As I continue to wade through Paulo Freire‘s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, it is easy to see its range of influence within faculties of education across North America. The intentions expressed in Freire’s praxis of critical pedagogy form the basis of (what I sense to be) most teacher-certification programs, graduate diplomas and masters programs. And yet we continue […]
Read more "Liberation Citizenship for the 21st Century"Part of my summer plans to reread a few formative books of my university years. It’s been ten years almost since I consciously “outgrew” Jack Kerouac’s singular influence on my young mind. Having long exhausted myself of his optimistic early work, I petered out through Desolation Angels and Big Sur as Jack faded into alcoholism […]
Read more "On dipping a toe…"For a formative period in my youth, I was made of books and words. Half a continent from home at the end of my adolescence, I filled the blank slate of my life in Arkansas with the stories and poetry of the literary zeitgeist of people like Jack Kerouac, Jim Morrison or Douglas Coupland. Such […]
Read more "The Summer Book Project"Senior Animation – EXILE – Gleneagle Secondary from Jodey Udell on Vimeo. I’m extremely honoured to report that a student animation I was asked to do some voice-acting / narration for was recently selected as both the Top Animation, as well as Top Film, at this year’s Reel Stars Student Film Festival in Coqtuilam last week. Directed by Travis […]
Read more "Exile by Travis Anderson"Last week, the TALONS classes presented audio documentaries their small groups had been preparing out of individual threads of personal inquiry into the history of the Canadian Northwest (if you’re just joining us, here is a brief introduction to the project). Personal explorations became reflective and highly professional collaborative radio documentaries that were broadcast – via […]
Read more "Northwest Inquiry Radio Documentaries"I’ve long-been a passionate fan and supporter of Josh Ritter‘s musical output over the years, even luckily finding my way into one of his soundchecks at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver with a few students the last time he was here. Ritter’s literary sensibilities (in 2011, he published a novel), combined with an enthusiasm for […]
Read more "Making a Life in Music: Advice from Josh Ritter"I’ve written here before about being a ‘notebook guy,’ someone who cut my creative teeth with pen and paper and has yet to find the same intimacy in digital space that I have had with notebooks and journals going back to my teen years. This isn’t to say that I don’t do some creative thinking […]
Read more "On Keeping a Notebook"Something that I haven’t given as much blog attention here as I would have liked so far this semester is the vibrant community that has sprung up around our school’s Introduction to Guitar class. Having had students post their work regularly to a wiki site in past years, I wanted to incorporate some of the […]
Read more "“…totally uncharted territory.”"Without taking away from the stellar work that the other two groups in Philosophy 12 contributed to our Ethics’ unit endeavour to create teaching/learning materials for a younger audience (middle school on downwards), I wanted to share a recording I made of Iris, Megan, Greg, Zoe and Toren’s group’s presentation in a grade one classroom […]
Read more "Christmas Ethics in Grade One"Following this evening’s cultural adventure into the city for the Vancouver Opera‘s presentation of Gilbert and Sullivan‘s Pirates of Penzance, I wanted to share a favourite Radiolab episode of mine that introduces Wagner‘s epic Ring Cycle (the title was actually the subject of a bet on the bus ride home, I was told). It might seem hyperbole to claim, […]
Read more "Greatest Work of Art Ever?"