Sit back and enjoy some writing from great Ontario Edubloggers.
Becoming a Better Person for Others: Faith into Action
- Rolland Chidiac – @rchids
- https://wcdsbleadership.blogspot.com/2022/04/becoming-better-person-for-others-faith.html
I really appreciate when bloggers are so open and transparent. In this case, Rolland shows the best of this. He takes a look at his role as re-engagement teacher and marries it to his understanding of social justice.
In particular, he identifies four things in his role.
- Dignity of the Human Person
- Call to Family, Community, and Participation
- Rights and Responsibilities
- Option for the Poor and Vulnerable
With each of these, he analyses making connections to his job and to education. Then, for each he provides a next step for himself. I couldn’t help but think that blogging about it and making it public really makes himself accountable for these changes to his approach.
The word “brave” kept running through my mind as I was reading.
Learning from Each Other — Destreaming Across Ontario: Waterloo District School Board
- Alexandra Woods – @XanWoods
- https://medium.com/the-reciprocal-teacher/learning-from-each-other-destreaming-across-ontario-waterloo-district-school-board-8798fcb5ba4d
This is another very brave and open post about learning and planning for action. Alexandra thinks that there are three things that will make destreaming effective.
- Smaller class sizes to support students
- Equipping teachers and administrators with the correct tools and professional development
- task force to “inform the design, implementation and monitoring of de-streaming
Ultimately, any success will result from the practice and acceptance of classroom teachers. After the past two years, it’s going to take a great deal of effort to do the necessary learning and then implementation of new approaches.
Alexandra shares her notes and thoughts from a Google Meet conducted by Jill Hicknell and Jillian Waters and some reading to support their thoughts. A big takeaway is a Google Resource site and a Twitter handle to follow.
Check it out.
New Twitter Communities: Will this better our Twitter experience?
- Jennifer Casa-Todd – @jcasatodd
- https://jcasatodd.com/new-twitter-communities-will-this-better-our-twitter-experience/
Do you ever have one of those moments where you’re thinking something but you keep it to yourself and it’s only when someone else notes it that you realize you’re not alone?
I had that moment as I read Jennifer’s post. There are times these days when I feel like I should be getting more from my Twitter community than I am. It was somehow comforting to note that she felt the same way.
Lately, I have been a little dissatisfied with my Twitter feed to be honest. Unless someone tags me, I feel like I have been missing out of many of the powerful voices I once had access to. And whereas I felt like my own voice reached many before, I feel like unless I tag people, they rarely see my tweets either.
At about the same time that I started to feel this way, Twitter rolled out the concept of Communities. I took a look and felt it was too much like the Twitter lists that I’ve been curating. But, again, Jennifer takes it a bit further and offers a way that we may fall back in love with Twitter again.
Nicely done, Jennifer.
Self-Reg Havens
- Susan Hopkins – @susanhopkins5
- https://self-reg.ca/self-reg-havens/
The big takeaway for me from Susan’s post was that her concept of a haven isn’t necessarily
just a location
For the longest time, a safe haven for me was a place to think and I guess I’d always put it in personal terms as a location. With a busy life, often the thinking was done in my car commuting to and from work.
The post is a look at what that haven just might be and Susan takes us to these attributes
- Safe
- Rooted
- Balanced
- Capable
- Trusted
If nothing else, it will give you lots to think about.
OBSERVATION IS A NEW REFLECTION!
- Setareh Dabbagh
- http://blog.teslontario.org/observation-is-a-new-reflection/
From Wayne’s World…
I think that most of us did our quality observation as student teachers having placement with an experienced teacher. I don’t know about you but it was one of the first times that I thought that maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a teacher. Thankfully, I persevered.
It shouldn’t stop there and Setareh talks about observing a colleague in their teaching. I did that a couple of times and I think that you get a new lens when you are in the profession. Setareh talks about observing a very extroverted teacher, knowing that that would be a real challenge and maybe an impossibility.
Still, there are lots of things to learn and we should never stop.
Coding Fireworks!
- Barb Seaton – @barb_seaton
- https://www.fairchancelearning.com/stories/coding-fireworks
From the Fair Chance Learning blog, Barb offers a project (along with a solution) for creating a program that will emulate fireworks on a Micro:Bit.
Now, if you’ve already done something like this for Victoria day, you might want to move along.
Or, how about setting off some fireworks to celebrate the end of the school year?
Importance of Context and Concrete Manipulatives From Kindergarten Through Grade 12
- Kyle Pearce – @mathletepearce
- https://makemathmoments.com/concreteness-fading/
Kyle shares a wealth of information here that’s applicable to all grade levels.
I like his start and confession. We all had it. When we started teaching, we wanted to be copies of the very best teacher that we ever had. If you’re honest, you’ll realize that their classroom often doesn’t resemble the successful rooms we have today. We’ve learned so much about effective teaching and learning and it’s just not the same.
This is a long resource but well worth the read and thinking. We want the best for everyone after all.
Please take some time to enjoy these posts and then follow these bloggers on Twitter.
- Rolland Chidiac – @rchids
- Alexandra Woods – @XanWoods
- Jennifer Casa-Todd – @jcasatodd
- Susan Hopkins – @susanhopkins5
- Barb Seaton – @barb_seaton
- Fair Chance Learning – @FCLEdu
- Kyle Pearce – @mathletepearce
This Week in Ontario Edublogs Show
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.