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Welcome to the Wonderful World of Teacher Inquiry! Together we will explore some of the inumerable questions about teaching, learning and everything in between.

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The Whole Student

What three areas am I initially interested in regarding my Inquiry 1 & 2 project? Consent Understanding and respecting consent is one of the fundamental necessities for human interaction. And yet, we have a societal tendency to undermine or ignore children's boundaries both inside and outside the classroom. Sometimes, when the child's safety is a concern, an adult must intervene. But how much do we ignore student consent in order to accomplish our goals? My interest in this area is finding out how these actions impact students' ability to learn. Moreover, how to we healthily and helpfully incorporate non-coercive practice into the classroom? Additions - How do we balance student comfort and the learning goals? Sex and Gender Education There is plenty of literature to support the positive impact of comprehensive, realistic sex education. My question is how sex education impacts students' learning in other areas. We know that by the time they've hit grade 7...

Teaching as an Embodied Practice

"Recognition is inextricably intertwined with selfhood and personal identity" "the practical active knowledge that animates teaching is something that belongs phenomenologically more closely to the whole embodied being of the person as well as to the social and physical world in which this person lives" "our actions are sedimented into habituations , routines, kinesthetic memories ... [and] are sensitive to the contigencies , novelties and expectancies of our world." I'd like to unpack these quotations with reference to the Heideggerian term Befindlichkeit  that Manen mentions and to the Greek term phronesis that he alludes to when talking about 'practical wisdom.' Central to both of these concepts is the idea of situatedness/embodiment/being-in-the-world. For Manen, and for me, this idea of temporal, spatial and individual existence is the critical piece, oft underemphasized by students, of teaching education. It reminds me of th...

Being Welcome (For Oct. 12 in-class)

Below are some common classroom experiences that make me feel more or less welcome: Positive experiences opportunities to self-determine my learning space to give and to revoke consent individual attention recognition of difference between students (race, sexuality, gender, interest, etc.) teacher openness regarding and willingness to correct mistakes acceptance and praise of student mistakes as part of the learning process deliberate and explicit class and subject expectations space for and acceptance of the need for physicality and movement space and flexibility for questions and "off-topic" moments organization and routine respect for personal boundaries teacher investment in my learning positive interdependence and personal investment in my learning Negative experiences presumptive and gendered language (the scientist = he; the nurse = she) cis-hetero-normative assumptions (binary pronouns used without checking, assuming that someone who "loo...