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#VerseLove 2022 – Day 6

Hi, all:

I’ve decided, as much as possible, to participate in the remarkable space that is #VerseLove2022, put together by ethicalela.com . Each day in April (National Poetry Month), a prompt is provided by one of the participants. It comes in the form of a mentor text, and then a poem that the day’s facilitator has written based on that text. I need to send a thank you out to Joel Garza (@JoelRGarza) on Twitter for posting that he was going to take part, which sent me off to look at the event. The other expectation is to read other poems that are being written and posted, and give some positive feedback. Let me be clear that this is a humbling experience. The people taking part in this process can write! Among them is Kevin Hodgson, who is one of the people that helped me make the decision to create this blog years ago. (thanks, Kevin).

Please consider coming over and joining in, if that appeals to you. The poems and prompts would also be great to use with a writing class.

Today’s poem is a form which is new to me, called a Cherita. Introduced by Mo Daley, this form is another one that students might really have fun with. It’s basically a 6 line story, with stanzas of 1, 2 and 3 lines. https://www.ethicalela.com/cherita/

This is the inspiration for today’s mini-story (apologies for the pre-tidy-up chaos)

There is such good poetry in the space. I am working on another cherita, inspired by Kevin Hodgson’s poem today about the panicked moments of losing a child in a crowd.

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#VerseLove 2022 – Day 5

Hi, all:

I’ve decided, as much as possible, to participate in the remarkable space that is #VerseLove2022, put together by ethicalela.com . Each day in April (National Poetry Month), a prompt is provided by one of the participants. It comes in the form of a mentor text, and then a poem that the day’s facilitator has written based on that text. I need to send a thank you out to Joel Garza (@JoelRGarza) on Twitter for posting that he was going to take part, which sent me off to look at the event. The other expectation is to read other poems that are being written and posted, and give some positive feedback. Let me be clear that this is a humbling experience. The people taking part in this process can write! Among them is Kevin Hodgson, who is one of the people that helped me make the decision to create this blog years ago. (thanks, Kevin).

Please consider coming over and joining in, if that appeals to you. The poems and prompts would also be great to use with a writing class.

If you are checking out the posts at VerseLove, please take a minute to read the amazing poem that Rhiannon, one of the other poets wrote with my last lines from yesterday. Super powerful, and how cool to see your words turned into something completely different.

Today’s poem is a 4 x 4. This is a form with major constraints, which means it might work for some of your writers in class. 4 stanzas; each stanza has 4 lines; each line has 4 syllables, AND the first line of the poem becomes your refrain – it is the 2nd line of stanza 2, the 3rd of stanza 3, and the final line of the poem. Denise Krebs, who wrote today’s prompt, suggested that we challenge ourselves to come up with a 4 syllable title.

I also owe a debt to the driver who drove past the post office where I was locking my bike this afternoon. They were playing The Marvelettes’ Mr Postman, with that great “Wait a minute, wait a minute” chorus. Hey, wait a minute – that’s 4 syllables. I had the poem written by the time I rode home. Also influenced by buying boxes to mail goodies to faraway boys.

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#Verselove 2022 – Day 4

Hi, all:

I’ve decided, as much as possible, to participate in the remarkable space that is #VerseLove2022, put together by ethicalela.com . Each day in April (National Poetry Month), a prompt is provided by one of the participants. It comes in the form of a mentor text, and then a poem that the day’s facilitator has written based on that text. I need to send a thank you out to Joel Garza (@JoelRGarza) on Twitter for posting that he was going to take part, which sent me off to look at the event. The other expectation is to read other poems that are being written and posted, and give some positive feedback. Let me be clear that this is a humbling experience. The people taking part in this process can write! Among them is Kevin Hodgson, who is one of the people that helped me make the decision to create this blog years ago. (thanks, Kevin).

Please consider coming over and joining in, if that appeals to you. The poems and prompts would also be great to use with a writing class.

I will try to post each day’s poem here, as time allows.

Today’s prompt was to find a “seed” at the end of another writer’s poem, and to begin yours there. https://www.ethicalela.com/burrows-and-seeds/

I know there’s more to go with this one. I took my “seed” from Tammi, who wrote:

“Before we act/Before we love/Before we heal/ And the world just darkness.”

Before
Before we act,

We must prepare

must ensure that all is there.

Must check the boxes, dot the t’s

What would happen should someone see

Our fear?

Before we heal

we must first bleed.

Must see our wounds, and name our need.

Must cry for those we could not mend

Take that fear, and call it friend,

and live.

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#Verselove 2022

Hi, all:

I’ve decided, as much as possible, to participate in the remarkable space that is #VerseLove2022, put together by ethicalela.com . Each day in April (National Poetry Month), a prompt is provided by one of the participants. It comes in the form of a mentor text, and then a poem that the day’s facilitator has written based on that text. I need to send a thank you out to Joel Garza (@JoelRGarza) on Twitter for posting that he was going to take part, which sent me off to look at the event. The other expectation is to read other poems that are being written and posted, and give some positive feedback. Let me be clear that this is a humbling experience. The people taking part in this process can write! Among them is Kevin Hodgson, who is one of the people that helped me make the decision to create this blog years ago. (thanks, Kevin).

Please consider coming over and joining in, if that appeals to you. The poems and prompts would also be great to use with a writing class.

I will try to post each day’s poem here, as time allows.

These are the first 3, with links to the prompts, in case you want to check them out.

April 1’s prompt was an acrostic poem https://www.ethicalela.com/verselove-2022-begins/

I dedicated mine to #EduKnitNight:

The prompt for April 2 was to write about core memories: https://www.ethicalela.com/core-memories/

One of the spindles I was thinking about in my April 2 poem

And today’s prompt was a borrowing – to find a line in another’s poet’s writing that started you writing: https://www.ethicalela.com/collaboration-inspiration/

I worked from a line in Kevin Hodgson’s poem from today about background sound stopping.

The space where some of these sounds are heard.

Watch for more poetry in the coming days. I hope some of you will be inspired to come and play with words.

Let the sparks fly.

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Saying Goodbye

a women in a blue dress and a man in a white shirt are seated together in front of a china cabinet. Both are smiling.
My father in law Ken, and me.

My father-in-law, Ken Noble, died on Sunday, July 18, after a long fight with an undiagnosed respiratory illness. We were lucky enough to have him spend his last days in hospice care here in Peterborough. With all of Ken’s children living here in town, it meant that people were able to have quiet visiting time with him before he died.

My dad died 17 years ago, and Ken has been my dad since then. He was also my boys’ grandfather, and he excelled at that role. One of the things I loved most about Ken was the way he worked at getting to know my kids. He always asked questions about what they were doing and what they were interested in, even if he didn’t always understand the answers. When my older son grew into something of a gearhead and maker, Ken was thrilled, because he did understand the answers!

An older man is seated in a chair with a 9 year old boy sitting on the chair arm. The boy is showing the man something on a smartphone. A younger boy is standing beside them , also looking at the phone.
Ken, in grandpa mode, having some kind of technology explained to him by his grandsons.

I want to share a few things that Ken taught me along the way. One was to always make sure to tell the people you love that you love them. I know it seems obvious, but Ken never let me head back to Peterborough from time at the lake without telling me he loved me. When I went through post-partum depression after each of our boys were born, Ken always, always, made sure to lavish extra hugs and love on me. He didn’t know how to talk about what I was going through, but he knew that I needed to hear that I was loved. I don’t know if he knew how much of a gift that was for me.

Ken also taught me, and our boys, about having a sense of place. I am a first generation Canadian on my dad’s side. When I wanted to take my kids to connect with my late dad’s past, I took them to High Park in Toronto, where he had played as a kid. We walked the spaces where he had raced bicycles, and wandered over to Grenadier Pond, where he skated. That sense of place and where you are from is more concrete on my husband’s side of the family. We buried Ken on Friday in a small cemetery near his home and the historic church he worked on maintaining. Two of the stones in that cemetery bear the name my older son now carries. The small lake where my in-laws lived, and the home they designed and built there (with my husband’s help) were home away from home spaces for the 4 of us. My boys were the 7th generation to help make maple syrup in the Noble family sugar bush, and when that space became too much for my father-in-law to manage, we created Sugarbush 2.0 in the maple bush at the lake. While the lakefront home has now been sold, the sugarbush now belongs to my family of 4, and that is a remarkable thing to me. Ken was a guy who was happiest when he was outside – cutting wood, walking trails, tapping trees, taking the pontoon boat up the lake – and I am thankful for the way he modeled that for my kids. The 6 of us (My family of 4 and Ken and my mother-in-law, Joan) would often schedule “car camping” time in Algonquin in the same weeks, so that we could spend time outside together.

An older man is standing in snow, hanging a metal bucket on a maple tree to gather sap. Two small boys, one in a blue coat and one in a red, are watching him.
Grandpa Ken, in the original sugarbush, checking buckets with his helpers.

I need you to know that Ken wasn’t perfect. He was a charmer, and always willing to lend a hand, but it was sometimes hard to get him to go deeper – past that exterior. He sometimes put up walls between himself and his immediate family. He dealt with depression, but didn’t have the words, for a long time, to call it that. He was not the easiest guy to live with, and my mother-in-law has all my respect for the work she did in a marriage of 60 plus years.

He was a man of his generation, living almost his entire life in rural Haliburton County. That meant that he and I butted heads along the way, especially when a racist or sexist comment came out of his mouth, particularly when it happened in front of my kids. That brings me to the last thing that I will carry with me about Ken. Despite being a man of his generation, and raised in an era and a place where racism and sexism were part of the furniture and where one never, ever, talked about feelings, my father-in-law was willing to learn, and willing to work at being better. He and I built a relationship, and that meant that when I needed to address something he’d said, I felt safe in doing it, and he was willing to listen. That, too, was something that we modeled together for my kids. Whether it was helping my husband bathe the grandsons (which he had never done as a father) or learning to use appropriate language when talking about Indigenous women or people of colour, Ken was willing to learn. He embodied, in some ways, that idea of “know better, do better” and I am so very glad that I got to be part of that learning with him.

On Sunday, after Ken died, we came home and toasted him with an ice cream sandwich, which was always one of his favourite treats. I would invite you to do the same in his memory, with the people you love.

We buried Ken on Friday, in his much-loved Essonville cemetery, after a funeral that was a combination of sincerity and silliness (as many are). The Zoom link had no volume, which meant my mom did her usual social co-ordinator thing and made friends with everybody in the Zoom room, but also meant people missed my husband’s amazing eulogy for his dad. (Let us know if you’d like a copy e-mailed to you, though we’d ask you not to share it on social media). From here, we go on.

Ken’s obituary can be found here: https://memorials.gordonmonkfuneralhome.com/kenneth-noble/4670650/obituary.php

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Measuring or mattering?

A few weeks ago, I treated my husband to an evening of restorative yoga and Thai yoga massage. As we relaxed through two hours of hot stone therapy, deep massage and gentle yoga poses, one of the facilitators offered some possibilities to focus our thinking. One of them in particular has been rattling around in my brain since then. The question was “are you measuring or are you mattering?”

This question resonated with me particularly because of an experience I’d had earlier in the week. Mr 14 had come home with a challenging story. He had gotten to school one morning last week to find a crowd outside the office. He found his friends gathered around a listing of students who had achieved “honour roll” status with their first semester marks. “Okay”, I thought, “this was an alphabetical list of the kids who had achieved a pre-established standard. Not ideal, but not awful”.

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Measuring, or mattering? A strange combination here. credit: flickr user Rafael Castillo, va cc

Except, as my son explained, it wasn’t what I pictured at all. Instead, it was a list of student names, with their averages listed, in numerical order. I have a fairly resilient kid, so he wasn’t particularly shamed by what was posted, but I also have an empathetic kid, who was looking at friends who were crying (or trying not to), and obviously struggling. One very talented child, who had achieved an average above 90, was repeating “it’s not good enough” to herself.

 

This is clearly a focus on measuring over mattering. The system in which these children are learning seems to value the grades they achieved over who they are as individuals, and felt that it was acceptable to post a list that would clearly identify who was “winning” and who was not. It made me think of Josh Hill’s amazing TEdXedu talk in Waterloo in the fall about how we define excellence:

 

The story does have an ending that gives me hope. My son has built enough of a relationship with the director of his program that he felt able to approach that teacher in the hall later that day, and express his concerns about the way the Honour Roll recipients had been published. He was not the only student to do so over the course of the day. When I bumped into the program director a few days later, he expressed his thanks that those students had felt able to address the issue with him. He talked about an “unexamined tradition” that will now be looked at with staff and student input moving forward. The staff and students, together, are beginning a journey from measuring to mattering.

It’s easy to get caught up in measuring – again, there’s that idea of expectations and “enough”. Is our house clean enough? Are we making enough money? Are we losing enough weight? Are we taking enough risks in our classrooms? Are the students in our class learning the material as well as those in the classroom down the hall? It’s often the default position in the world we live in – to compare ourselves to others. How do we shift the climate – for ourselves, our families, our students, our school communities – so that we look for ways to show others that they matter, that they have intrinsic value, no matter how they “measure up” to some imposed set of standards?

I would invite you, as a small step, to think of someone in your world who needs to hear today that they matter – a student, a teaching colleague, your administrator, a friend, your own child, your spouse.  Or maybe even, you. Take a moment and let that person know that they have value, that they are enough. Take a moment to matter.

 

Let the sparks fly.

 

 

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Giving it up (for a while)

It’s Mardi Gras as I write this.  Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday.  It’s the day on which, historically, you wanted to use up the things in your pantry and larder that you were not going to be able to eat during the 40 days of Lent, which, historically, most people observed. According  to Wikipedia, this idea of fasting for 40 days got its start around 331 CE. The idea, originally, was to have only one meal a day, and to avoid meat, dairy, oil and wine (doesn’t that sound fun?). Gradually, that expanded to a small “collation” or snack in the morning and evening, and the main (meatless, oilless, dairy-less) meal at lunch.  In many places, fish and seafood were allowed, and in Canada, historically, you could also eat beaver. So, eating pancakes and sausages on this day kind of makes sense, to mark a stretch when, historically, you couldn’t eat those things.

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This could have been your way around a meatless meal in early French-Canadian culture. photo credit: flickr user Space Age Sage via cc

 

Over time, the idea of “fasting” or “abstinence” during Lent has evolved into giving other things up – maybe chocolate, or beer, or coffee. Followers of this practice are often asked to think about something that draws them away from God that might be given up, or to think about whether they could add prayer or devotional time to their day, rather than giving something up.

This year,  I’ve decided that I need to try a self-imposed social media fast. Particularly during this self-funded leave year, I find that I can happily spend a lot of time down the rabbit hole of my Twitter and Instagram feeds. Without my daily face to face connections with colleagues, I find myself craving connection through my digital networks, and seeking that next hit of dopamine from a like or reply. I need to wean myself away from that, and hopefully find some more time for writing, knitting, spinning, working out, and yes, prayer and meditative time.

I’m also interested in seeing whether stepping away from social media helps with my expectations (my OneWordOnt). I was intrigued during Tina Zita’s OTF workshop on wellness in a digital world to hear one of the participants admit that being on social media actually raises her stress level as a teacher. She feels like she sees all these great ideas, and creates some unreasonable expectations for herself in terms of using them all. I have had other friends share this thought as well. Perhaps taking some time away from the #edtech social media world will help me focus in on the things I already know I want to do with my class next year, rather than worrying about what the hot new activity might be. We’ll see.

One thing I’m pretty certain I’ll accomplish is lowering my yarn budget. I had no idea that Instagram was the true home of yarn porn. So much hand-dyed loveliness, so many women of Star Wars colourways, so much money…..

 

So, this is a farewell for the next 40 days or so. If you need to reach me, e-mail will probably be easiest, although I will also check Messenger, and Twitter DM. I will still be blogging, and will share those posts via social media. I hope to be “talking” to some of you via your blogs. I hope you’ll let me know if there’s something big happening with you that I might miss if I’m not on Facebook. Maybe we can get together over a cup of tea…..

 

Let the sparks fly

 

Why not go? (and some ways to get there)
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Why not go? (and some ways to get there)

If you were paying attention to my social media postings over the past week, you know that I was at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference (#OLASC) from Tuesday night until Friday. This is a huge conference, with around 5000 participants coming from all over the country, and from every sort of library (medical, public, school, archives) you might be able to think of. It includes a trade show with many authors available for signings, a huge offering of workshops in different streams, and spotlight speakers for each stream as well as keynote speakers designed to appeal to all attendees. This year’s theme was “Fearless by Design”.

fearless

I had an amazing time. I presented on Wednesday morning, on the topic of “Dishcloths, Design Thinking and Knitted QR codes”. I was thrilled to have an enthusiastic, engaged group of learners who were ready to participate in the activities I had prepared, ask some great questions, and try their hand at knitting. The photos and tweets shared by participants showed that people were having some “aha” moments, and that there was a lot of mentoring going on by some of the experienced knitters in the crowd. It was a terrific way to start the conference.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend all 3 days of the conference, and I learned an immense amount. I got to watch amazing educators share their knowledge, hear some remarkable speakers (and have my thinking really pushed by some of them) and be a “fangirl” for a favourite author or two.

Most importantly for me, I got to spend some precious time with old friends, while making connections to new ones. Relationship-building is what this kind of event is all about for me, because connecting with those people is what can help me keep that “conference high” going. It was a terrific recharge and  this is a great time for it – a boost to get you through the “middle stretch”. I came home with much to think about.

And then I thought: “why don’t more people go to things like this?”, and then I had to check my privilege at the door, because I know there are a ton of reasons why people can’t/don’t attend conferences.

Economic barriers are huge – conferences are not cheap, and if you’re an out of towner, you’re paying for transportation, accommodation and meals. You also have to figure out release time, which, I learned, is WAY more of a hassle in some boards than in others. Time barriers are huge: if you have dependents of any size and shape, leaving for 3 days can be impossible, and then there’s the major chunk of time you’re going to spend prepping for a supply teacher. I hadn’t realized how much that was a factor until this self-funded leave year, when I went to a conference and it hit me that I didn’t have to worry about how thing were going in my classroom, or check for supply feedback, or adjust plans, or call a parent or…..(I know, you get it). This year, OLASC overlapped with my board’s elementary report-writing day. I would have been heading home Thursday night if I’d been teaching, or I might have decided not to go at all, in order to have time to complete reports. I think a third barrier is that people genuinely don’t know a) what conferences might be available and b) don’t know what a conference can offer them.

 

 

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There can be a lot of barriers to attending a conference. How can we work around them? photo credit: Matteo Parrini via cc

 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about teacher mental health. Partly because I’m on a year off, and I know I’m emotionally and mentally healthier without work stress; partly because of the growing concern about violent incidents in the classroom; partly because I’m part of this community, and I know we don’t do enough for ourselves. At report card time in particular, we’re often hanging on by our toenails, as we try to keep all the balls in the air and meet everybody’s expectations. I’d like to propose that time away from your work routine for some self-directed learning, even for a day, might be one possible mental health strategy.

So how do we get around those barriers?

  • Check the workshops your provincial union might be offering – many that ETFO offers cost $50 and include release time, transportation, accommodation, meals and dependent care coverage (and yes, you have to apply). Summer workshops offered by OTF are multi-day events with transportation, accommodation and meal allowances, and you get your registration fee back after the workshop (yes, that’s right, it’s FREE!) and are open to all teachers in Ontario. (and they’re offered all over the province, so many people combine learning with a family holiday, if you have another adult who can help you make that happen).
  • If you’re looking for a lower registration price, put in a workshop proposal – we all have great ideas to share. Many conferences offer free registration for the day you present, or a discounted conference rate, if your proposal is accepted.
  • Release time an issue? Check if your union local offers funding for learning opportunities. Shoutout to KPRETFO, who will cover release time and up to $400 for accommodation and registration until that budget line is depleted. Yes, you will have to fill out an application and have your principal sign it. Worth it? I think so.
  • Find out where conferences are taking place. Can you stay with someone? OLA was downtown Toronto, and my best friend lives there, close to a transit route. I just hugely lowered the cost of my event, and got to spend time with my best friend. Win-win.
  • Check dates – find an event that’s happening when you feel like it might work for you to have a break.
  • Ask a friend to go with you – you can go to different workshops, and share resources (and if you share accommodation, your costs go down). And you’ll always have someone to sit with at lunchtime.
  • Find a conference that you really want to go to. Going to a conference won’t feed you unless it’s something you choose. Tech, subject area associations, indigenous learning, mental health, art, early learning, inquiry – it’s all out there.

Yes, it’s still a hassle to prep to be away. That’s a reality, and probably a whole blog post. You may still struggle to find child/parent care, which may mean that this post is a “not now, but someday” for you. You may be the kind of person who’s going to add to your stress  by going to a conference and getting overwhelmed by all the things you “should” be doing (yes, I’ve been there). You know what you need. But maybe, just maybe, it’s worth a try for moments like this that you can hold in your heart to get you through the next rough spot.

librarian love

The reason I really go to conferences. Spending face to face time with my personal learning family. Thank you, Diana, Alanna and Dawn!

 

What’s your favourite conference? How do we make going to conferences more manageable for a more diverse set of learners? How do we find opportunities for people to share what they learned, if they want to do that?

 

Let the sparks fly!

Is this enough?
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Is this enough?

Monday morning, as I checked my e-mail, I found a message from my director of education. She talked about our board’s focus on student well-being over the past few years, and introduced a new initiative, specifically targeting staff wellness. I admit, I got a little choked up reading that.

I have been that annoying person, every time we have professional development on student mental health, who participates fully, but always asks, “and what about staff mental health?”. For me, the two are inextricably linked. All teachers, and particularly those working with high-needs populations, need support to keep themselves healthy (physically, emotionally and mentally) in order to best support their students. They need to be working in spaces that feel safe, with supportive colleagues and admin, and have access to strategies and supports to help them when life is not going exactly as planned. I know I’m not alone in saying this has not always been my experience as a teacher. I was thrilled to see the e-mail.

I was less thrilled to read on and discover that the new focus on staff well-being comes in the form of a partnership with a particular research team, which “has over 20 years of experience working with some of the world’s highest performing individuals and organizations. They specialize in research-based strategies that improve health and wellbeing in challenging environments, including schools and boards.” I’m not saying that sounds bad – because it doesn’t. Teaching, and staying healthy while doing it, can define the phrase “challenging environment” . So, why did I have such a negative reaction?

Maybe I’ve become a cynic in my old age, but my experience has been that when we align ourselves with one particular program, a) we’re paying a lot for it and b) it doesn’t make for a lot of opportunity for differentiation. And I’ve wary of that at this point. I’m wary of anything that comes “pre-packaged”, that is supposed to meet a multitude of needs.

However, I try really hard to be a positive person, so I went on to the accompanying video.

 

And that’s when I really got frustrated.

I’m not going to go into all the things I struggled with in the video – those are probably for a conversation with my director, who I respect as a fellow educator. But I have to say that I felt like there was a gaping hole in the whole “pitch” (and yes, that’s my sarcastic voice coming through – it did feel like a pitch). There was no mention, really, of emotional well-being (other than as “stress”). In the interests of transparency, I need to say that my spouse is a couples and family therapist, who uses an emotionally focused approach. That definitely colours my thoughts on this.

The approach indicated in the video suggests a major focus on physical health, and I cannot argue with the importance of sleeping well, eating well and moving more, because those are strategies that work for me. I believe in the value of mindfulness practice, especially when it’s adapted to different people’s needs (some of us are helped by moving meditation). But for me, unless this program makes space for learning about the importance of our emotional health; for learning about our relationships – with ourselves, with our family and friends, with our school community – we’re missing a huge, vital, piece of the puzzle.

relationships

It’s all about relationships, really. Photo credit: flickr user Robert Eede via cc

My other main struggle is that this program will come to us, as teachers, every couple of months, as a package in our in-box, including videos, podcasts and articles. Again, I’m thrilled at the thought of more resources. However, the expectation that teachers will need to take another piece of their constantly shrinking “own” time, and dig into those resources, and hopefully benefit from them, is not a realistic one. How many colleagues do you know who rarely access their school e-mail, because they already feel the demands are too much? Surely, if this is really a priority, we could spend the occasional staff meeting working through a module together? Maybe find some PLC time during the day to gather with a small group and listen to a podcast or watch and discuss a video (maybe even with snacks)? Staff well-being is incredibly important, for bigger reasons than reducing absences.  I think it’s the bedrock we build on. A well staff means a well school, which means more ability to work with students, and their families towards their own wellness and, at its strongest, means being able to model what health and well-being looks like. Having been in the job for 25 years now, and currently experiencing the lowered stress level that comes with a self-funded leave, I know that many of us struggle with balancing our own emotional needs with the needs of our immediate and extended families and of our students, with the stress of deadlines and paperwork and trying to build safe spaces for our students. 

I think that we deserve more than a package in our in-box.

I’m going to end in hope that this focus will grow. I’d also love to know what other boards are doing. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Let the sparks fly……

 

Leaving Kansas…
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Leaving Kansas…

 

 

In December, an exhibit opened at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, focused on the work on designer Christian Dior, and particularly his role in resurrecting couture fashion after the Second World War. I’m not a huge follower of fashion, as anyone who knows me would assert, but I am fascinated by the links between popular culture and history, and this fits perfectly in there. My family is lucky enough to have an out-of-town membership for the ROM (worth getting if you visit Toronto a couple times a year), and I was able to register for a member experience involving the ROM exhibit.

 

Dawna Pym, who is part of the education staff at the ROM, and who has a personal deep and abiding passion for fashion, gave us a hands-on provocation with textiles from her own collection, helping us situate Dior historically. White-gloved, we lifted lace, examined the construction of corsets, and envied zippers on girdles.

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Yes, really – that’s a zipper on a girdle. How great would that be?

 

Dawna then took us for a guided tour of the beautifully curated Dior exhibit. The ROM has the 3rd biggest museum textile collection in the the world, behind only the Met and the Victoria and Albert, some 55,000 items. We got to see scrapbooks, fabric samples, finished products, and learn about the way in which the resurrection of couture also helped save the disappearing arts of hand beading, embroidery and more. Anyone who doesn’t think sewing machines have a spot in the makerspace needs to come and see some of the astounding work on display in this exhibit. More on this adventure in another post.

After 2 engrossing hours, I headed down to the cafeteria in the bowels of the ROM to reflect, and really try and absorb some of the amazing stuff I’d learned, and then the world tilted.

Because on her way out of the cafeteria, on her way to her session with Dawna, was a friend I spent a magic summer with 33 years ago – and who I’ve really only seen a few times in the interim. But that summer, and that experience, was one of those that binds you to those you share it with. It connects you and despite communicating via Facebook, when you see each other 33 years later, you call each other’s names, and laugh, and hug each other, and do a 5 minute update, and get teenaged girls (who can never imagine that they will be this old someday) to take your picture , and then, if you’re me, you sit down, and get a little teary, because that bond is still there, and it’s magic.

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Old friends – we’ve aged surprising well, I think!

 

So, I thought, why, after all this time, is that connection still there?

In July of 1984, when I was 17 years old, I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of about 30 Ontario kids to go on an immersion experience to Germany. There was a cost involved, and I know I paid some, and my parents somehow came up with the rest (which would not have been easy). We would be boarded with families, most of whom had a teenaged child, and would go to German classes in the morning, and then have the afternoons free for social and cultural activities. We soon realized this was code for eating much bratwurst and poppyseed cake, drinking much beer, lying in the sun at the town’s outdoor pool complex and dancing at the local disco, with the occasional castle and cathedral tour thrown in for good measure.

I had done a fair amount of travelling as a kid. The requisite long road trip out west, lots of camping adventures with my family, a year spent living in Florida the year I was in Grade 9, while my dad worked on his Master’s in Media Literacy (yup – on his #selffundedleave – I come by it honestly). But prior to this trip, in the summer of Grade 12, I had not really been away from my family for very long – maybe a week at a time at a summer camp. And suddenly, here I was, on another freaking continent, with money of my own to budget (my dad set me up a ledger), and really, no accountability to anybody except the charming grandparent-age couple who were housing me.

I think that was the key.  That “out here on my own” thing we were all experiencing together, with no opportunity for helicopter parenting – no cell phones, no e-mail, no Skype or FaceTime. I sent a couple of postcards, but my parents were very far away – literally and metaphorically. If somebody got a dear John letter from his girlfriend in Canada, and was trying to self-medicate himself to solve it, nobody but us was going to dig him out of that hole. If somebody truly fell in love, and didn’t know how they were going to say goodbye, we cried it out together. If someone was mixing pain meds, paprika chips and apple schnapps a little too liberally, it was up to us to solve that problem. If I wanted to have my hair cut down to an inch all over my head, there was nobody who was going to say “no, that’s a bad idea”, and lots of people to encourage me. We became each other’s family, and we took that responsibility seriously. We grew up a lot, that summer, and we helped each other do it.

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Dear heavens, but we’re young. Summer of 84, Kulmbach, Germany. That’s me, in the mushroom cut (before I cut it all off!). We were fierce, and brave and gorgeous!

And that’s why I had a little “verklempt” moment. Because seeing, and touching, and talking to my old friend reminded me of the fierce, brave, gorgeous women we were becoming in the summer of ‘84, and of all the things we didn’t know yet were going to hurt us and give us joy.

Being me, I am left with some questions.  What was that defining experience for you – when you knew that you weren’t in Kansas anymore, and that you were okay with that? Who were the people you shared it with? Are they still part of your world? Please share in the comments, or your own writing – I’d really love to know.

Second batch of questions: Do those opportunities still exist for our students and our children in this ultra-connected world? Do we encourage our students and kids to take them, and then get out of the way? How might the technology that enriches our lives be getting in the way of this kind of adventure? How do we help our parent/teacher selves let go?

 

Let the sparks fly….