When you're a Northerner

Slave Lake on fire,  May 15 2011 Courtesy L Ramsey

When you live in a rural northern community, you’re vulnerable.  You’re vulnerable to fires and floods and insects.  You’re vulnerable to the unpredictable weather, the vagaries of the economy, the transient nature of your friendships as people come and go. Sometimes you’re trapped by highway closures.  And you put up with these things, because that’s what it means to live in the north. You put up with unreliable internet, limited public transportation, bad roads and the increased likelihood of highway accidents, few restaurants, limited cultural opportunities. You watch your kids go away to school because that’s where the universities are. And you put up with these things, because you’re a northerner.  You’re strong. You don’t complain. When there’s nothing to do, you make your own fun.  When there aren’t good restaurants, you learn how to cook. When you need something, you ask for help-even from total strangers.  You use your ingenuity to overcome the roadblocks that nature and geography has thrown in your way.  And even though you work as hard or maybe harder than your urban southern neighbours and you don’t get the same benefits from your tax dollar as they do, you put up with your challenges because you’re a northerner. That’s what you do.

Courtesy Nik Neville

But after a while it starts to wear on you.  You discover that your hospital no longer has an anesthesiologist or a surgeon, and you get a bit worried. When you learn that young women who are expecting their first child have to go to Edmonton to give birth, and their families have to take days off work and stay in hotel so they can be with them, that doesn’t seem right.  And then your government decides the medevac centre needs to be moved further from the city hospital, adding crucial time to emergency transport, that kind of gets under your skin. And when you find out your town is losing its air ambulance “to serve you better” and they’re moving your own air ambulance to a the city where no one uses an air ambulance because they actually live where the hospitals are and now the time to hospital is at least another hour, well- that just kind of makes you mad.

 

So you do what your social studies teacher told you.  You contact people.  You call your MLA but she doesn’t return your message.  You contact the Minister of Health and you don’t hear back.  You talk to opposition MLAs- still nothing. You find out your local government hasn’t been consulted and they are calling for a face to face meeting, and nothing is done. You talk to Alberta Health Services and they stick to their talking points that “this is better for all Albertans”.  So you start a petition and within a week, 1200 people have signed it.  Many of these people have their own stories about how their lives were saved by air ambulance.  They’re mad.  They contact their politicians.  But no one answers their pleas.

So what do you do?  You rely on your northern ingenuity. You rally.  You stick together.  You fight for what you deserve. Because you’re northerners.  And that’s what you do.

now is not the time

Now is not the time

Now is not the time

Now is not the time to commit sociology

Now is not the time to talk about gun control 

Now is not the time to buy super bowl XLVII tickets

Now is not the time for reckless opportunistic experiments

Now is not the time to give money to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood

Now is not the time to ship Canadian beef south to the United States

Now is not the time to discuss the 'political aftermath’ especially when your theories are ludicrous

Now is not the time

Now is not the time

Now is not the time for clichés

Now is not the time for subtlety

Now is not the time to give up on me

Now is not the time for dick measuring

Now is not the time to wonder why you do it

Now is not the time to go down memory lane

Now is not the time to talk yourself out of your goals and dreams

Now is not the time for fear.  That will come later.

now is not the time…now is not the time…now is not the time…

Now is not the time

The Private Lives of Teachers

Aerial photo of Slave Lake on fire, May 15 2011.

The last couple of months have been kind of weird for me.

Since the Slave Lake fires of 2011, my husband and I and our local newspaper editor and a local forestry educator have been writing a book.

The Sky was on Fire: Slave Lake's Story of Disaster, Exodus and New Beginnings was self published in December.  We've sold close to 3000 copies so far and the book has been either number one or number two on the Edmonton non-fiction best seller list for each of the four weeks it has been for sale in that city at Audrey's Books and the Royal Alberta Museum.

Writing the book was an amazing amount of work- every evening, hours out of each weekend, vacation days.  All of it volunteer labour. Selling has been easier, but time-consuming- late afternoons, evenings and weekends delivering, packing and shipping orders, making bank deposits, and promoting sales.

It's hard to say why we worked so hard on this book.  Seeing your whole community on fire, realizing that your own house and all your worldly goods could be gone, and wondering how many of your friends and neighbours must surely have perished is life altering. Hearing the stories of escape, near-death experiences, and unthinking acts of selflessness performed by average people is something that changes your worldview.   The book was our way of paying tribute to those who lost so much and carried on with their lives.  It is a testament to the unsung heroes to whom the book is dedicated. But beyond being a piece of Alberta history, we think the book tells a universal story of resilience and community-our way of saying, "Look at what happened to us! Look at the strength of the human spirit!"

It does not surprise me that the book is a best seller.  People tell us it's well written and beautifully produced. Thanks to a grant from Alberta Culture, it's affordable.  The strange thing is the almost complete lack of interest from the media.  Apart from one interview with CTV, a network that seems invested in our Slave Lake story, and a short piece in metronews, no one in the media seems to care. Is the Slave Lake story too old to be news? Is it too local?  Is the fact we self published the book part of the problem?  These are questions this social studies teacher cannot answer.

Students, teachers, and support staff feature prominently in our book of stories, although they are not named by their occupation. Teachers helped fight the fire, school employees "stole" the school buses that evacuated seniors from town, a custodian assisted with checking basements for bodies. Dozens of teachers and teaching assistants lost their homes, and yet in the face of their own losses, worked to restore a sense of normalcy for their students in the days and weeks following the fire. "Lost and Found in the Fire" - the first thing I wrote about the event- was published in the A.T.A. News in late May of 2011. The English Language Arts teachers of Alberta did a fundraiser for our book. And the A.T.A. News most graciously agreed to help promote the book in their next issue. Proceeds from the book will go towards a scholarship for students pursuing an education in the arts.

The Sky was on Fire can be purchased online at www.stagenorth.org

Voiceless

I had a meeting this morning via videoconferencing.  First, I couldn't log in because there was a new way to access the VC that had not been explained.  Then I could not get through to tech support. When I did get into the session, no one could hear me. And then my screen froze and went black.

I'm used to talking.  A lot.  And ranting.  So to sit in a meeting and not be able to talk was more than frustrating.  In fact it verged on enraging.  It's like how you feel when your party loses an election. Year after year after year.  And after awhile you just stop caring.


I used to feel that my voice was listened to in my workplace and by my professional association.  Now, not so much.  So this year I took a vow of silence.  I don't speak at staff meetings.  I don't send bulk emails containing my views on things.  I don't write to the ATA.  It feels weird. I'm a Social Studies teacher, and I tell my students they should speak out.  But now, I don't. And even though my vow of silence is self imposed, it's no less enraging.

I wonder if my students feel like that.  Out there in cyberspace, at their kitchen tables, and in their distance ed learning labs, in the back rooms of their places of employment- do they feel alone?  Do they feel like anyone listens to them?  Or have they just stopped caring?

Cancer, Capitalism and the Classroom

Here it is Movember, I think I have convinced two guys to grow a monkeytail and next week my sister is shaving her head as a cancer fundraiser.

But I keep thinking of the session I attended at a teachers convention a couple of years ago.  Wendy Mesley about chasing the answer to cancer.  The gist of her message was that our research dollars go into cures for cancer, when what we really should be doing is looking at prevention.

 How much of our fundraised cancer dollars go into looking at what causes cancer?  Because, seriously, wouldn't any human rather not get cancer, rather than find a cure? As the old "Demotivators" poster says, "If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made prolonging the problem."  Am I cynical about big pharma and --I admit it-- capitalism in general?

Today I came across this video on, of all place, aljazeera (where I was looking for an XML code to put in my D2L News Widget (which I still haven't figured out, btw)

And I wonder, what am I allowed to say on this subject?  Teachers are supposed to be impartial and present fair and balanced views. But if it's true that the chemicals we use in farming and industry cause cancer, should I remain quiet?

A Day in the Life

One kid at a time.

Talked to Mrs. Jones.  Her son was causing her no end of grief.  He is a peer oriented follower who often misses class and goes to the library where he sometimes works and he sometimes disappears.  Sometimes for days.  Mr. and Mrs. Jones don’t always know where he is and this has been going on for a year and a half.  Could we please hang on to her kid for an extra month even though he’s already been enrolled for a whole year?  Social 20-1 could be the one thing he could hang onto-if he passes, then he can take Social 30-1 and graduate from high school.  I promised we would not give up on this kid.  That’s not what we do. 

Got an email from a co-worker. “Kendra” was in her online class but the discussions weren't working out because there were no active students in her cohort. She really wanted to talk about some issues.  Could she be moved to another group?  Kendra has Asperger’s and selective mutism.  Talking to people face to face? Forget it! But if she actually wants to discuss issues online, that’s progress. 

Speaking of discussions, Clinton- diagnosed with ADHD and ODD- was entering into some online discussions.  Not in the aggressive manner we had been led to believe might happen, but in a fantastic supportive way.  And while some educators may say there can be no discussion like face to face discussion, his conversation about “traditions” with a classmate - spending her first Thanksgiving without her dad-was electrifying.  I wonder if that would have happened in a face to face classroom?

Bob called.  He just wrote his final exam in Social 30-2.  What was his mark?  He had written the diploma without having taken the course. He was racing through the content and currently had 38.  With 68 on the diploma  he knew he only needed 32% to get his credits and graduate.  Bob could be about to learn an important life lesson.

Another phone call.  A Social 30-1 student was outraged that his paper on the relevance of Marxism had received a poor grade. Stalin failed so how could Marx be relevant?  A heated discussion ensued- had Jamal contacted me to complain yet?  No...and the next day I found out they had had a very good discussion with some deep learning- on both sides.

A call about another student, suffering from social anxiety and an eating disorder.  She was seeing an outside support worker and had access to a school counsellor but she would not talk to anyone on the phone.  Mom was distraught. How can we help?   Well, we can listen.  We can remember this student’s particular circumstances in our assignment feedback and communications.  And, like a good parent, we can wait- patiently and supportively-as she works through her issues.   Because sometimes that is all you can do.

I may work with my students online. I may never see even one of the dozens of students on my class list.  But I work with every one of them one at a time.  My students are not a nameless mob lost in cyberspace.  Every one of them is real to me.  As a professional I would be derelict in my duties if I believed that the education I offer my students is a pale second in comparison with face to face instruction.  In fact for many of my students, it is the only instruction that will work. 

Lacking evidence to support the position taken

So I'm reading the ATA News, because that's something I do as a professional, and I come across this guest editorial republished from the Globe and Mail.  It's called "The teacher is the real heart of education" and it's written by a university prof, so I'm thinking it will contain a thesis and some supporting evidence.

To my chagrin, I find it's nothing more than an opinion piece.  If I were to mark it according to my grade 12 Social Studies Diploma rubric, I'd give Clifford Orwin a "limited" when it comes to argumentation and evidence. My comments to him might run along the lines of  "you have a good start, but find make sure your evidence supports the position taken.  Be careful with assumptions- your position was based on uninformed belief, and your evidence, while potentially relevant, was incompletely developed."

Professor Orwin suggests that the only way to really teach in a university classroom is when one can "see the whites of their eyes."  The whites of their eyes?  Who are you kidding ?  That is not what I see when I visit today's universities, where teachers need two large screens and the assistance of sound engineers for their voices to be heard as you'll find at the U of A CCIS building.


Furthermore, I wonder about the integrity of of my own professional association when it publishes an article about the state of affairs in post secondary education to imply that the same holds true for distributed learning in Alberta's public schools. Just as we do not have lecture halls that seat 500 students, we also do not have online classrooms with "zillions of students." As an online educator, I am not a "disembodied electronic wraith," nor are my students.  We are all real people.

Online education and teacher presence are not mutually exclusive. To suggest that the heart of a teacher does not lie in the very essence of online education is an error in logic. This assumption denies the reality of distributed learning in Alberta and denies the reality of online relationships in today's world. Online educators are the heart of their virtual classrooms, just as they are in the face to face classroom.

If I teach my students online, it's because I believe it works. That's something I do as a professional, and I expect my association to respect that.