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Those who know me are well aware of my love of live events and especially concerts and musicals.  I love the theatrics, the costumes, the soundtracks. Something beautiful comes together on the stage in that very moment of storytelling that makes the characters come alive through the music and the shared experience. 

I’ve never really found the same love for sports, though.  Don’t get me wrong, put me in a live audience and I’m cheering with the best of them!  But I don’t follow a specific team and I’m not a sports fanatic. I’ve always felt a little removed from sports and the athletes seemed a little impersonal to me.  It’s a storyline I just can’t follow with a lot of excitement or connection. 

Lately, that seems to be changing.  

With the spotlight on women’s sports, I’m finding myself connected with the athletes.  I’m following their stories, their rises through the ranks, their funny commentaries on social media about themselves and their teammates. I’m listening to these women talk during interviews about topics that are important to me: challenges they face, uplifting one another, finding their own stories and who they truly are. Somehow, through all of these interactions, I have gained a renewed interest in sports. 

It wasn’t the shared identity or interest in sports that finally got me to remember the names of professional athletes or put the game on TV. It was that I saw a shared experience, the same struggles that many of us have: being questioned about talent, setting boundaries, trying to balance careers, mental health, and being true to ourselves. Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles stepping away from their careers to take care of themselves and their health.  Alysia Liu drawing boundaries and defining herself in her own way. Ilona Maher championing body positivity. Their journeys helped my lived experience as a woman feel a little more familiar, a little more seen. In their stories I saw humanity and a reminder that representation isn’t just about who we see, but what parts of ourselves we recognize in others. 

The books, the stories we share with students in schools might echo the same way. Flashes where students might see themselves represented through common experiences, emotions, and challenges. Instances where children might recognize their own stories and respond with a quiet, “hey, me too.”  This is exactly why representation matters: when students see reflections of their identities, they feel less alone and a little more understood. These connections can cultivate compassion, confidence and even a feeling of community.  

I still don’t identify as an athlete and it’s pretty unlikely that I will ever willingly join a sports team. But you will find me following some incredible athletes on social media and liking all their posts. I’ll still be cheering loudly and boldly at any live sporting event I’m attending. Perhaps, though, I’ll be a little bit louder for the women with a voice that is cheering for their power, their resistance, their continued pursuit of excellence. This representation feels personal; their presence feels like a win for anyone who’s ever been underestimated or whose struggles felt unseen. When I look at sports through this lens, it would seem we’re no longer in competition with each other.  Instead, we’re all on the same team. 

In my previous post I shared that one of the things I find joyful about teaching is witnessing students make progress in their learning and recognizing that I had some part in it. In this post, I’ll focus on the joy that I find comes from learning how to improve my teaching practices from direct work with students. Again, my hope in sharing the insights included in this post is that they help other educators reflect on what brings them joy in their teaching practices, then think of ways to use that joy to further fuel their passion for teaching and learning.

One of the reasons that I became a teacher beyond a love of helping and working with kids is that I really enjoy learning. To be more specific, I enjoy reading, writing, thinking and engaging in conversations with others about things that add value and meaning to their lives. Because I enjoy learning, I hope that what and how I teach inspires students to engage in the learning we do together and that it brings them some joy and adds meaning to their lives. To hopefully ignite or further fuel a joy of learning in students, I spend a lot of time preparing my lessons and assignments. During instructions I am constantly monitoring student responses to verify their engagement and understanding and while they are working on assigned tasks, I often meet with them in small groups or one-to-one to observe their progress and provide individualize constructive feedback to aid them in further progress.

Over the course of this year, I found that my small group and one-to-one meetings were where I had some of the best opportunities to see how my teaching of the curriculum landed with students.

While traditionally, teachers have been positioned as the ones to impart knowledge to students and it has often been seen as a one-way transactional process, I prefer to utilize a Paulo Freire educational approach where I recognize that both students and teachers are learners and participants in a learning community. This translates to mean that both students and teachers enter classroom spaces with valuable funds of knowledge to share and support the ongoing teaching and learning of all participants within the community. As a result of the sharing of knowledge both grow from their experience of collaborating and working together. I know that I have become and continue to become a better teacher from my work with students and the indirect and sometimes direct feedback they have given me.

For example, to keep myself and students organized this year, I often used slide decks for my whole group instructions. However, during a small group meeting, several students shared that sometimes I moved too fast through the slide decks and sometimes they found them difficult to see from their seat at the back of the classroom.  Finding this to be useful feedback, I made immediate changes. I first posted a digital copy of the deck on our virtual learning platform so students could access them through classroom devices while I taught lessons. I also slowed my rate of instruction to provide more thinking time for students and created workspaces closer to the front of the classroom where students could sit and work to obtain a better view of the screen.

I think being open to hearing and learning about what students need to support and be successful in their learning, then being responsive to those needs is such a vital part of my teaching practice; It reminds me that I teach students the curriculum not the curriculum to students. Understanding the subtle but clear difference between teaching students the curriculum and not the other way around ensures that adapting the curriculum to support student learning remains at the fore of my mind. When I learn simple or complex new ways to help students learn, it brings me immense joy.

The Steps to English Proficiency continua (STEP) is one of those teaching tools that never ceases to surprise me with new insights every time I come back to it. To be sure, there are moments when I wish it was updated, more reflective of changing pedagogy, and more streamlined. However, its importance in our linguistically diverse schools is undeniable.

To those who are unfamiliar, STEP is an Ontario Ministry-developed tool that help educators understand and track the English language development of multilingual language learners (MLLs). They are used to guide instruction, accommodations, and programming in oral communication, reading, and writing.

I have noticed in recent years that many educators are less intrigued by language proficiency and more concerned with literacy screener scores – and it’s not hard to see why.

Unlike other ways of measuring language development, STEP does not have a tangible and specific assessment that generates scores and identifies students at risk. Its purpose is to give educators a sense of a student’s level of English proficiency, so they can plan, adapt, and assess  instruction accordingly. Educators use triangulated assessment (observations, conversations, products) to place students at different proficiency levels. When a student remains “stuck” at a level for an extended period of time, it would be a possible indicator that additional assessments and direct support may be needed.

Screeners and diagnostics, on the other hand, really pinpoint which skills students need to develop to become better readers, and regular progress monitoring helps educators, students, and their families to map growth. What is important to note, however, is that literacy screeners assume that students already know and speak the language they mapping onto different combinations of letters, or graphemes. MLLs in the early STEPs, unlike proficient English speakers, have the more complex challenge of learning the English language at the same time that they are connecting its phonemes to written script.

So what does the STEP continua have to do with it? When we stop paying attention to language proficiency, we risk looking at literacy screener and diagnostic scores out of context. It is only when we look at both of them in tandem that we can gather useful insights about an MLL’s literacy portrait.

For example, an early STEP student may score low on a literacy screener because they are still learning English sounds and syntax, developing oral speech in English, acquiring vocabulary, or processing unfamiliar academic language: not necessarily because of an underlying reading difficulty. It is only when educators examine both STEP data and literacy assessment results together that they can build a more accurate and strengths-based literacy portrait of MLLs.

A colleague recently shared her frustration that the “MLL perspective” was noticeably absent from conversations with about literacy screeners at her school. Another literacy coach commented, “I’m tired of hearing teachers use ESL as an excuse for students doing poorly in reading.” Statements like these highlight the ongoing need for professional learning that bridges the gap between English language learning pedagogy and structured literacy approaches.

It is clear that STEP implementation is more important than ever. Without regularly utilizing and referencing shared language and tool for describing language proficiency for MLLs, especially those in the youngest and most formative years, we minimize and possibly even lose sight of a critical piece of data about students’ oral language foundations, which is well known to be a key indicator of student success.

Did you know that ETFO has a resource that may be a great starting point for you if you are interested in learning more?

Enhance classroom practices with these considerations when implementing early reading screeners and analyzing the data from multilingual language learners. (PDF)

As educators, we know how important strong home school partnerships are. When families feel connected to what is happening in the classroom, they are often able to better able to support their child’s learning and engage in meaningful conversations. The challenge, of course, is finding the time to communicate while balancing everything else we do each day.

As both a parent and an educator, this is something I value deeply. It means a lot when my own children’s teachers share not only what is happening in class, but also the strengths they notice and the areas where my children are growing. It helps me feel connected, informed, and better able to support them at home.

Recently, I had the chance to speak with a Grade 6 teacher whose families consistently say they feel very connected throughout the year. I was curious to learn what makes the difference.

Her answer was simple: consistency.

She shared that communication starts early in the year with positive messages home. Sometimes it is a quick email, other times a short phone call to share something she noticed that made her smile. These small moments go a long way in building trust from the start.

While we often think of positive phone calls home, there are also times when we need to reach out to share concerns or ask for support. In those moments, I try to keep the same mindset of partnership. Sometimes my message is as simple as, “I wanted to share what I am noticing and see if you are noticing something similar at home”. That shift in language helps me open the door for collaboration and brings families into the process, rather than only when concerns become more serious.

She also shared that communication is built into routines she already has. Each week, she uses her school’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to share what students are learning, post helpful resources, and give families a view into classroom life. At the end of the week, she posts a short update with reminders, upcoming events, assessments, and a snapshot of learning, what has been covered and what is coming next. This helps families stay informed and gives them natural ways to continue conversations at home.

As she shared her routine, I found myself reflecting on my own practice.

When I first started teaching, one of the things that made me the most nervous was calling parents. I often worried about saying the wrong thing or upsetting families, especially when I needed to call about a concern. Over time, I learned that these conversations are not about having the perfect words, but about building trust and approaching families with honesty and care.

My approach now looks a little different. Each month, I send home a brief curriculum overview for each subject. Throughout the week, I use our VLE to share tasks, feedback, and helpful links. I also make time for positive phone calls and emails whenever I can. Looking back, I realized we are both doing the same thing in different ways. Neither approach is wrong, we have simply built systems that work within our own routines.

What stayed with me from my conversion is that effective family communication is about being intentional so families feel informed, connected, and valued.