The SHIFT Blog

The Shift has decided it is time to throw down the gauntlet and invite our fellow Shifters to try something new. We love getting out to see other school communities and other teachers’ classrooms in action, but there are only two of us and there is a lot of great work to see. We think now is a good time for some Shift challenges. Every so often we will post some #TryShifting challenges here . To start with, there are already three available for you to try, such as starting an educational Twitter account, or convincing a friend to do so. There are no deadlines or due dates. You can spend as long as you want working on a challenge. They can be completed individually or in a group. All we ask is that you share your work with the wider education community using the #TryShifting hashtag. Post some pictures, reflect on how the challenge went. What did you learn? So what are you waiting for? Try some Shifting!  

  Christine Vanderwal is a grade 7 teacher at Viola Desmond Public School. She is passionate about equity, Indigenous perspectives, building relationships, listening to students' stories, meeting the needs of her learners, and building safe school cultures. This is her first contribution to the Shift Blog. “Then he said, ‘That’s my favourite part about this class.’ ” One day, my students were deep into their inquiry work.  One boy wandered over to me. He told me that he was sorry to have gotten off track, but that he was looking into wood extraction and the search somehow took him to a page about his ancestral country of Pakistan.  He wanted to show me some beautiful landscape images of the country. We chatted about it for a few minutes. Then he said, "That's my favourite part about this class."   Unclear about what he meant, I replied, "What's your favourite part about this class?" "That I can talk so much about where my family originates, P