network breakdown

I saw this teacher/zombie meme on twitter today... perhaps referring to the emotional stone faced by educators in BC right now, or maybe a reference to the Zombie Summer School that the BC government deems an "essential service." This stirs up some thoughts about how educator networks are under strain.

Last night I attended a meeting for the my local teacher union and was struck by a few things that the teachers there seemed to have in common: 1) continued anxiety over the unresolved labour situation in BC Schools. 2) humour, creativity, and hope as we discussed what job action, if any, would be useful and necessary in summer. 3) the need to get some closure on the school year, to put things in perspective, and reserve some energy for the other good things in life that aren't locked out or on strike.

After, I had a short online chat with a Ft. St. James colleague Kelley Inden who had many of the same thoughts. She is a remarkable teacher and storyteller, with obvious commitment to her students. She is also one of many teachers who closely examined BC's new Education Plan, got past the rhetoric, ignored the parts that had a political agenda, and found areas that resonated with her own practice. For example, her efforts to transform assessment and nudge all students to think critically show a willingness to experiment and cast off old practices when they no longer make sense.

Much of the work of teachers is connected by the networks they share. Some are face-to-face, like the union executive meeting I attended, and others are online, like the circle of educators that folks like Kelley and I have happened across via twitter in the last couple of years. These groups don't have to be close, we don't even have to like each other, but we keep gnawing away at what drives our teaching and what inspires learning. Real community (like family) is something different, and can survive hardships like labour strife, but networks are engineered entities and relationships built on function are are highly susceptible to redesign, for better or worse.

This lockout/strike/negotiation has been hard on networks. We say things we probably shouldn't, we second-guess our efforts, we deal mostly in anger over an intransigent contract-stripping government and sometimes the direction our union takes, or individual members therein. Anti-teacher trolls step up their efforts to equate the bctf with communism, teacher trolls flame the media for not being compeltely sympathetic to our cause, and a variety of other kooks come out of the weeds to embarrass us in other ways. Our government employer and education minister make statements in the media that wouldn't stand up to a modicum of fact-checking, district administrators seem content to carry out the government's directives without protest, and school board trustees seem confined to writing letters and offering condolences via social media. No doubt in the midst of this some strategies are working (for both "sides") but it will be a pyrrhic victory regardless of the outcome -- the educational landscape is currently being scorched, most visibly in the way we treat each other.

Longer term, we worry about how the widening gulf between teachers and all arms of the provincial government will play out vis-a-vis education reform. If anyone had any doubts about embedded cost-offloading, privatization, and de-professionalization of teachers in the BC EdPlan, they've found plenty more evidence in the last few weeks. One example is the government's use of the curriculum-focused @bcedplan twitter feed to broadcast bargaining messages from the employer with "funny" math about teacher wages. Other moves, like the bizarre lockout, the dumbing down of "essential" exams, and the summer school directive that actually excluded all (living) students in BC, have further alienated future efforts to build common language and actions for education reform. These moves have also shown that the government is more interested in punishing the teacher union than it is in a settlement. The middlemen in this battle, school administrators, have been hosed from either side... set up for failure by district admin and the BCPSEA in regards to the lockout, marks, summer school, and picket lines, and then vilified by teachers for being virtually silent on any of the education and funding issues facing our education system.

In short, the bad relationship in BC Education has gotten worse, and it happens at time when progressive educators -- teachers, principals, and others -- were making some progress towards understanding where our education system might go in the coming years. I've noticed this breakdown most in the conversations I've had with educators about their networks -- teacher in-fighting over labour tactics and actions past/present/future, administrators collectively embarrassed about what they've been asked to do, endless twitter battles between groups that are not going to shift their position, and growing anxiety about what next year will look like after present charring of the educational landscape.

Hope, resilience, and humour, however, are never in short supply, so I'm of a mind that "this, too, shall pass." I do share Kelley Inden's concern, however, that picking up the pieces next year will be challenging, regardless of the eventual contract settlement. Personally, it has strengthened my resolve to build more self-reliance as a teacher (which means shutting out some of the crap that comes from colleagues, school, districts, and province), and also to foster more interdependence through the networks that re-emerge from this present strife. Having broken down to some extent, educator networks will necessarily go through a period of renewal next year as people come to terms with what they've said and done and reposition themselves with others who offer good dialogue, support for fresh thinking, and continued efforts to make teaching and learning joyful and rewarding.

Failing that, there is an awesome two months of summer ahead and I plan on avoiding zombies while camping, teaching my son how to fish, keeping up with my daughter in the pool, and coaxing my wife to stop fretting so much.

Morbid Summer School Ruling by LRB

The British Columbia Government and BC Teachers Federation are in the midst of a labour dispute that is trying to unpack 12 years of cuts and contract strips related to class size and compensation, an impasse on compensation, and resulting actions from both sides including a gov't lockout and a teacher strike. The latest issue is whether Summer School should continue.

I've just read the recent ruling by the deciding body, the Labour Relations Board (LRB), on whether Summer School is in fact an Essential Service in BC. Take a quick look at this short summary from the Langley Teacher's Association and the actual interim ruling, especially 2.a.1: http://bcteacherinfo.blogspot.ca/2014/06/bc-lrb-interim-order-issued-on-summer.html

The interim ruling says that Summer School must be offered, and run by administration if possible, but only applies to Gr. 10-12 students who have failed a required course and can't take it again in the following year. Unfortunately, that pretty much excludes all (living) students in BC.

Given that any student can return to school, even after Grade 12, and that every district offers required courses in every school year (either at a local school or through a Distributed Learning Centre), the only students to whom this applies are ones who will not be alive in the following school year or plan on being physically or mentally incapacitated between the end of summer school and the beginning of the next school year. I suppose it would also apply to students who plan on being out of the province for the entire year without access to the internet for an online version of a required course, or can't receive mail from one of our regional correspondence centres. So, dead, incapacitated, or missing -- truly a morbid set of criteria to lay on students.

I sure hope the interim in their interim ruling means "we'll throw this out there for starters and see what happens next." The imprecise language might cut it for a hasty press release or impromptu media interview, but not a legal ruling that needs to hold up to precise, literal application. This reminds me of how Government negotiator Peter Cameron described the bizarre and contradictory lockout notice for teachers as a "living document" -- subject to interpretation and changing emphasis on a daily basis. This was the lockout notice that both banned and encouraged voluntary duties, and was used to justify taking 10% off of teachers' wages. That is, until they brought it to the LRB where the employer argued that it's own lockout didn't justify the 10% deduction, it was the services withdrawn by teachers. These services amount to less than 2% of our paid time at work.

Way to go LRB, Minister Fassbender, Mr. Cameron, and the BCPSEA team. You've taken a silly notion -- that Summer School is somehow an Essential Service in BC -- and managed to make a macabre joke out of it. I guess there is a logic to it... "Essential Services" usually refer to life-and-death duties in society. Apparently Summer School is a life-or-death decision for students -- if they attend, it means that something unfortunate will happen to them before the new school year starts that would prevent them from taking courses. If you follow the LRB logic, that is. Maybe this is an end-run around the "optics" of who is responsible for the inevitable cancellation of summer school in most districts -- it is no longer essential or necessary to operate if the rules exclude virtually every student in the province.  With a number of logic-defying restrictions in the order, it will be impossible for school districts to pull it off, and thus they can cancel summer school and avoid the head-ache. Beyond that, I can't imagine why the LRB would goof up on their wording on such a basic point -- an essential service designed for no one in particular, at least no one who will be alive enough to attend in September.

Next up: the LRB will no doubt rule on students who are both dead and plan on returning -- Zombie Summer School (thanks @_MrsBarb for the idea). Between the "living document" lockout that was not a lockout, the dumbed down exams that were still somehow essential, and now the "Fawlty Wording" that excludes virtually every student in BC from Essential Summer School (the "undead document?"), it's hard to see where the LRB ends off and Monty Python begins.

I'd Rather be Teaching - Guest Post

Guest post by Judy Addie, a long-serving teacher who "most recently" has been at D.P. Todd Secondary for almost 37 years. She teaches Alternate Education and has been instrumental in the success of "school-based teams" (collaborative problem-solving for at-risk students) in School District 57 Prince George. More importantly, she has been a caring adult for hundreds of lost souls and troubled youth, guiding them to firmer ground (academically and emotionally) by providing attachment and safety when these students had few other options. 

This letter was written in during the longest teacher strike in Canadian history, a situation brought on, in part, by the violation of Charter Rights by the Government of BC.  

Thanks, Judy, for sharing your open letter to trustees with others in British Columbia. Also, good luck on your retirement from all the staff at D.P. Todd. Your wise counsel & sense of humour will be missed!
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Dear Trustees, 

I am a teacher in School District No. 57 ( Prince George) and I'd rather be teaching today and everyday until the end of this school year. I hope that you can use your influence to bring a negotiated settlement and a fair deal for students and for teachers.

After 45 years of teaching, I will retire on June 30, 2014. I have seen many changes over the years, but the last few have resulted in drastic effects for my students. I teach students who are at risk not only academically, but because of other factors in their lives. Some are affected by mental health issues, some are affected by drug and alcohol issues, and many are affected by poverty. I have one student, a teenaged boy, who boils water so that he can bathe because the gas has been cut off in his home. I have another student who comes to school just to eat the breakfast and lunch that we provide because those are the only meals he gets. I have students whose mental health issues are so severe that they only attend one class per day.They arrive and leave when the halls are clear due to anxiety issues. I have students with behavioural issues who need time away from class to cool down. I have students who have severe learning disabilities who do not receive extra help except for the bit of one on one help that I can provide as I am moving about the class. These students need counsellors, learning assistance teachers, youth care workers and educational assistants to help them get through their day.

Some might think that the end of the year is not a busy time for high school teachers. There is so much I still have left to do before my retirement. In addition to the usual year end activities, I need time to write notes to the students' teachers next year. I need to meet with the new teachers who will be replacing me. I need to tell them about the program and the 19 different courses that are available in Alternate Ed. I need to tell them about each individual student and their strengths and their challenges.

There are only 5 more days in my career, and………. I'd rather be teaching.

Upsurge in Anxiety - Guest Post

Guest Post by Dave Harper, a Humanities, French and Music teacher at Southgate Middle School in Campbell River, BC. He is also plays the banjo, guitar, and harmonica and shares his love of Bluegrass with students. Thanks, Dave for sharing your thoughts.

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My experiences as a middle school teacher lead me to share much of Glen Thielmann's thinking. I honestly feel that what he has written in his blog is the outline for a book about the contemporary middle school / senior secondary and how life within it and its social media and hallway nexus plays out on a 24/7 basis for our students as part of the upsurge in anxiety in students.

At the root of it all I see the Neufeld / Mate theories of attachment playing out in real time every day. Only five years ago it was rare to have students arrive at class as anxiety-ridden wrecks saying that they can't attend that block and just leave (often with a friend escorting them who is going to assist in their "decompression") . Usually I discover quickly it is the result of a social media driven interaction that has just occurred or has been "building" over the course of the day. This is now a thrice weekly occurrence at a minimum.

Note that I generally agree to let the other student go with the student in the midst of the anxiety attack because there is no counsellor available and I have 28 to 30 other kids who are expecting me to teach the class. Only five years ago my middle school had two full-time counsellors. The extrapolation to what is playing out on the sidewalks in front of schools around the province is a bit of QED.

Interestingly I notice the greatest degree of inner calm in those students who either do not have or whose parents do not allow devices to be brought to school.

The link to the then-Minister Abbot-era drive for BYOD ( bring your own device ) and the increase in student anxiety is very clear in my mind. We cannot say no to the devices being at school now. Most / certainly many elementary schools try not to allow them. I notice that the majority of elite prep schools are explicit that personal devices are to be left in lockers or will be taken away. I don't know if that is an "all talk" but without follow up policy that looks very different in practice than on paper. I feel it is the correct policy but we are unable to have such a policy at public middle and secondary schools.

As the parent of a seven-year old boy I have already decided that my son will not be allowed to have a device at school when he gets older. The boys in my classes without devices are generally more focussed, involved in less social conflict, and involved in sports and real social interaction. The shockingly few girls without devices at school also tend to be calm social leaders who are involved in leadership activities and have "balanced" lives.

Are they calmer because they don't have devices or are they calmer by nature and therefore they don't feel the need to bring a device? Chicken and egg, perhaps.

I think I may ask Glen if he wants to collaborate on a book! Typing these thoughts has got me thinking that there is something deeper going on here with which our schools are ill-equipped to cope. Feel free to ask me any follow up questions if my thoughts are not clear to you.

student anxiety

Every now and then I start writing a tweet and try to jam a blog post into 140 characters... the solution, of course, is to write a blog post!

I have been teaching for 19 years and over the last dozen or so I have noticed an interesting trend in my students:  an increase in student anxiety. I am hard-pressed to come up with a single reason why this is the case, nor have I made an effort to quantify or document this trend in any formal way. I am also at a loss to say whether what I'm seeing are anxiety-like symptoms or actual disorders that have been diagnosed (or should be diagnosed). I'm no expert on the subject although I know firsthand what anxiety does to someone because my wife suffers from anxiety -- it was her suggestion to include that! That leaves me with some observations and opinions. The reader may notice that I don't offer many solutions to the anxiety factors I list below. Maybe I can follow up with what I've tried over the years, or what my school does to address mental health, but for a thoughtful read on how student "weaknesses" are often an invitation for educators to develop empathy, focus on strengths, and work through the anxiety, try some of the blog posts tagged "relationships" on Chris Wejr's site. Here's what I've seen as the basis of growing "general" anxiety among my Grade 9-12 students in a public high school in Prince George, BC:

• ACCEPTANCE. More openness in talking/dealing with mental health in recent years has allowed students to "come out" with their issues and seek help -- "anxiety" as a condition (for better or worse) has less stigma and is even seen as a normal part of many students lives. Anxiety was a hidden condition 15 years ago, and is now part of the parlance of classrooms and staffrooms. In the past, students "put up or shut up" about OCD, anxiety attacks, and much of the fear that comes with anxiety, in part because these issues were poorly understood by the adults in their life, and in part because that's what one did; even before social media altered our external selves we have become a society accustomed to letting our problems spill out in our public persona --in many ways this has been a good thing, a necessary step in establishing LGBTQ rights for example. My school recently had an awesome assembly from a group talking about schizophrenia among other things -- both the presentation and message were well received. 15 years ago, this presentation would not have taken place. Having close family members and many friends who deal with mental health issues, I am glad it's out in the open.
• SCRUTINY. When I first started teaching, I almost never heard from counsellors or got a run-down on the emotional needs of my students; now, I regularly have counsellors drop by (usually at the beginning of a course) and let me know that so-and-so has anxiety, needs to take breaks, needs a special place to write tests, needs to be allowed to come late and leave early to avoid hallway scenes, needs to be excused from answering questions out loud, etc. -- I think all three of the above points are at play here, plus new diagnostic categories and sensitivity from educators. Anxiety has nuance (expressed in so many ways) and can be paired with other like depression, eating disorders, and so on. Our school system and medical spectrum professions (i.e. including psychologists) have more ways to label and treat mental health issues than ever before.
• REDIRECTION. Over-diagnosis and over-medication (or self-medication) for anxiety leads many needy teens to grab on to anxiety as a "cover" for the normal angst and hormone-driven craziness of growing up -- it is a reasonably acceptable mental health category which some students find useful as a coping mechanism for diverse teenage problems. Of course their are also many students for who the designation absolutely fits (whether or not they have received help), but there are many more for whom the anxiety is a normal response to what is going on their lives and would go away if they could deal with or get help with the surrounding triggers (such as the other points mentioned here)
• ROLES. Parenting has shifted, in some ways for the better (again, another blog post), but in other ways towards indulgence, neglect (hands-off or absentee parenting), entitlement, and trading a loving parent-child relationship for some kinds of zero-judgement friendship with their kids. What did Phil Dunphy call it on Modern Family... peerenting? Kids are protected from failure and given smaller and smaller opportunities for self-reliance. I don't get a lot of phone calls from parents but I have noticed more parents that advocate for their children for exempting any kind of consequence for skipped classes, missing work, poor assessments, etc. This is not new, but the scale is ridiculous -- having parents who write a blanket notes excusing all 30 absences is certainly their prerogative, but it is not helping the student any. Both parents and teacher alike are powerful models for kids, even when it doesn't seem like it, and students see more and more modelling of anxiety-causing behaviour in their parents and teachers than in the past. Maybe the adults don't hide it as well as they used to, or maybe our whole society has developed more neuroses.
• ATTACHMENT. Genuine loving attachment and self-regulation are often lacking -- my students appear to raised by their peers and are missing quality connections to caring adults. It is a gap that many teachers are aware of and try their damnedest to fill, but the need is growing, especially in a city and school like mine with increasingly vulnerable and at-risk students. Gordon Neufeld, Gabor Mate, Stuart Shanker, and others have written about this extensively and found a large audience among educators, so I don't think I need to elaborate
• STANDARDS. Our education system through its administrators and teachers has gone away from many of the penalties associated with poor attendance and lack of success that have characterized schools for generations. Lates, skipping, incomplete complete work, even drug offences are seen as "related to background problems" and result in more conversation that consequence. I think this is because our system has misinterpreted or misapplied much of the popular literature about punishment and rewards (not to mention assessment), but on that topic I'll again steer the reader to Chris Wejr's posts about penalties to see how this trend can be redeemed. Meanwhile, I have noticed an entire generation that does not take their elders seriously and as result misses out on much of the guidance that might have actually dealt with the anxiety before it claimed their being.
• TECHNOLOGY. Digital communication, in particular interactive social networking, has created layers of identity-forming possibilities with which the human brain has not yet caught up -- the kinds of interactions student build online are not foreign to the human experience (gossip, flirting, and hazing go back to the Stone Age), but now they are in high-speed, recorded for posterity, and include images. I read an article recently about how teens get anxious about casual prom pics and selfies because they know every image will be used across multiple social media sites to "frame" the individual and narrate the event -- this is "identity work" in real time.  I read this article, too, which had a similar theme. Many "connected educators" (e.g. @technolandy and @gcouros) would counter the idea that technology itself is the problem, and that mobile technology and social media can be the basis of incredible discovery, awareness, and even help for mental health disorders. I would not disagree, but I've observed that technology is never one thing, it is not a passive tool. At the same time as personal devices are powerful conduits for learning, they are also used to tune out, get sucked in to mind-draining drama, and provide markets for an endless bombardment of commercial and social propaganda. As one person put it, we make our 16-yr-old kids go through multiple stages of preparation before we let them drive a 4000 pound car, but we routinely hand over to even younger children the most powerful communication device in human history with almost no training. Technology is by no means neutral -- it does some cool stuff (for this reason I have been quite active in pushing transformative uses of technology), but it also routinely facilitates enormous damage to the lives of kids.
• SILENCE. The technical demands of social media alone are cause for anxiety... many students feel an obligation to keep up with dozens of conversations each day across multiple apps and platforms ranging from the facile to the thought-provoking and always with an emotional undercurrent and a constant need to maintain multiple personas (establishing oneself in a certain way, building a personal brand that is popular, funny, edgy, juicy, alluring, etc.); however, many of my students have lost the tech skills that students had even 7 years ago -- they are less tech savvy (because new tech is so easy to use and one never has to "break open the box") and yet there is an expectation (i.e. from teachers) that they be tech experts in order to live their lives online. The time involved in playing with tech and maintaining online "relationships" (not to mention all the nifty games!) is overwhelming for my students -- it has replaced TV, play, staring and thinking, and everything else that used to engage the senses and move the body. For many of my students (and colleagues, and myself at times) addictive technology has filled every uncommitted minute of the day and thus fills that part of our brain that evolved to make better use of silence and slow bits in the day... the contemplative life.
• DISCONNECT. Students with an intense social media life have isolated and , ironically as they are also hyper-connected and superficially engaged with others -- many of my students lack the social skills to carry on sustained face-to-face conversations with peers or adults, and fall back to their phones as a security blanket; more seriously, many students are engaged in a constant battle to reclaim their self in a digital swirl of peer pressure and sometimes bullying... the close scrutiny and intense pressure to look a certain way is more than many kids can handle and yet they come back to it day after day.  It is not a coincidence that my most anxious students, or at least the ones that aren't dealing with it, the ones that leave the room in tears or are involved in non-stop drama, are also the ones who are glued to their phones and become upset by the minute details of other people's problems. Twitter was bad enough, but Snapchat and other means of getting up in someone's space have amplified anxiety triggers and created a 24-hour arena in which anxious banter opens surface wounds or bandages them up without ever really getting to the heart of the problem. Every now and then I poll students about their device usage... most go to sleep with their phones and most of those leave notifications on.
• PORN. Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, actually. I think the fact that students have instant and intense access to hardcore porn has led to anxiety. Students have messed-up ideas about everything to do with sex and this leads many of them to make some stupid decisions that leave an emotional wreckage behind. In particular, the expectation of how females should service males has created mass confusion for both genders and has set back feminism sharply over the last 10 years. If in doubt, seek out a high school counsellor for a one-on-one conversation to learn how deep this problem goes. Misogynistic music does not help the cause, either. How many thousands of times does a teenage boy need to see or hear that girls are "bitches" or "hoes" before the image sticks? Without getting into #yesallwomen and the roots of misogyny, I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the high school fashion trend of yoga pants and exposing cleavage is not helping boys or girls develop successful relationships. This may seem like a surface issue (pun intended), but is nonetheless a sign that kids have internalized patriarchal expectations of gender and porn-inspired reduction of people in parts, and in my mind it represents a botched job of empowerment. Suffice it to say that schools are more sexually charged for students than they have even been and that all students have unrealistic expectations about what their bodies should look like and what constitutes beauty. This is a huge cause for anxiety, especially among girls. 
• DOPE. Did I forget about drugs? The ease of access to illicit drugs and the increasing acceptance of marijuana has also done wonders for the teenage brain. Again, this is well documented elsewhere so I won't elaborate. I will add that parent modelling is important when it comes to drugs. Too many of our students who are busted for drugs (and this is different than 15 years ago), do them openly at home with parents dismissing the activity or looking the other way. Call me old-fashioned or living in a bubble, but I still think dope makes kids stupid and is not an acceptable medicinal solution to mental health disorders. I'm not going to vote for Harper or any such insanity, but I have observed the effect of dope on teens for many years and the impact is consistent.
• PASSIVITY. My students are more docile than ever before, even as I teach more vulnerable, impoverished, and at-risk students. This sounds cynical and contrary to everything you read in the BC Edplan, but most of my students would rather complete a worksheet than jump into an interactive social learning activity or pursue project-based learning. My colleague Rob Lewis explored this in a little more depth. When I first started teaching, I seemed to spend a lot of time on classroom management and dealing with student behaviour. Now, I almost never have to ask a kid to step out into the hall for a conversation. I'd like to think it is because I've become a master teacher but in reality I find that is an increasing challenge it to engage students with shorter attention spans using the same kinds of go-to activities that used to get students thinking and talking. Why are they so quiet, so polite, and so compliant? Perhaps we've beaten the play out of them with a widespread reliance on passive forms of learning and a reliance on instructional technology -- we've constructed a comprehensive and responsive sit-and-listen program for students to follow rather than opening up a space in which a healthy tension exists between what is being taught and what is being learned. What does this have to do with anxiety? It reflects a larger pattern, one in which students have many obligations on their time but are still left alone to be mediocre by their parents, teachers, administrators and society. For most students, this is not a big deal, it gives them the space to follow their own path. but for the students suffering from anxiety, it creates an echo chamber in which they are alone to deal with their problems. Add the social isolation and technology disconnect, and the passive, subdued, and sanitized milieu in which students are dropped is a petri dish for culturing anxiety.
• POVERTY. A less abstract petri dish are the social and economic conditions in which and an increasing number of my students grow up. Child poverty, single-parent homes, vulnerable neighbourhoods, and the residue of colonialism touch about 1 in 6 of the students in my school, although substantially less in the classes I teach due to the variety of special programs. Poverty translates directly to student stress, anxiety, anti-social behaviour, and depression. Take a look through the work of Edmonton educator Dan Scratch to see the connection and also how social justice can empower impoverished youth to break the cycle. About 4 years ago I facilitated a staff discussion about the changing demographics in our school. We were about to take in two new feeder schools, one of which had a high vulnerability index (we used the neighbourhood data from http://earlylearning.ubc.ca/edi/ to anchor our discussion), and also noted that all of our school catchment area was predicted to move further into the vulnerable zone and lower income categories. We ended up with 100 more questions that when we started -- one of the leading concerns was about whether we were equipped to deal with the emotional needs of poor, stressed out, and anxious students.
• MEDICATION. I wish I understood this better, but I get the sense that quite a few of my students and a fair number of my colleagues are on medication for anxiety, depression, and variety of other mental health conditions. I also get the sense that half of them should not be, I think it masks the tensions that have led to anxiety and prevents them from dealing with the issues. I know too many people on meds, so I'd rather just leave this topic with a reference to some recent reading on how anti-depressants may not be the best treatment. and also how drugs may not be enough.
• DIET. What students eat, drink, and how much they exercise is also a factor in anxiety.  Although BC schools have tried to promote health food choices and daily physical activity, the battle against obesity and overall health is still uphill.  Lifestyle "choices" (often the choices are limited) among impoverished and vulnerable students are a particular challenge. This is not new science, but I place some of the blame for mental health issues on the shitty high-sugar diets that so common for my students. One could explore lack of sleep as a related factor, although that outcome sits at the intersection of many other factors.
• PLAY. I think many of my students suffer from "nature-deficit syndrome." This subject is expertly handled by Richard Louv in his book Last Child in the Woods. The topic of safety overload in playgrounds has also been in the news. Many of my students do not know how to use their own bodies to get stuff done.  I see it clearly on the soccer fields where my 7-yr-old son plays -- the kids actually have to be taught how to "cavort." I have a gym teacher colleague who has observed this with his Grade 8 and 9 P.E. classes -- increasing numbers of students who can't run, jump, throw, catch, or simply "be" in their own bodies. This is another area where educators are paying close attention and I'm quite impressed (though still shocked that it is needed) by all the work with physical literacy not just in Phys Ed but in multi-disciplinary environments. This can't come soon enough -- students who have lost their connection to the real world and miss out on the powerful need for play are placed in the zone of anxiety. Some hold out longer than others, but the effect is cumulative and has the potential to split the mind and body -- a recipe for unease.
• UNDERFUNDING. To be honest, I didn't see the connection right away, although I'm sure teachers and counsellors who deal directly and expertly with anxiety issues and solutions could expound on this with more evidence. I'm also aware that my secondary academic course load does not qualify me to fully understand what elementary teachers in inner city schools deal with on a daily basis. Anxiety is ripe in many of our classes, and has become a school focus and therefore a funding issue where it was largely swept under the carpet from the perspective of school organization and staff planning. Teachers have always built empathy for students' needs and tried to work towards wholeness, but the scale of the problem in today's classes requires a depth of response that many teachers have a hard time balancing with all the other things happening in their space. Our schools now deal with "services" that used to be performed by solely by parents and also the Health Care sector (including Family Services), and we've done so on reduced budgets and no contributions from the Ministries who let us be their frontline.  It is not by accident that the BCTF finds itself engaging in extensive social justice advocacy -- our schools are ground zero for hunger, depression, diverse health issues, poverty, and anxiety. The job of teaching has changed as a result, as have the composition of school staffs and the roles that other workers in our system play. We've made the leap to providing education to providing a range of social, emotional, economic, and health services alongside education. This is a huge reason why underfunding has come to a head in our schools -- we have been doing more with less for too long.

O.K., I've cranked this out rather quickly and late at night, but I do see a rough pattern or two in the factors leading to student anxiety. If someone else would like to provide a succinct wrap on these patterns, be my guest. I came back a few hours later to add some thoughts and edits, but feel free to message me or tweet about remaining typos, semantic lapses, and simply to dispute or discuss.

BCPSEA confusion

If the BC Government set out to undermine the teacher contract negotiation process and frustrate all stakeholders in BC Education, they have found a winning strategy.

Students are heading into a week like no other in BC Schools. Rotating strikes by teachers will close some schools, but it is during the rest of the week when things get weird. The representative of the BC government and school districts, BCPSEA, has issued a "partial" lock-out notice for teachers that prevents them from working outside of classes and 45 minutes before or after school, and not at all at recess or lunch. Doing so will result in discipline that administrators will be forced to carry out. Teachers are also banned from doing certain voluntary activities listed in the lock-out notice. These restrictions are then used as the basis to deduct 10% pay from teachers. The catch? Teachers can still be on site during the "off-hours" as long they are doing other forms of voluntary work not listed in the lock-out order, again open to interpretation and different from teacher to teacher. Presumably, we know the difference in our minds and the administration will use the honour system in determining whether we are breaking the rules. All across the province principals and teachers are guessing and second guessing what the ridiculous lock-out really means and as a result have cancelled services to students like tutorials and extra help, curricular and extra-curricular field trips, events and concerts -- anything that walks the line between what has and has not been restricted by BCPSEA. Even lunchtime is now a question mark -- if we are found to be working (marking, planning, etc.) or engaging in voluntary collaboration or professional development, we can be disciplined or fined. Part of the original lock-out notice even restricts the evaluation of students, depending on whether BCPSEA actually meant what it wrote on a Wednesday vs what they backpedalled on Thursday. At the heart of the problem is BCPSEA's choice to focus on unpaid work as the basis of the lock-out and a deduction of pay, work that falls outside of our contract but work that teachers do because we are professionals -- the myriad extras that make sense of our time with students and allow the education system to function. This work runs the gamut -- professional development, coaching, sponsoring a club, collaboration, tutoring kids, developing learning resources, joining committees, reading, writing, staying caught up with technology, taking students on field trips, designing student projects or new courses, etc. -- all stuff we choose to do (mostly unrecognized), and which have nothing to do with our paystubs. BCPSEA has held its dowsing rod over this abstract list of professional/voluntary activities and chosen a few of them to add to a lock-out notice. No one is completely clear where the list starts or ends or how broadly the items can be interpreted, but we are clear about the penalties involved. We are set to lose 5% of our pay for not being able to volunteer as much as we normally do, and 5% more for skipping hallway supervision and staff meetings (which actually account for less than 2% of our paid time). All told, 10% pay deduction for exercising our legal right to strike.

Let's get into the details.

BCPSEA reference documents: http://www.bcpsea.bc.ca/ -- They move things around a bit but it is not hard to find the May 21 lock-out letter, and the May 22 and May 23rd follow-up memos (now called "Consolidated Q&A"). Also, see School Regs 4.1 g and subsections g.1 and g.2: http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/legislation/schoollaw/d/bcreg_265-89.pdf

BCPSEA starts on May 21 with a lock-out notice to BC Teachers, a legal order delivered to teachers via the BCTF to which we are bound, and then followed up by posting  a May 22 Q&A document on their website -- not actually delivered to the BCTF and thus not legally binding. The Q&A was supposed to clarify the lock-out notice but has instead led to chaos about what exactly is expected of teachers during a lock-out and what is expected of the management staff who are tasked with enforcing the lock-out. Both documents contain some wild assumptions about teachers' work, and have created uncertainty for teachers and administration alike as to what next week is supposed to look like in BC Public Schools.

One example of the uncertainty -- BCPSEA has locked out teachers from School Regulation Section 4.1 (g) "Evaluation of educational programs," e.g. curriculum committees and curriculum development. However, they did not specify whether this included subsections (g.1) and (g.2) which are the general orders for teachers to evaluate students and supervise/mark exams. It is quite normal to include subsections with sections unless stated otherwise, but BCPSEA has not actually come out and said that they have excluded (g.1) and (g.2). Assuming we are allowed to mark, Provincial Graduation exams take place on Tuesday June 24th in the morning and afternoon, but the teachers whose students write them are fully locked-out on June 25th-27th -- the only time available in which to mark the exams.

How about this one: "The performance of the following work will also be suspended until further notice: [a]ttending... collaborative and/or professional community meetings." The next day we're told that "[n]othing in the lockout order prevents individual teachers from discussing student needs or concerns with their colleagues or school administration." So -- we can't collaborate, but nothing prevents us from collaborating. The logic goes beyond oxymoronic to just plain moronic.

This is simply the beginning of BCPSEA biting off its nose to spite teachers. As if the May 22 BCPSEA Q&A memo wasn't confusing enough, they have posted Q&A #2, with statements like: "The guiding principle for all decisions with respect to extracurricular activities is that if they are voluntary (i.e., not part of a teacher’s work), they are not covered by the lockout order. Please contact BCPSEA directly at any time if further clarification is required."

So all voluntary work is back on? Does this include the voluntary duties described by the lock-out, or only if they happen outside of curricular time? And I can contact BCPSEA -- who do I call? I'll give up another day's pay just to have these questions answered. Seriously. I have lots of questions.

The original lockout notice contains items which, while often useful and something we do as a professional service to students and colleagues, are not paid work and are by definition voluntary. Example: attending pro-d outside of a NID, attending a staff committee meeting, sitting on a curriculum committee, joining a professional learning community discussion. The BCPSEA interpretation of "Evaluating educational programs" is limited to committee work and curriculum development which teachers choose to do (or are asked to do); this is not part of a regular paid day unless release time is provided. I have spent thousands of hours of my own time on curriculum development and professional development over the last 18 years -- evenings, weekends, and summer time that was never paid but willingly offered because I am a professional. This work, including the department meetings and so on that I opt to attend, is both curricular (because it often relates directly to my current classes), and extra-curricular (because it is often unrelated to my current classes and is sometimes meant to benefit only myself, other teachers, or the profession in general). By contract, and by direct observation, my "job" is to prepare for classes (unit and lesson plans, assignments, tests, learning resources), to teach students (almost exclusively within the school timetable), and deal with the aftermath of teaching (like assessment and reporting). Like most teachers, I do a tonne on top of that that is neither defined by contract nor absolutely essential to the paid part of my job -- pardon my Old English but I do the extras because I give a shit about my students' learning and the quality of both my own teaching and the public education system in which I work. It really chafes me that my employer wants to block me from the smallest slice of this volunteerism, and then use this plus the fact my union is exercising their legal right to strike in order to steal from my paycheque.

In short, we are locked out from work that we:
a) do on a voluntary basis because it augments our profession and practice
b) do when released from our regular work or do on our own time -- none of it is, by default, part of our paid work

The Q&A memos suggest that I can continue with some voluntary work, but the lock-out notice says I should cease other voluntary work. Maybe BCPSEA can produce Q&A #3 with an exhaustive list of the unpaid work from which I am banned or not banned. In the mean time, teachers should speak in hushed tones (for fear of being seen to collaborate), and put paper covers on all reading material (for fear of being caught doing professional development). The Eye is watching.

I really hope BCTF, BCPSEA, and the LRB will spend some time this week focusing on the bogus nature of the "partial" lockout (one colleague said a partial lockout is like being partially pregnant). I can actually accept that I should be fined or docked for unpaid work like striking, or withdrawing my supervision time which is about 1.8% of my work week, or my 1-2 hour staff meeting 7-10 times a year which is about 1.4% of my work week. I can't accept that I should lose 5 or 10% of my pay for not doing work that is unpaid to begin with and work that my employer doesn't understand or keep track of. If I am actually compensated based on a 9 hour day as BCPSEA suggests (which is about right considering the planning and marking I do), supervision and staff meetings in total account for less than 2% of my paid time. Here's my math: 540 minutes x 190 days = 102,600 minutes. 30 min/week of supervision plus a max of ten 1.5 hour staff meetings is 1980 minutes (although at my school we usually have eight per year that each last about an hour). Divided by the minutes worked in a year and we get 1.93%, not the 5% calculated by BCPSEA. I am not going to quantify written and electronic communication -- some teachers choose to spend hours a day on email, some check it once a week and ignore most of what they see. Actually talking with our adminstration has not stopped, and in fact has become more purposeful and fulfilling during the current job action. Problem-solving still happens, and is often slower when you can't just fire off an email.

So, BCPSEA, do you actually want me to resume voluntary work as you suggest in Q&A #1 and 2? Should I resume voluntary "evaluation of educational programs" (as you've defined it), voluntarily going to department meetings, voluntarily going to school org meetings, or voluntarily doing a professional development activity? Today (Saturday) I am reading some professional articles I accessed through Twitter -- by one of your definitions (the lockout letter), this is banned work and I could be subject to discipline (plus a cut in pay). By your Q&A #2 memo, though, I am free to pursue voluntary/unpaid work, so maybe my clandestine professional development is ok?

The "volunteer/don't volunteer message" has teachers and principals scratching their heads. My school's drama teacher was planning an evening performance -- but by BCPSEA's rules, the teacher would not be able to put this on because it is part of the curriculum and assessment plan for her class -- work that should not take place outside the lock-out hours. Yet, if it were to take place, I am free to attend because I would do so voluntarily? According to the lock-out letter I can't have a department meeting (where we often discuss student concerns) but according to BCPSEA's Q&A memo #1, I can meet with those same folks to discuss student concerns? What's the difference? Sitting or standing? Someone taking notes or being more bossy than the others? How about the Grade 10 field trip to Barkerville we had planned? It is extra-curricular in that we do not mandate that kids have to go, but we designed it (and the activities we do while we are there) to exploit learning outcomes and conduct research for projects in Social Studies 10. Should we proceed with the field trip because BCPSEA says it is ok, or do we cancel because we will be "teaching" before and after school hours and right through our lunch? Will I be disciplined if I incorporate ideas into my Social Studies class that I generated from the field trip? To do so would confirm that is was curricular in nature and in breech of lock-out duties hours.

What about lunch-time lock-out? Should I roll the dice on whether hanging out at school will lead to discipline? Is it my earned break time (eating lunch), my professional time (conversing with colleagues at lunch) or my voluntary time (having my room open for students). I feel bad for my principal -- as a manager, he will have to determine whether I am breaking the lock-out order or not and whether a letter of discipline is necessary. Should I hide all professional material in case he walks in and catches me engaging in professional development? Should I warn the students who use my class at lunch for a gaming club not to ask me questions that might be curricular in nature? Should I avoid talking with colleagues because it might be construed as a department meeting or a professional development activity? If he catches me reading a book, should I say "oh, the book is quite terrible. I really haven't developed professionally at all from reading this; please don't write up a letter of discipline." That sounds silly, but this is the position that BCPSEA has placed both teachers and administrators. The uncertainty is driving teachers out of the building -- most staff will now spend their "lockout lunch" off school grounds.

We could get sillier with this, and in fact we are -- these "what-if" scenarios are being played out across the province within groups of teachers, administrators, and boards. Who wouldn't be confused when BCPSEA's collection of notices can be summed up as: "do what you normally would do but only during the normal hours, unless it upset your plans. Don't do what you normally wouldn't do, especially during the normal hours, unless you don't have to do it, in which case you can do it, but only in the hours you normally wouldn't.  If you understand this you will lost 10% of your pay.  If you don't understand this, you could lose more and also be disciplined." Beyond the silliness, the wise ones on all sides of this issue are thinking about the mountain of grievances that await when the dust settles, perhaps more court cases and lawyer costs, too. BCPSEA's bizarre lock-out will place more pressure and hardship on management than BCTF's Stage 1 job action ever could.

Conclusion: BCPSEA threw out a blanket lock-out based on voluntary activities, and has added layers of confusion with two non-binding Q&A documents. It seems they are scrambling to ease the impact on the public by teasing out extra-curriculars from the long list of unpaid work that we do (a portion of which is now locked out). Confused? You should be -- one can only assume that the BCPSEA lock-out was designed hastily in a backroom by people who did not have the experience in schools to think through the consequences of banning voluntary work and then docking pay for it.

Lesson to be learned: BCPSEA should stay out of the business of disrupting the education system as a bargaining tactic. It barely works when teachers do it, and we've been pretty careful to structure our job action to minimize disruption (some would say too careful). When the government does it, the real impact is not on teachers, but rather on the prospects for a negotiated settlement and the confusion of all stakeholders. The acrimony will also leave a bitter taste behind for upcoming years: an unwillingness to give the extras that we do to keep our system working (the services offered voluntarily as professionals that go beyond the job), and a lack of enthusiasm for the ambitious project of education reform that is underway in BC.

May 24th UPDATE: The BCTF has asked us not to picket our school while locked out at lunch and before or after school, presumably to "place nice" and avoid affecting CUPE employees inside the building. Even when kicked in the dingleberries and threatened with a pay cut for volunteering, we've somehow found yet another way to prop up the system.  Speaking of nice, here's a nice article on the same topic by Victoria teacher Tara Ehrcke, and an excellent graphic that sums it up: http://www.staffroomconfidential.com/2014/05/when-is-lockout-not-lockout.html

May 25th UPDATE: BCPSEA has confirmed they are insane.  They have issued a second letter to BCTF president Jim Iker, reinforcing that "nothing in the BCPSEA lockout direction in any way restricts union members from participating in extracurricular and volunteer activities, including those that take place on school property at any time." The entire lock-out is based on voluntary activities. In effect they are rescinding their lock-out notice. That or crazy. BCPSEA also suggests that qualified management staff will mark provincial exams when the teachers are locked out completely on June 25-27. No doubt they'll get hardship pay. In our district we will have 400-500 Social Studies 11 exams to mark and we have only one or two administrators that have taught Social Studies before; I think only one has taught it since 2004 when the SS11 provincial exam was introduced. BCPSEA appears to be making up this lockout as they go along, and expecting it to be self-policing, based on the honour system.  No doubt teachers will work their hardest to make sure their own lockout goes smoothly.

interesting turn

Pardon a few acronyms here, but I'll define them as I go. A local professional development (PD) issue in our school district took an interesting turn the other day. Our Prince George District Teachers' Association (PGDTA) has been buzzing with an announcement in March that the school board office (SBO) has proposed cutting support for a district teacher position that I happen to hold at the moment.  This position coordinates support for teacher PD expenditures & travel, organizes one or more conferences, and contributes to local PD, mentorship, professional networks, and what folks like to call "capacity building." Just four years ago we adjusted to a cut in this position from three-quarter time to half-time, so we are used to doing more with less. Our PD Funds are small in SD57 -- with or without the position attached we receive less per teacher than virtually every district in the province outside of the Lower Mainland. A good example is District 27 (Cariboo-Chilcotin). They provide teachers with more then twice the funds per member as we do in District 57, and this includes support of a two-fifths position for a coordinator. Another example is District 73 (Kamloops/Thompson) with similar demographics and geographic challenges to our own; teachers there also receive more than twice the funding for autonomous PD as do our teachers.

Despite our meager funds, the PGDTA are provincial leaders when it comes to offering PD (from small sessions to a major annual conference), supporting individual PD growth plans for teachers including conference travel and leadership experience, and communicating opportunities for all. We've also had success blending our work with the services and training offered by our SBO, Ab-Ed Department, and other groups in the district. The proposed total cut to this position means either: a) the coordination work undertaken for and by teachers is misunderstood and thus undervalued, or b) the coordination work runs counter to the SBO vision for how teachers grow professionally. If there is another rationale I don't know what it is -- no one from the SBO has talked to me about it and the PGDTA has not been engaged in any meaningful discussion about this position or the value in coordinated, teacher-autonomous PD. Common decency suggests that if an authority is going to cut a position with diverse responsibilities, the courteous thing to do is to actually inform that person and offer an explanation, but that's more about HR practices and not central to this issue. The official reason given for the cut was to help cover the unfunded CUPE raise but this explanation doesn't pass the smell test -- district support for this position goes back 20 years and has been the foundation of teacher-led PD throughout that time. The cost for this position is $39K or $45K depending on how the books are kept; it also generates funds to offset costs via conference fees and alleviates costs at the SBO by reducing pressure on their Finance department. My understanding is that we would not even have known about this cut by now if CUPE hadn't put in a Freedom of Information request to find out where their raise was coming from. So many secrets, so little time!

The full background to the issue is described in this open letter to trustees.  The duties of the position in question are outlined on the PGDTA website.

Back to the "interesting turn."  There has been debate among teachers as to what we should do about this situation.  Dozens of individual teachers and at least three whole school staffs have written to trustees about the value they see in teacher-autonomous, well-coordinated PD.  The trustees tend to stay mum on most matters that are under review, so it is hard to tell if they understand what's at stake. Some teachers have suggested that if the SBO wants to take away the tools that make teacher-autonomous PD work, then maybe we should take away our support for SBO-intiated PD, In-service, and other professional training.  So far, this had been discussed on the union email forum, at the PD Committee, at the Staff Rep Assembly and AGM, and now at the Executive level of the PGDTA. I wasn't sure how far this would go -- teachers tend to give and give and often find it hard to say, no let alone take something away (even in the midst of our current job action!), so I admit being a bit surprised by the strong motion that came out of the last executive meeting:

That should the board make any cut to the Pro D fund administrator position, a motion will be made at the June SRA (Staff Rep Assembly) that our members will not voluntarily participate in any Professional Development or training events planned by the district. (carried unanimously)

This has significant implications. Current district-planned PD and training includes Learning Team Grants, an Early Learning conference, an Assessment Academy, mentorship programs, and a variety of workshops and learning series put on by SBO and elsewhere. If triggered, this June SRA motion would signal a shift in what has been a relatively cooperative relationship between teachers and the SBO on PD. Why would teachers take such a step? They see the cut to PD coordination as a cut to their ability to access teacher-autonomous PD and a reduction in quality to the PD that comes out the use of the PD Funds. The backdrop to this is that the work of the SBO to put on PD, in-service, and training has 10 times the funding and has grown every year since they "right-sized" in 2010. The work they do is admirable, although there are a few positions there that are mysterious and under-utilized. SBO-planned offerings are valuable and often necessary, but they are different from PD that is directed for and by teachers. The impression left is that PD is great, but best it it comes from the SBO and not from teachers -- as such this is appears to be a move to squeeze out professional autonomy. This is the impression that is left when our PD allocation is decreased by a third while another budget (one that could ostensibly fill the gap but is out of teacher control) simultaneously increases by a quarter million. How do teachers respond to this perceived devaluation of their own PD? Well, the PGDTA executive motion suggests one course of action. I see it as a statement that if teacher-autonomous PD is undervalued, perhaps teachers should step away from voluntarily playing ball with the SBO. I'm sure this would be a tough pill for all parties to swallow -- teachers derive benefit from all forms of PD, autonomous or otherwise.

Tonight is a School Board meeting, the first reading of their 2014-15 budget. With this issue front and centre, I am curious to see whether there will be a change in heart. It is surprising how opinions shift and votes change when a matter leaves a closed-door meeting and enters a public forum -- I've found myself doing softening a stance in similar circumstances. To date, the trustees have been publicly quiet on the issue, but the powerful testimonies from teachers about coordinated, autonomous PD, and the motion from the PGDTA Executive may finally move our trustees to realize, as our PGDTA president said, that "three blocks of time is a pittance to keep relationships collaborative and positive."

I really have no clue who reads this blog, but I'd like to thank teachers and other members of the local educational community for supporting the work of the PD Coordinator this year and contributing to high quality, useful, and joyful PD on many occasions. If my position is indeed eliminated as intended by the SBO, I have no regrets as to how I spent my afternoons this year and I look forward to adding to the PD culture of our district next year, albeit in a reduced role and off the side of my desk. My only regret is still to come -- if the position is cut we'll be forced to cancel a New Teachers' Conference for Fall 2014, the Zone Conference for Spring 2015, and attend to the inevitable change in PGDTA policy from a Fund that supports rural travel and conference opportunities out-of-district to a system that simply divvies up money to teachers and does not attempt coordination. We've seen this in other districts and it is not a successful model, especially where the amount per teacher is a low. This year, with the support of the PD Committee, I was able to act on a vision for PD that included more celebration of teacher growth, increased local opportunities for excellent PD, reaching out to more stakeholders for shared projects, notably the Ab-Ed department, and stretching our  dollars as far as possible to support individual and group goals for PD.

So, enough gloomy speculation... we could be in for an interesting turn in the way teachers are supported in our district, but I also believe that trustees have been given excellent rationale by many teachers as to why strong support should be maintained and budget cuts should be sought elsewhere. If nothing else, this experience should give trustees pause to think about how they can lobby the provincial government for sustainable funding. Again, to quote our PGDTA president: "we have been dealing long enough with cuts to Public Education. Teachers have been propping up the system for too long."

PBL slow steady progress

I have had the pleasure of taking in some wonderful student presentations in my Middle Earth 12 class over the last week.  It took considerable time for the students to work through essential questions and other stages of project-based learning (PBL) development. It is not clear to me that PBL is as "productive" as other forms of learning -- and yet I am impressed with how the early projects represent learner identity and authentic research. I am increasingly convinced that with an unsorted group of students (e.g. an average crowd in a public school classroom), PBL must be blended with more traditional forms of learning. The all-or-nothing PBL approach requires resources I do not possess, structures that are unrealistic, and technology that is not accessible. In fact, I think PBL will be most successful in contexts where it is necessary to break down curricular walls. Nonetheless, we are making slow, steady progress towards both our course goals and a thorough examination of PBL.  Here are the first three presentations:

• Can the use of creative writing and visual arts be used to understand and empathize with daily life in a medieval village?

This turned into an interesting construction of a fictional medieval village in two ways -- writing which explored the evolution of social structures in Britain leading up to feudalism, and a model of the village built out kits that the students crafted from a variety of internet "maker" sources.  I learned some new things from the students' timeline about the evolution of British society and was impressed with the amount of time it took to build the village.  Both presenters had knowledge about their topics that exceeded what they presented... in other words, there was a depth of understanding that formed a foundation for their project, rather than "just-in-time" learning that scratched the surface.

• What patterns are in place in the lore and creation of Dark Souls characters such as Havel the Rock?

This student project focused on character development and speculated as to what the game writers had in mind when they created various "NPCs" in Dark Souls.  The discussion extended into archetypes, base qualities and symbolism behind the characters, with comparisons to Greek mythology and Tolkien's creations.  The presenter is a hardcore gamer, but this did not prevent him from being overly technical during his narration of video clips.

• How and why have monsters such as werewolves developed in modern literature and cinema?

The project grew to become a study of the Trio of Gothic Monsters (Werewolf, Vampire, Frankenstein), their literary origins and cinematic debuts, and the role they played in popular culture a century ago compared to today. The student's conclusion was that the roles were similar, but not the same: in the past, these monsters were scapegoats, a way to blame society's ills on external forces, whereas in the present these monsters are used as a release for our tensions and way to address our anxieties, particularly about growing up. The student was definitely "caught" by her own research, and was busy reading Shelly's Frankenstein before and after her presentation.  We got to hear quotes from the Romantics, video clips from 30s and 40s films, and insightful analysis from the student who drew from a deep well in her presentation to the class

open letter PD

Open Letter to SD57 Trustees and Senior Learning Team:

Recently I learned that Senior Admin has recommended a cut in funding for the Pro-D Fund Administrator (PDFA) position in SD57. Trustees need to be aware that this cut will come at significant cost to teacher growth and work with students. For starters, without coordination the Teacher Pro-D Fund will require a new dispersal model that does not pool funding or allow the extensive organization and leadership currently taking place -- an unravelling of years of PGDTA Pro-D policy and a cooperative relationship between teachers and the school district.

This relationship has been positive in the past because each group that contributes to the "suite" of Pro-D in SD57 does their part well. District In-service and professional learning initiatives are focused on implementation of district goals and provincial curriculum -- that's what C&I is for and it does it well. Teacher-led Pro-D is something different -- it is the professional learning that each teacher chooses for themselves to affect learning in their classrooms -- every district in the province recognizes this, and also respects the difference between in-service (implementation of requirements, a board responsibility) and professional development (teachers have autonomy over their Pro-D, their Pro-D Fund, and their Pro-D Days; this is in contract). This also works well in our district, perhaps better than most in the province, because the Board has funded a coordinator position for the last 18 years and this insures accountable and purposeful use of the Pro-D Fund and provides leadership and organization for teacher-led Pro-D. Teacher-directed Pro-D will not go away (this is in contract), but it can certainly become ineffective and less accountable without coordination. Our set-up is the envy of the province not because of the budget (as you'll see below, teacher-led Pro-D is poorly funded in SD57 regardless of whether there is a PDFA position attached to it), but because it works.

Here are some of the main items that will be lost if the PDFA position is not funded:

1. Application process for Conference Travel (approximately 100 teachers travel each year for Pro-D they can't get in the North) 
2. Rural School Travel Subsidies (Mackenzie, McBride, and Valemount would not otherwise be able to access Pro-D events in PG and beyond) 
3. Involvement in Mentorship Programs (including two new programs co-funded and co-created for next year) 
4. Year-long Pro-D Facilitation (e.g. Robson Valley Mini-Conference last Fall, a Northern BC New Teachers conference next Fall) 
5. Communication on Pro-D and Collaboration on Shared Projects (teachers, administrators, C&I, DLC, AbEd, SetBC, CUPE EAs, etc.) 
6. Spring Fling Educational Conference (the organization and aftermath of this multi-district event is a 6-month process that flows from one desk) 

I can expand on these if you wish, but I will assume for now that you have a sense of what each of these involve. You can also learn more about how Teacher Pro-D is structured in our district at http://pgdta.ca/pro-d.

The district spends over $1 million in Pro-D and Travel each year, but only a small portion of this is directed (by contract) towards the Teacher Pro-D Fund.

The current district investment in Teacher Pro-D is around $150,000 -- $107,000 in the Fund and about $43,000 to buy out three blocks of time for a teacher leadership position. This PDFA position is responsible for the careful administration of a fund but beyond that has the "justification of time" to be fully engaged in the professional growth of teachers and their work with students, as evidenced in the weblink provided above. Like other part-time, half-time, and full-time non-enrolling positions in the district, the PDFA supports student learning and building capacity among educators, and in fact reaches and affects more teachers and their practices over the course of the year than most district-released positions. Through shared projects and the Spring Fling, the work of the PDFA also affects other employee groups. This work used to be 0.75 FTE and is now 0.5 FTE but there really has been no reduction of roles or work with teachers.

$150,000 is a small amount for a district our size and a shoe-string budget for the amount of professional development we support. It is a lower investment per teacher than virtually every district outside of the Lower Mainland and Southern Vancouver Island -- they typically pay less because travel costs for conference are very low. For comparison SD27 (Cariboo-Chilcotin), with less than half as many teachers as SD57, has a Teacher Pro-D Fund valued at $172,000 (budget, TTOC time, and 0.4 FTE position for a coordinator). Incidentally, this is the only other district in the province with a similar level of PD Coordinator release paid for with district funds -- they use their district-supplied Funds to release 2 days per week for their Teacher PD person. Some districts have smaller release arrangements (but do not attempt the roles that we see in our district such as conference travel approval and conference organization) and some large districts have attached a "Pro-D portfolio" to union-released table officers. SD57 is somewhat unique, and as a result we have a better Pro-D set-up than most other districts in the province -- it is a recognized drawing card for new teachers despite the low overall investment from the district.

Cutting a third of this investment in teacher professional development will have lasting harm on the positive relationship and momentum for professional learning that has developed in our school district. Our district may have its challenges, but one thing we do well is professional development. This cut would also send a chilling message to teachers from senior admin and the board about the value they placed on teacher-led professional development.

I have very much enjoyed the experience of working with teachers this year on their designs for professional growth and improving student success. I have also enjoyed working with others in the school district on shared projects, including plans for next year that are now in limbo: organization of a Northern BC New Teachers' Conference, funding and support for a Math Conference, and involvement in two new programs for mid-career teacher mentorship ("Learning Alongside" to address areas of challenge, and "Fresh Air Days" to allow teachers to observe and collaborate with teachers working on similar problems).

Within the "suite" of Pro-D in SD57 we have diverse and complex district, school, cross-school, and group/individual teacher-directed goals for professional development. Each is different -- by contract they have to be different -- e.g. the difference between BC Edplan implementation (in-service on paid time, board responsibility) and teacher Pro-D (autonomous, can take place on PD Days and teachers' own time). The first three are very well funded in our district, and have in fact grown substantially in each of the last four years (e.g. C&I is now up to 23 members at various levels of release). The last area, teacher-directed pro-d, has done very well on a limited budget for many years, and could soon be cut by a third with the loss of the PDFA position. A very minor shift in the way Pro-D is funded among these four areas is all it would take to keep the PDFA position. I encourage the trustees to include a recommendation to make this shift as part of their budget amendment directives that result from ECOW (Budget Consulation).

Feel free to get in touch or respond with questions. This should not be a decision that is made without discussing "what next" with the affected partner group. In the very least I urge you to fund the position for another year in order to allow time for discussion on "what next." If the position does disappear, there are layers of policy to unwind and many actions to consider. Disengaging from district involvements or shared projects, and transitioning to any new form of Pro-D Fund dispersion, record management, and travel application, etc. will take time. This needs to be done respectfully and carefully as will the explanation to teachers, conference presenters & vendors, and other contacts from our educational community and elsewhere who have become accustomed to the excellent Pro-D relationships and opportunities over the years.

Best regards,
Glen Thielmann

Dresden Codak

I've been following Aaron Diaz (@dresdencodak) on twitter for a while. It was one of those follows that results when you read a few witty or eccentric tweets and think that you need something different in your feed. My twitter stream is composed almost entirely of educators, centred on my province, educational technology, social studies, and public education advocacy. This is awesome as a professional development tool but it sometimes makes for way-too-serious reading and often raises my blood pressure. I'm trying to add some colour and humour to my feed, at the same time trying to avoid anything connected to celebrity or sports.

As it goes sometimes with twitter, it took me while to realize that Aaron Diaz was a graphic artist (and author, illustrator, and internet curator of comics lore based in Portland, OR), and it took me even longer to realize that he had an interest in illustrating the world of J.R.R. Tolkien, something dear to my heart and the theme of course I just started teaching called Middle Earth 12. I came across his Silmarillion Project a few weeks ago and was blown away by his renditions of characters that are known by the select few who have been Inducted. I find that his sketches and art go right to the profound thoughts I have about key characters and skip past the mental images I have about what they might look like. This is a big deal for me because I don't want these characters to be fixed down (the way they become after you've seen a book turned into a movie), I want them to remain fluid and possessed of the ability to inhabit new interior landscapes depending on where I'm at.

Today I emailed Aaron Diaz and asked if I could use his images with my course on handouts etc. and for comparison and study. He said "sure thing... kids need Tolkien." So, I'm thrilled to share his unique art with my students and help make the connection for them that the passions and interests kids have in high school can translate to satisfying lifelong pursuits and even paid work!

This image above shows Fëanor, a troubled elven prince in Tolkien's world, who created great gems called the Silmarils and set in motion a chain of events that altered the history of Middle Earth. The story of Fëanor has haunted me for 30 years, and is never far from my thoughts. I'm not sure if this was wise (given his tragic fate), but my wife and I named our son Fëanor. We gave ourselves a backdoor, though, in the moniker Finn.

___________________________

Image credit: http://silmarillionproject.tumblr.com/, Dresden Codak (Aaron Diaz) artist, author, and illustrator. Used by permission. Check out his main page at http://dresdencodak.com/ and more visual musings at http://dresdencodak.tumblr.com/.

Tapestry Workshops

Hello Victoria, Sooke, Sanich and Gulf Islands Teachers!

The organizers for the Tapestry Conference tell me that my workshops need some more souls or they might have to cancel. I'm really hoping to make the trip down there (from Prince George) for your Feb 21 Conference, so if you can help recommend a few people (or yourself) to attend one or both of these sessions I would be very grateful.  Tapestry Registration here.

Morning Session:

Heritage Inquiry: Connecting Land, People, and Narrative

Target audience: Secondary Humanities especially Social Studies, History, Geography, and English

Project-based learning using heritage research as the basis of cross-curricular inquiry and application of critical thinking skills. Case studies from Social Studies 10 and 11, Geography 12, and suggestions for adapting this work to other contexts. These projects have grabbed students and provided relevance, a basis for empathy, and really great presentations. You'll be amazed at the artifacts that students find in their basements.  Examples of Heritage projects.

Afternoon Session:

When Educators Co-create: Experimental Course Design for Secondary Schools

Target audience: Secondary teachers

Listen to some ideas from a Northern BC Professional Learning Network about course combinations, blended learning, simulations, and cross-curricular projects, including Middle Earth 12 and the Language and Landscape program (combination of English 11 and Geography 12).  Other courses and combinations we've tried or are trying "up here" include Yoga, Peer Mentorship, History of Social Justice Through Music, Geography combined with Digital Media Arts, History combined with "Cultures in Conflict" (another local course), and Genocide.

Then, the conversation can move to match the audience:

• engage in a “critical friends” activity that will tune your own curriculum/instruction ideas or designs for project-based learning
• look at what it takes to build your own locally developed course or adapt an existing one to new curriculum structures, including Board approval process and incorporating team teaching
• discuss how blended learning (mix of in-class, online, and community-based settings) can be used with new and existing courses, including use of digital portfolios

So.... sign up for one or both, and bring a friend with you!

Cheers,

Glen Thielmann

http://thielmann.ca

GeoNarrative Paula

This year's cohort in the "Language and Landscape Program" recently presented their GeoNarratives -- a historical/geographical study of a specific place, time, person/s, and/or event.  This "project-based learning" was meant to roll many English 11 and Geography 12 learning outcomes together for our blended learning, course combination approach.  The students had time in and out of class over a few months to put this together.

One of my students "P.C." built her project and presentation around what life was like for a woman coming of age in the 1930s and living a life of some privilege in the Vancouver of the 1940s-1960s.  The focus was her great-aunt Paula, a larger-than-life personality in the personal narrative of P.C.'s family who, with her husband, travelled extensively and left an impression on those around them.  Paula. among other things, was one of the first women to join the Vancouver Yacht Club, and was a careful recorder of life around her.

P.C.'s project involved designing inquiry, conducting personal research, curating evidence from a variety of sources (mainly primary documents), building a scrapbook to summarize her inquiry, and writing a short story from the perspective of Paula on he honeymoon. P.C.'s narrative for us (her audience) tried to capture both the extraordinary qualities of Paula, but also the more general characteristics of a time and place (Vancouver, 1930-1960).  Alongside this "evolving landscape" were descriptions of the many clubs, theatres, and restaurants that Paula visited.

One of the many artifacts that P.C. used to structure her presentation were the menus from some of these restaurants, saved by Paula as mementos and kept in the family after her passing.  I found this one intriguing, love the inclusion of cow's tongue and rarebits:

do your homework

O.K. I'll bite. A digitally dynamic educator from Penticton, Naryn Searcy (@ncearcy17) dropped a "getting to know you" meme-thingy on me and a few others:

• 11 Random facts about yourself
• 11 questions asked by another
• 11 questions that you ask to another 11 people in your PLN (professional learning network)

11 Random Facts about me:

1. I can exhale through my right eye. Busted tear duct valve or something -- makes a sound like letting air out of a balloon.
2. Although I consider myself outgoing, humorous, loud, and prominent in a crowd (big guy, after all), I consistently place in the Introvert camp when I do a Myers Briggs test.
3. Huge Tolkien fan, have a big bookshelf just for JRR. Named my kids after Tolkien characters... Luthien (Lu) and Fëanor (Finn).
4. Snapped my ACL while boxing with oversized gloves in a bouncy castle in the gym with hundreds of students watching... too much pain to be embarrassed.
5. Met my wife while treeplanting in 1991... at the time she was the camp cook and I knew it was love when she served me a up a whole chicken. Still, took us 6 years before our first date.
6. During my teacher training studies at SFU, I lived in a tent in the woods near where I parked my car. Both G-lot and those woods are now developed into something called UniverCity (how original is that?).
7. For my final project in my Masters of Ed degree, I wrote about the Epic of Gilgamesh, explored ecosystem theory in education, and made a film about a Sasquatch where I got to strip down, get covered in mud, and run madly through the woods.
8. My first real job, and one I almost carried through to a career, was that of forest ecosystem geographer. While I loved the wilderness, map-making, and the study of plants, I grew weary of isolation and being chased by bears.
9. I've had three concussions, had stitches 7 times, and been struck by lightning once. The latter happened in the woods of northern Alberta -- didn't really hurt, but the crackling waves of blue made me wretch.
10. My favorite go-to lesson involves a spatial history of the English language, one I borrowed from a beloved prof (now deceased) from UBC... Fred Bowers
11. I sometimes embark on endless bizarre undertakings because someone dares me to in a round-about way... intensive study of anarchism, massive genealogy project, building a web empire, challenging local school district decisions, creating a "Middle Earth 12 course," etc.

Answering Naryn Searcy's questions:

1. How do you balance time spent on face to face relationships in your own district vs online relationships? My online "PLN" is really just a list of tweeps that amuse and/or challenge me... I'm not sure I would call them "relationships" although I do learn from them. I send/receive a hecka lotta emails, but am making headway trying to squeeze my screen time into smaller and smaller daily windows. I reserve as much of my professional face time as I can for get-togethers with teacher friends -- fellow Social Studies teachers aka @pacificslope.
2. Where do you want to go in the world that you haven't been yet? Pretty much anywhere in Great Britain... I've started a list of things to do and see, and it already looks like more than can happen in one trip.
3. Are you a morning or night person? Usually morning, although if there is some stress or pressure I often put in late nights, too. I'm usually awake by 5:30, and have slept in past 9:30 only a handful of times in my life.
4. What was the last book you read/movie you watched or song you listened to? Reading: Fall of Arthur by Tolkien (posthumous publication), listening to Graceland today (introduced the album to my daughter), saw The Hobbit DOS a couple of weeks ago.
5. In what school/position do you think you "grew up" as an educator? My current school.  In keeping with William Blake, my Innocence as an educator was College Heights (1996-2003) and my Experience is D.P. Todd (2004-present)
6. What is one thing you would miss if you had to leave the community you currently live in? Friends, family, my street, the Knowing that comes from living in a place for 40ish years.
7. What is the source you rely on most for news about what's going on in the world? CBC web/radio, twitter articles, some alternate media.
8. What is your favourite movie and why? Groundhog Day, for reasons I don't fully understand.
9. Who will win the SuperBowl and Stanley Cup this year? I don't watch sports so I have no idea about NFL or NHL... it would be nice for the Canucks to win once, but only if they don't get drunk, tip cars, loot and burn.
10. If your son/daughter wanted to enter the field of education right now, would you encourage them? BC K-12??? Probably not, unless wages, respect for teachers, and relationship with management improved drastically. There are parts of the job that are unrivalled, absoutely fulfilling, but there are also parts that are mind-numbing and unduly stressful.  If my kid is going to be poor and misunderstood, I'd rather they be an artist or musician!
11. What is a good moment from 2013? Watching my kids at a recent swim club meet -- progress and confidence. Taking a moment recently to be in awe over my wife as she holds 2 part-time jobs (including elected school trustee) plus amazing mom and potter. For me, having the local university recognize a "Tolkien-themed" course I developed as an academic credit for admissions.

My questions for 11 others in my PLN:

1. If you morphed into an all-round Olympic athlete, what would be your Winter Sport and your Summer Sport?
2. What was the most interesting book or written work you read in 2013 (and was it paper or digital)?
3. What is a major change you would make to the BC Education system?
4. What is a work of art (any genre or form) that inspires or challenges you?
5. Considering the wealth of oil in northern Alberta that we seem anxious to liquidate in a single generation, are you in favour of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline?
6. What is a food experience that you wish on your children (or nieces/nephews)?
7. If your house was burning, but insurance would cover the obvious expensive items and your family & pets were safe, what meaningful artifact would you rescue from your home?
8. If you had to pick a different career than the one you're in, what would it be?
9. If you were to ever publish a book, what would you like it to be about?
10. What was a great event or experience in your work life from 2013 (e.g. teacher experience for many of you)?
11. What was a great family moment from 2013?

Here are the 11 people I'm inviting to do their homework, in alphabetical order... there are others in my "PLN" but they seem to have done this thing already, or they don't blog so they will find this activity frustrating. Some of these folks I just want to hear more from, others I have included because it will annoy them (Rob, Kate) and if they do this they can totally skip the last step of passing this on... but all of them excellent folks to follow on twitter for a variety of reasons:

• Andrew Campbell @acampbell99
• Steve Chase @Chase_Steve
• Kate Cooke @TrusteeCooke
• Kelley Inden @ksinden
• Bryan Jackson @bryanjack
• Andrew Kurjata @akurjata
• Rob Lewis @Lewy007
• Kathy Rice @Kathy_Rice
• Tobey Steeves @symphily
• Chris Wejr @ChrisWejr
• Rhea Woolgar @mizwooly

Added challenge... optional: if you post your response on a blog or such, include a random childhood pic of yourself. The one I placed at the top shows my first bike in 1973 -- 4th birthday.