Skip to main content

Hello World

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Green Spaces at School

It often occurs me just how weird it is that western culture makes such a deliberate, harsh division between what is Natural and what is Human. Of course, we have a bunch of dead white guys to thank for this (Descartes, Hobbes and Aquinas to name a few). [Hu]man's supremacy over the natural world went more or less uncontested by the western hegemony for a significant amount of time. Placing the natural (the garden) into an intellectual space is therefore a revolutionary counter-cultural practice. Beyond all of the physiological benefits we know green spaces provide, gardens in schools represent a paradigm shift in the way we think about our world. I personally believe that this is a critical movement towards environmental responsibility that we must continue. One of the things that struck me about the reading was the number of times students listed "slowing down" as a benefit to the gardening space. The students we will teach have all grown up in a world where time is ...
1 comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more