“From Away”.     

It’s a phrase often used by PE Islanders to describe those of  us not from around here.  Doesn’t matter if you’re from Halifax, Vancouver or  Paris, France:  If you’re not from PEI, you’re “from away”.

What’s the deal with the “voluntary toll roads” out here? 

Can you imagine the 401 slowed to a crawl,  not because of traffic, but because some firefighters are standing out on the  median with their boots held out to cars passing by, collecting loose change for muscular dystrophy?  Or driving along Queen Street through Parkdale, only to be stopped and asked to donate a few bucks to the Lion’s Club?  
 
Torontonians would be in an uproar! 

Yet such occurrances are quite common out here on Prince Edward Island.

So, guess who showed up Tuesday night just before midnight on her bike? That's right, Tatiana!

She flew into Moncton, stayed overnight in a hostile, bought a bike the next morning, and biked all the way to our house in PEI!!!
It took her 11 hours. (She flew back home from Ch'town on Friday.)

The boys were delighted to see her, and our visiting friend from Lyon was able to meet her before flying home, too.

During the short visit we hung out at the beach (low tide), finished off the scallops (Trevor was able to try his hand at our friend's "Whiskey Scallop" recipe), and kept up our tree-watering schedule (with such a dry spring/summer, the newly planted row of evergreens need to be hand watered almost daily to establish roots).

Sat morning we hit the local farmer's market in Morell, and the boys set up their lemonade and toy stand at Wayne's Yard Sale This afternoon, it's off to the St Peter's Bay Blueberry Festival -- yum!

Having a neighbour who works at the Charlottetown Airport Tower has its advantages:  We were lucky enough to watch the arrival of a friend from overseas, whom we hadn't seen in several years, and who is spending a few days with us in PEI.

What is it with American Literacy Teachers?  Do they not teach health, physed and the Arts down there?  I know schools don’t have the mandatory 40 minutes a day of french that we do, but for goodness sakes, man, at what cost are their classroom literacy empires built?!

After experimenting with the Daily Five last year, a method for fostering independence, especially for younger learners, I am keen to refine my Literacy Block this year.  So, I have begun delving into Boushey and Moser’s “Literacy Café”, a sort of follow up to their Daily Five book.

The Café offers a toolkit of sorts for effective classroom management of the Literacy Block, with a particular emphasis on assessment-driven instruction.  The format is attractive, the writing style very readable.  And yet, after just a cursery perusal of the various sections of the book, I already felt uneasy. 

It didn’t take me long to figure out why: Here was yet another book written by teachers who appear to have nearly three hours uninterrupted each morning for literacy!

The “sample timetables” in the book included very little emphasis on Math, Social Studies and Science, and no Phys.Ed or Arts at all!  Even if the school you teach at does not offer music, drama, dance or visual art (for shame!), surely at least some of the other curriculum areas are so robust as to require some intensive instruction beyond 40 minutes every other day, no?  I had to laugh at their curriculum calendar template, which included 8 spaces for literacy-related focus topic (comprehension strategy, writing form, phonics/spelling skill, etc.), and only one for math, (“math strategy”)!  Having just embarked on a major math and technology project in my own classroom this year, I can assure you that to do even a basic, no-frills job that acceptably addresses the many, many curriculum expectations in the five strands of math will take up considerably more space in my “curriculum calendar”, tee hee!

Many of the strategies and the ideas presented in the Café Book are sound, practical ideas for most teachers, and the book is written, as I said earlier, in a friendly, invitational manner.  However, I will have to read Boushey and Moser’s offerings with a critical lens and a healthy dose of realism as I consider the rich curriculum context in which the Ontario Teacher applies the learning from this text.

(I finally caved and biked over to Morell -- free, if somewhat slow, internet at the Morell Bakery!)

4 hours.  That’s all we have with our students each day.  I know, ‘cause I just jiggled the timetable around 17 times to see how I could get it to work best for my curriculum map next year! 

I knew we had “6-hour work days”, so to speak, because of course that’s all we teachers ever seem to hear in the media or from disgruntled neighbours.  But when I counted up the hours from entry to dismissal, subtracted lunch (the students get an hour) and recesses, and realistically considered entry times, announcements, national anthem, agendas and clean up at the end of the day, and remembered the kids go to a different teacher for Phys.Ed., Music and Dance, I realised that I had only four hours of instructional time with my students each day.

How am I supposed to run a comprehensive literacy program, do problem based math and engage my class in rich, meaningful social studies and science tasks, and – oh yes – do some “real” Art, not crafts, and also Drama – in only four hours a day???!!!

Really, people, is it any wonder our job as teachers is impossible?!