April is National Poetry Month. During this challenging year, poetry has supported critical and courageous conversations, offered some comfort and hope, while honouring pain and anger. Here are some examples of what this work has looked like and sounded like in our Grade 2 classroom: Igniting the Spark: Amanda GormanThe whole world was inspired by […]
LGBTQ2S
International Women’s Day
Happy International Women’s Day! What does this mean to you? What does this mean to your teaching practice? Feminism is for everyone “Eighty-one percent of the members of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) are women and, in many ways, the history of women teachers reflects the struggles of all Canadian women” […]
On Being a Queer Educator in Ontario Schools
If you read Part 1, you’ll know by now that my experience as a student sucked. By the time I went to teacher’s college, I had fully embraced my queerness. I had a reasonably good handle on my identity. As I took my first baby steps into the world of teaching, I had decided that […]
On Being a Queer Student in Ontario Schools
Recently, there was a PD day in my board where the morning was dedicated to equity training. We started with a discussion about a book that has been provided for every school in the OCDSB titled George. If you’re unfamiliar with the book, here is a brief synopsis from Scholastic Canada: A bright, bold debut […]
Hindsight is…
Please don’t make me finish the title until the last second has ticked off the clock. I may have developed a defensive outlook about this trip around the sun. While I know this Gregorian Calender measurement of time will soon be in the rearview mirror of our lives, it is still a battle avoiding the […]
Creating a Safe Space for 2SLGBTQ+ Students and Families
Growing up as a queer kid in a small town, my experience in school wasn’t always very welcoming. Everything felt like it was designed in a way that assumed that I – and everyone – was cis and straight, from the books we read to the forms we took home and the way everyone spoke […]
About those special days at school Pt 2.
This post is a continuation of About those special days at school Pt 1. Both seek to make sense of a number of events in and out of the classroom over the month of October. I believe it serves as an excellent snapshot of the incredible amounts of effort, organization, and attention that educators put […]
Novels That Spark Conversation and Empathy
This year, due to the ongoing job action, Forest of Reading looks quite different in our school. Rather than having a club where students read books at their leisure and then check in with the teacher who read the book for conversation, we’re reading some of the texts as a class. Given a couple of […]