Each spring the TALONS undertake an In-Depth Study, a five month “passion project” wherein they are asked to document their growth and learning toward personalized goals in learning a skill or craft. There are two universal goals for the In-Depth Study: 1. Know something about everything and everything about something. In school you are usually […]
Read more "An Open Learning Project"My sister brought back a picture of some graffiti in Saskatoon a few summers ago that I ran with, writing one of my first songs that has continued to grow with me in the years since, and which continues to accompany me in new musical places. I’ve played this song in my kitchen by myself, […]
Read more "Graffiti: An old song with new friends at the GSGW Fall Jam"Simpleton, British Columbia lyrics and chords. We aren’t on strike because we’re losing or we’ve lost. We’re on strike because we still might win.
Read more "Picket Anthems: The Ballad of Simpleton, British Columbia"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.”"I’m happy to report that the fruits of last summer’s Unplug’d 2012 event have emerged as a fabulous mosaic of letters, songs and stories written and published in Algonquin Park over a weekend in August. You can find my letter, written in the form of a song, on my page here, as well as video of […]
Read more "Unplug’d 2012: Letters from the Edge"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"I wrote a few weeks ago about team-teaching a wilderness journaling activity with my TALONS colleagues along with my oft-mentioned Internet brother Jabiz Raisdana, using his poem-turned-song “Poetry is Nothing” as an introduction to a solo-walk around Hicks Lake, in Sasquatch Provincial Park. Having turned the corner here in metro-Vancouver toward fall and winter, I […]
Read more "Poetry is Nothing… in the woods."An audio gem from Saturday’s campus fire at Sea to Sky this past weekend, Owl leads the TALONS in a audience-participation version of Solar Power Blues, which he explains in the clip.
Read more "Solar Power Blues"Admittedly, this is the Casa (not Soundlab), but that is the 12 string Grant was playing in the Soundlab recordings). Originally dropped in Alan Levine’s Storybox, which I think was supposed to remain a one-stop shop for media content, Grant Potter and I recorded a bunch of songs sitting around the Soundlab kitchen table back […]
Read more "Bootlegs Volume 1: the Soundlab Sessions"In a year that has seen much public discussion of the teaching profession in British Columbia, it’s important to do a few things every day to remind ourselves that we are incredibly lucky to do this job. This spring’s Thirty Person Rock Band project has made for many such opportunities, and with four weeks of […]
Read more "The Bears in their Natural Habitat"