“Every man moves on,” says my father quietly, and I think he speaks of Santa Claus, “but there is no need to grieve. He leaves good things behind.” From Alistair Macleod’s “To Everything There is a Season“ At certain times in life, there is too much to rightly say – too much felt, experienced, too […]
Read more "On other new beginnings and other new beginnings’ ends…"Just back from a whirlwind six-day sojourn in New York City, I’ve been thinking about the thread that runs the breadth of the learning I have been fortunate to join in on the road. In the British Columbia backcountry, Cuban fine arts classrooms, backstage tours of Disneyland, weekends at local ski resorts, and now the Big Apple, I’ve shared a […]
Read more "Learning On the Road: NYC Edition"Democracy depends on the negotiation of common ground I’ve spent most of my life as a connector. I’ve always been something of a bridge-builder. Someone who can ‘see both sides’ (sometimes to a fault). I’m forgiving, even when I might vehemently disagree with someone, and am generally able to admit that my way of perceiving […]
Read more "On Reconciling Epistemic Enclosures"Where did everybody go? Is it just me, or has it been a minute? Did we turn a corner? Or have we ascended some ultimate peak to only be careening out of control these last how many months? Did things online not seem to move so fast, previously? Or were they just less likely to […]
Read more "Teaching to Resist"It is the second day of spring, earlier the same year, and a colleague and I are shivering in soaking clothes in a damp ring of protective salal and cedar above Chin Beach. We are conducting reconnaissance on the Juan de Fuca Trail, assessing its relative difficulty, subjective and objective risks and hazards, and gauging the […]
Read more "Scenes in Adventure Learning (Part II): Reconnaissance"Aligning our departure from Chin Beach to the 8am low tide, our group of seventeen grade nine and ten students and four adult leaders set out around the rocky bluff at the western edge of the beach, walking in the shadow of towering sandstone cliffs. Groundwater drips down mossy walls and splatters on the slick […]
Read more "Scenes in Adventure Learning (Part I): Over, Under, Through"Introductions, Gender, and Amplification Every year in #introguitar (an open online guitar class I teach at my school, and which you should totally enrol in as a non-credit participant) I ask my students and our open learners to introduce themselves and their intentions to the group in a brief video. And rather than rehash a […]
Read more "Singing Taylor Swift Songs"This post is part of a serialized collection of chapters composing my recently completed Master’s of Education degree at the University of Victoria. You can access the other chapters on this site here, and access a pdf of the completed paper on the University of Victoria library space here. Ball, S. J., Thrupp, M., & Forsey, M. […]
Read more "A Unit Plan of One’s Own: References"This post is part of a serialized collection of chapters composing my recently completed Master’s of Education degree at the University of Victoria. You can access the other chapters on this site here, and access a pdf of the completed paper on the University of Victoria library space here. This project has allowed me to make […]
Read more "A Unit Plan of One’s Own: Recommendations"This post is part of a serialized collection of chapters composing my recently completed Master’s of Education degree at the University of Victoria. You can access the other chapters on this site here, and access a pdf of the completed paper on the University of Victoria library space here. Summary This project presents a unit framework for […]
Read more "Discussion: Personal, Professional, and Practical Implications"