy food and incredible architecture; highly recommend, though it's not cheap!), and we wanted to get to the Chess Club beforehand and also do some geo-caching if possible.

As always, the old cars provided a visual feast for the eyes.  It was fun to watch Rick's recognition of automobiles he had been young enough to own/drive or recognize from his youth in the US.  And Tats scoured the streets for old Russian models her family had owned before they left the Soviet Union (she was able to locate both i the 48 hours we spent in Havana!)

Capablanca Chess Club

Finally we arrived at the chess club.  Rick, an accomplished player in his own right, was invited to sit down to a round of speed chess.  

Unfortunately, having only played online for the past several years, the combination of having to use actual chess pieces and the pressure of five people watching and scrutinizing the game proved too much for Rick, and he was creamed in under five minutes.

As I suspected he would, he stewed about the opening move for the rest of the evening, and announced the next day that he could easily beat the guy if they played again.  Needless to say, it was a threat that did not have the opportunity to come to fruition during our short sojourn in the city.

Matanzas

Last year the boys and I had stopped to snorkel between Matanzas and Varadero, and this year, I wanted to actually see the city of Matanzas.  So, rather than driving directly back to the resort, we had our Havana hosts arrange a ride for us to Matanzas, where I had prearranged a tour of the city with a local journalism student through Air BnB's new "experiences" feature.  (She, in turn, arranged a ride back to the resort for us from there.)

The city of Matanzas has a different vibe from Havana.  The buildings are not as tall, and -- as we learned from our guide -- the city is set out according to a master plan that allows each property and equal amount of sunlight.

A wide variety of colonial and other influences contribute to the city's eclectic architectural style.  And, like elsewhere in Cuba, both old cars and a love for the poet Jose Marti abound.

Since we were feeling somewhat over-stimulated, and were eager, after our adventures off the resort, to get back to the relative calm of the all-inclusive, beachfront oasis and process the many happenings of the past 24 hours, we asked our guide to shorten her intended 3-hour tour to a more manageable 2-hour session. 

​We were grateful that she was able to do this without sacrificing the climb to the top of the city, which afforded us a view of Matanzas out to the ocean that would have been breathtaking on a less overcast day.

Uncaptured

As always, some of the best memories were not the ones necessarily captured on film.  Playing cards with the kids in the lobby each night after dinner, for example, while listening to live Cuban jazz.  Or sitting down on the beach sharing mate w/ some Argentinian girls we happened across while walking past the resort two down from ours!

Or, my personal favourite, the escapades from the morning in Havana when we sent Tats and Rick off to the Hotel Nacional for a tour of the mafia suites and artefacts from the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the boys and I took our local pesos and hopped on the guagua (Cuban Spanish for public bus) and headed out for a little adventure of our own -- They had the camera, so we have only our memories!

While Rick and Tats took in the historical tour succeeded by a drink on the hotel terrace, Simon, Alex and I made our way up Av 23 (La Rampa) on the P9, as suggested by the gal who made us breakfast at our Air BnB. At 40 centavos (moneda nacional) per person, it was a steal!

After a short visit to the very old , very broken down and very small Jalisco park (a pre-revolution theme park, super fun for the age 4-7 crowd, so long as you don't mind somewhat sketchy, possibly broken, old mini roller coasters and merry-go-round style rides!!) , we made our way over to the Necropolis.  The boys commented on the similarity to the one we had visited in Recoleta, in Buenos Aires, a few years earlier.

But the most fun of all came when we hopped back on the bus afterwards and made our way to Coppelia, determined (now that we had local currency) to finally eat at the REAL ice cream cathedral, with the people, rather than off to the side, at the over-priced, underwhelming tourist trough! 

Having bypassed the guards, we were not disappointed when we landed at a table in one of the upstairs salons, and enjoyed a little people watching along with our dirt-cheap ensaladas de bola, before heading back by "coco cab" to the neighbourhood of our AirBnB to meet Rick and Tats for pizza at a nearby stand.

With an election this year, and rumours of a combined currency on the horizon, Cuba continues to evolve at a rapid (by Cuban standards) pace.

​Happily for us, during this visit, we were still able to enjoy the visual and experiential time-warp afforded by the old cars and still-somewhat-limited digital infrastructure. Like last time, I enjoyed the opportunities this encouraged for strengthening personal connections with the people I love most, and for forging new ones with the people whose country we were guests in.  I also relished the time to read voraciously (I started and finished Everybody's Son, as well as several longer magazine articles while away, and the kids polished off two thick books each). 

On our final morning in Cuba, we by-passed the 8:00 a.m. milk run and elected instead to enjoy a leisurely breakfast and one last walk on the beach, before hopping into a local car to take us -- for the price of 9 CUCs, some batteries, a baseball cap, a few t-shirts, some children's books and some other odds and ends -- to the airport at a more reasonable 10:30 a.m. arrival for our 12:25 p.m. departure back to Toronto.

I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to visit this amazing place once again, and am grateful for having packed so much excitement, relaxation and learning into such a short length of time.

Not long ago, a colleague of mine came back from a workshop and shared with me an image she had seen.
​
“I have something to show you!” she gasped, almost breathless with excitement.  “I know how much you love equity, and I think you’ll really like this.”

The image she showed me served as a stark reminder of the long road ahead of us.

While I have nothing against this image as a starting point for engaging the blissfully ignorant in a conversation about equity vs. equality, her excitement in thinking she had uncovered something new to share with me made me realize how naive I had been, in terms of people’s general exposure to many of the concepts I take for granted.

While my colleague was engaging with the fence image for the first time, I had moved on to reading articles like this one, that challenge its limitations.

A Literal Interpretation

For a long time, I’d been struggling with the fact that proponents of the fence image seemed to be implying that anyone should be able to see a professional sports game for free (yes, literally)... And while I myself am not much of a sports fanatic, I was wrestling with the concept of implying that we (or some) should not have to pay to watch a professional performance.

Yes, yes, I know that in general professional players in sports are HUGELY overpaid in the larger scheme of things -- but apply the analogy to a arts performance then, dance, or a group of local musicians… how are people supposed to make a living if everyone should just get to enjoy their talents for free?!

Making Space for Everyone

Around the same time as I was wrestling with this conundrum, I’d been reviewing a monograph on culturally responsive pedagogy, which included a quote by George Dei:

(It’s also quoted in Ontario’s Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy, btw.)

At the time, it seemed like a nicey-nice, lofty statement. Lately, though, I’ve been meditating on it a lot.

What does it mean, exactly, to make a new space?  I mean, why wouldn’t we want to bring people into our great space that already exists?  Don’t we want “them” to have access to “our” sporting (arts, etc.) events?

It’s what I’d been trying to do for most of my career, open access for the students I taught (“them”) who might not have typically had access to the variety of resources and opportunities that I do.

And yet, if I examine the way my own classrooms unfolded over the two decades I taught, I am beginning to realize that together with the students in my care, I did in fact increasingly create new structures, systems and spaces.  Any remaining barriers (class size, lack of thinking and planning time, access to reliable wifi or digital devices and other resources, etc.) were products of the larger system, over which I had only limited control. (More on that later.)

Relinquishing Power

Creating a new space together with the students meant that as the person in the classroom on whom power and privilege had been conferred, I the teacher had to make way for the kids to develop some power, some real power.

It meant that when a colleague and I began exploring the concept of centres as a way to teach math with my Grade 7 and 8 math classes a few years ago, we asked for feedback… and then listened to that (often brutally honest!) feedback the students provided, and modified our approach.

It also meant that the following year, when we started a social studies based, cross-curricular inquiry together in Grade 6, and some of the students wanted to move in a direction with their learning that I had not envisioned, I had to give them the freedom to follow that learning, and support THEIR learning from the side rather than demand from the front what I thought it should be all about.

In my experience, Middle school students who have been raised in fairly traditional classrooms have become very “comfortable” (complacent?) with their lot. While perhaps unfulfilled and possibly bored, they generally do what they are supposed to -- including acting out and “misbehaving” in ways that are expected -- perhaps because they don’t know any other way.  They’re like prisoners who have lost their scope for the imagination of any better reality!

So when you introduce a new way of doing business (“You can write about it or show me by taking a picture of your work and recording a verbal explanation”, or “will you choose to work on your own today, or with a partner?”, or “are you ready to come and talk with me about your assignment, or do you want to get some feedback from your group first?”) middle school students (and heck, even adults!) can get very antsy.

They’re not used to being treated like capable, competent people with potential!

​They’re not sure what to do with the freedom and the ability, nay, the provocation, to think!  This is hard work, they realize, this participating fully in my learning....  And at first, they rebel.

Using the structure of a classroom circle early and often as we got to know one another as co-learners helped… as did regular read-alouds (yes, middle school kids still love a good read-aloud, especially when Ms. Teschow cries at the sad parts, as she notoriously does!!) 
​ 
Surfacing challenges, discussing and sharing people’s feelings and behaviours openly, honestly and matter-of-factly, and sharing ideas for next steps helped -- in my experience -- to validate all members of the class.  (As an added bonus, our regular community circles really built their learning skills and work habits, and helped me get to know kids more personally, which was a huge bonus come report card writing time!!)

Eventually, fear at this “new” way anxiety was replaced with pride and commitment.  Pride their classroom family, and commitment to working hard (both academically and socially) for the benefit of all.

Discomfort was replaced with safety, and students flourished, even the most “unlikely” learners!

Scalability

Now, after 18 years in the field, I’ve become part of that larger system I mentioned earlier, the one that sets up barriers that directly impact kids in classrooms… and I still only have limited control!  (I thought working at the ministry of magic would enable me to change the world in six months or less -- ha!)

But while the systemic work is different than I thought it would be, and the workplace MUCH larger than I had imagined, the need to co-create new space together exists here as anywhere. Systems and structures that worked at some point in history for some group(s) of people are being challenged as new technologies disrupt the status quo and allow (and indeed encourage) an increasing diversity of voices in the workplace.

I’m interested how those in power in this large system approach their leadership role.

I’ve observed that some try to include by bringing people into an existing culture.  Others actively seek out newcomers that will help to shape a new space, a space where everyone is welcome, even if it means that they (the leader) will need to rethink their pre-existing assumptions. Still others speak of making space, but are reluctant to relinquish the comforts afforded to them for so long by their positions of privilege and power.

Parenting monozygotic twins allows one a glimpse inside a uniquely intimate relationship between two visually "identical" people.

When the boys came from their dad's yesterday wearing the same shirt, I thought I'd take a nice photo. (They rarely dress alike, so when they do, the "twins effect" is quite jarring!)

As one of them said to me later, when I had expressed my frustration that they refuse to post pose nicely for a photo, "but we had so much fun, right mom?" Ahhh, twins... such a blessing!

As a public educator who has spent most of her career working in, or facilitating work about, the elementary panel, I've often reflected on the "generalist vs. subject specialist" debate.  Now working as an Education Officer in the Student Achievement Division, I occasionally have the opportunity to revisit this question from a more research- and policy-oriented perspective. 

A bit of a die-hard generalist at heart, I recently was faced with a situation that challenged my viewpoint.

A former secondary school history teacher had been asked to speak at a staff professional learning day. She and some colleagues were sharing details of a trip they had taken to a history site earlier in the year, and linking the experience to the concept of leadership.  Her role was to set the historical context of the event.

As she spoke, we were riveted; all 200 people sat glued to her every word.  The manner in which she presented made it clear that she was both an expert on the topic, and a passionate educator about said topic.  She "lectured" in a way that engaged us far more deeply than I could probably sustain a group's interest on pretty much any subject (unless maybe when regaling my pre-service teacher candidates with classroom management stories from the field)!

The first thing I thought about afterwards was the one big flaw of my generalist mindset, namely, that I know a little about a LOT of things (in terms of elementary level curriculum subjects and strands), but that said knowledge and understanding is in most cases quite superficial.  Due to the fact that I've pretty much always taught many subjects to a single group of students (rather than one or two subjects to several classes), and that I've only ever taught one grade for a maximum of two years at a time, any depth or breadth of knowledge and understanding on my part has typically been acquired alongside the students in my care, as we research, think and learn together. 

This really made me begin to rethink the "must be a generalist" position I had held for so long.  Perhaps, if ALL subject specialists were as knowledgeable and passionate about their topic as my colleague was about hers, AND assuming they were also good pedagogues (i.e. had a firm grasp of the assessment for learning models outlined in Growing Success, and understood UDL and DI principles and used them regularly in their practice), then maybe having subject specialists WAS the way to go.... ?

I puzzled over this for some time, as I still had a nagging feeling about it all. 

Despite being able to take care of systems and structures like timetabling (to avoid having middle school students run across the school from class to class) and other things that typically bothered me about the specialist model, I still felt a real sense of loss when I thought about giving up the generalist model altogether.

Finally, it dawned on me: Achieving a high degree of expertise in a particular field necessarily precludes considerable knowledge in other fields.  While becoming an expert in an area is important for some professions, in teaching, it can actually create barriers for our students.  Where a good generalist can help learners uncover connections between subject areas, and can facilitate meta-cognitive growth by highlighting skills and competences that transcend a variety of areas, a subject specialist risks becoming a "one trick pony", from whom students may even learn only one perspective on an event or skill. 

​Being forced to reach across curricula as a generalist breeds new knowledge for not just the students, but more importantly, the teacher, who begins to see things from different perspectives, and may often be encouraged to reexamine her own long-held beliefs.  (Less of a danger from the comfort of the subject specialty the specialist has always taught.)

I could never figure out my specialist colleagues who would marvel at how I could spend SO. MUCH. TIME. with one group of students (my last year in a classroom, I taught everything except French and Phys.Ed to a single group of Grade 6 students, and we often spent the better part of a day together in the same physical space). 

​But when you think in an integrated fashion, time flies!

I remember preparing a Science lesson, on flight, for that class... though really it was a lesson in dissecting non-fiction text... and also a digital and visual literacy lesson, as we had begun to experiment with mind maps.  And all that while we focused on developing perseverance and task-commitment while working effectively with a partner.

Similarly, the year before, the students and I dug into the stats on carding, as we examined racial profiling through data management and probability.  Was it a math lesson?  A social studies lesson?  A lesson in research and note-taking skills?  A expository writing and debate lesson? 

It was all of these.

Indeed, the layers of complexity were seamless; with a well-planned lesson, it was all happening at once... and it was really good!

Perhaps the answer is not generalist or specialist.  Perhaps the answer lies in new systems and structures at both the elementary and secondary school levels, structures that allow for a small group of diverse educators to work together to support the learning needs of a group of students.

I imagine a system where -- rather than one teacher having responsibility for one class, and a few periphery teachers are enlisted to fill in gaps like french or phys. ed. --  instead 3-4 educators are collectively in charge of teaching all subjects to a group of 60-80 students.  Ideally each educator team is carefully selected to include diversity: newer and more experienced teachers, gender, racial and other diversity, too.

Among themselves, the educators decide who will teach what to whom and when.  The flow of the learning is fluid, as different adults in the group may work with different students at different times. Sometimes I am teaching a focused reading lesson with a small group of 5 students while two of my peers are facilitating a science lab with 35-40 other students and our fourth colleague is reviewing a math problem with 8-10 other kids.  Another time, each of us has 18-25 students for a 40 minute mapping or fractions or health lesson... and then we switch.  And at other times, still, two of us work together with a group of 35-40 students between us.

Sometimes I am teaching math while my colleagues are teaching music, visual art or science, and at other times, they is teaching math while I teaching these other subject.  Sometimes one of us is teaching a specified subject, whereas at other times, the learning is so integrated, a visitor would be hard pressed to identify which subject is the focus of the lesson that morning or afternoon.

The fluidity of the structure here, and the positive interdependence built in for the adults to work together, would also enable the sort of collaborative, cross-curricular planning that a few of my colleagues and I tried to do with our collaboratively-planned Canada: Fair and Just? Inquiry last year.

​But instead of 90 hours outside of the work day, this sort of collaboration is built into the very fabric of the way school is structured.  All four of us could begin the work one morning before the school day starts, and then two of us could continue the planning while the other two run an hour-long math clinic with the whole group of students.  The next day, one of us works with one of them to continue to develop the inquiry plans we've started, while the other works with the other teacher to follow up the math clinic, or writer's workshop, or whatever.

As the group of educators works together, each on brings her special knowledge and skills and expertise to the table, and they learn from one another as -- together -- they build something quite profound with and for the students they collectively serve. As each individual educator comes with distinct schema, she contributes to the evolution of understanding of her colleagues... both about the skills of teaching, and of the subject matters taught.

The students, too, get the benefit of four consistent expert learners.  They see their teachers as collaborators, communicators and team players, effectively working through problems together. 

This serves not only to model the global competencies we hope to engender in students, but also allows students to seek out the support of different mentors from the educator team at different times to serve emergent needs, both academic and social-emotional.  No one student is stuck with one teacher with whom they may not have a positive chemistry. (Conversely, each teacher on the team has three colleagues to consult when they face a difficulty with a student or family, as happens from time to time. )

Both in the subject specialty as in the  pedagogical skills associated with teaching in general, each educator lends a different perspective that serves to help their colleagues learn and grow, and, as a result, directly benefits the group of students that the team is responsible for. 

​These teams of 3-4 teachers attend some professional learning together, and some individually.  They do some learning on their own as a team, and some with other teams in the school.  Oh, and they keep their group of 60-80 students for at least two years, allowing the development of strong relationships with both the students and their families.

Well, now that we've developed the perfect model of schooling, I'll just have to convince my colleagues to write the policy... or maybe it's time to win the lottery and open my own fully publicly accessible private school!

 Despite enjoying a decent meal out, I'm no restaurant connoisseur, and I know very little about the industry.  Recently, however, my partner and I were treated to an impromptu yet phenomenal behind-the-scenes experience at a Toronto gem after dining there for lunch.

Richmond Station is a mid sized restaurant located in the heart of downtown Toronto, right on -- you guessed it -- Richmond Street!  An odd L-shaped design makes the space look deceptively small, and in some sense, provides two almost completely different dining areas, with distinct ambiances. 

We happened to have the good fortune to be seated next to a local foodie, who was obviously quite familiar with the locale, as evidenced by his personal banter with both the wait staff and head butcher Ryan Donovan, who is also a partner in the restaurant.

We connected with our table neighbour and his guest over dessert, and were soon set up with a tour of the premises conducted by Mr. Donovan himself.

For almost the next hour, we had the pleasure of Mr. Donovan's enthusiastic teaching about the restaurant industry in general, and the history of the Richmond Station venture in particular.  

We got to learn about not only the colourful past of the space, but about how the unique structure of both the space and the kitchen(s) influence the type of dishes prepared and the flow of work in general.  We learned of the chalk board menu that changes twice a day, and saw the open kitchen -- next time we'll dine at the chef's table for sure, and leave it up to the chef to concoct us something not on either menu -- as well as the eat-in pantry (great for small parties, with the added quirk of serving as a functional pantry, so that you or your guests may need to temporarily vacate a seat during your meal so that one of the employees can grab a dry pantry item from the shelf behind your chair)!

We also got a tour of the kitchen itself, and even the meat fridge, which Donovan proudly explained is big enough to allow for cold butchering, which is better for the food in terms of taste and food safety.  While we were there, I noticed a big tray of Bully Oysters from PEI; Donovan explained that as with other suppliers, he had negotiated to get only the best (in this case biggest and freshest) stock available.

As we proceeded with the kitchen tour, Donovan pointed out various aspects of the flow of the lines, making it clear that he was not only an enthusiastic manager, but also a knowledgeable and well-organized one.  He explained that the reason it may appear quite crowded was because the evening shift was already there, preparing in a side room so that the transition between lunch and dinner would be  a smooth one.  The lunch folks, he noted, would trade places with the dinner team soon, in order to do some prep work for their own lunch shift the next day. 

He also pointed out that the staff ate together as a family twice a day, an important part of establishing and maintaining a positive work environment, he and his partners felt.  (Our own waitress corroborated this sense of work satisfaction, even though she'd only been there for just shy of a year.)

This restaurant, Donovan noted, was a teaching space, and he and his partner Carl Heinrich wanted to ensure that everyone who came there showed promise and enthusiasm for the industry, and was able to work towards their own career goals by having a broad range of experiences at different stations in the kitchen (or front of house). Initiative is both encouraged and expected.

Carl Heinrich is not only the restaurant's executive chef, but also the winner of Top Chef Canada not too long ago.  He and his partners have a good thing going here,  both from the vantage point of a client in terms of taste and cost, but also from a lifestyle perspective in that the team they've assembled, and the way in which they appear to manage their business, lends joy to the work for all involved.

As someone interested in leadership and personal growth, and how a positive work environment contributes to and is influenced by both, I tremendously appreciated not only the incredibly tasty meal we were served, but also the opportunity to have a peek behind the curtain and learn more about leadership and learning in this particular environment which is so different from -- and yet surprisingly similar to -- my own in structure.

​These guys have maximized every experience they've had to squeeze as much learning out of it as possible, and it's clear they are applying said learning to this venture.  How delightful to have people like this enriching the culture of our city!

Simon and I had the most amazing encounter this past weekend.

Having decided -- after a recent "Spooky Lagoon Tour" -- to conduct his history fair research on the Island community's history, and having successfully convinced his school partner to join him in this quest, Simon approached me for some support.  It wasn't a hard sell; I've always been a fan of the Toronto Islands, and finding out more seemed closer to  fun than "homework"!

Tumbling down one rabbit hole after another on the Internet, I finally stumbled across the Island History Project (tihp) online, and contacted someone with my plea for a "primary source", preferably an interview with an islander, for my son and his school partner.

I was soon exchanging emails and phone calls with a fellow who had lived on the island in the 40s, and who was now living in the US, but still in touch with his old community.  He was willing to set Simon and his friend up, and shared our contact info with two gentlemen who still lived on the island, one of whom was none other than Jimmy Jones, the guy whose stories had sparked Simon's interest in the first place!

Not long afterwards, we arranged to meet the two elderly islanders at one of their homes on a Sunday afternoon.  In the end, Simon's school friend couldn't make it, so Simon left him to do some book research, and he and I set out alone on the gloomy November weekend to purchase our ferry tickets and visit the large park that tourists usually reserve for sunny, summer day trips.

 We said good-bye to the city, and boarded the ferry bound for Ward's Island, armed with 6 scones and a jar of jam from one of our favourite bakeries.

Peter and Jimmy proved to be spry in both body and spirit, and we spent a delightful afternoon together, listening to stories that covered considerably more territory than the few questions Simon and his partner originally had in mind.... Simon jotted down what he could, and I listened intently. 

We learned that Centre Island's park-like Avenue of the Islands was once a bustling main street of a real town, complete with restaurants, several grocers, a pharmacy and all manner of other businesses, a fact I later confirmed in more detail by further intrigued googling at home!  And while there is a lot written about the "wealthy" families who built summer homes on the island, both men confirmed that all sorts of people lived on, worked on and visited the islands, and further, that when the houses started to be demolished (the City claimed it needed the space for a large public park -- despite the copious amount of parkland already available and in use on the site), it was not the wealthy families who lost their homes first... if at all. (The exclusive yacht club, for example, was never touched -- it stands and is used to this day!)

They told us stories of how the city had started their demolition derby with the town on Centre first, coring out the community's backbone, so to speak, before moving westward and then eastward towards Wards Island, where both Jimmy and Peter presently lived.  It was a sobering moment when both men recalled the impact on many families of being evicted from their homes, or of the threat of having their homes demolished.  The fight was a long, hard one, and one not without a few casualties.

On a more upbeat note, Jimmy also told us that many of the homes still standing on that part of the island had been built from materials that came in a pre-fab kit, ordered directly out of the Eaton's catalogue - he remembered a time when both Eaton's and Simpson's had several deliveries a day from the city to the islands.  (A house could go up in a weekend, added Peter, noting that it helped if you had several friends and a little beer.)

He recalled with fondness the rich and vibrant communities that had existed all along the island, including many details from the amusement park and Baseball diamond on Hanlan's Point, where Babe Ruth had hit his first professional home run, and where the busy airport I now fly out of stands (much to many islanders' chagrin).  Jimmy's dad had been a clown at the amusement park; his mother had sold tickets at the ticket booth -- that's how the family arrived there in the first place, and Jimmy has lived there ever since. (85 years, as he told us, and Simon did the math to make sure!)

Both Jimmy and his neighbour (and our host) Peter were engaging and lively story-tellers, who had a remarkable number of details crammed into their heads.  One got the feeling that there was probably no question about the island's history that either one or the other couldn't answer... and we asked many.

Simon, fairly quiet during our visit other than the questions on this list, seemed greatly affected by his interaction with the two men; he chattered with me afterwards about his impressions, and seemed quite pleased at having met Jimmy in person, recognizing the asset of such a meeting to both his school project and his personal development as a Torontonian.

Taking our leave from our host and his guest, we headed back to the ferry docks, Simon and I, and I reflected on how fortunate newer islanders are to have access to such a lively wealth of information about their beloved home's past still living in their midst.  Those lucky enough to have not lost their homes in the dramatic city seizure of the 60s and 70s now live in community with an eclectic mix with fellow "old islanders" and newer converts, islanders "by chance" in some cases thanks to the now-35-year wait list/lottery.

The island has certainly changed over the past hundred years, both geographically and politically, and to be able to learn the island lore from someone who has been through the bulk of those changes in-person is truly a treasure!

As we boarded the ferry back to the city, I gave Simon a little squeeze. 

​Although I'll probably never realise my own dream of living on this particular island, I'm grateful for our fairly regular day trips here, and in particular, I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude for the opportunity to sit in on this unique aspect of my son's history fair project research.  I sure learned a lot.

By the way, if you're keen to learn more about how the Island was formed, geographically speaking, check out this 2012 article from Blog TO!