The SHIFT Blog

  Dr. Sunaina Sharma is the Program Leader for English, French and Canada and the World Studies at MM Robinson High School. Rebecca Newcombe is the Vice Principal at MM Robinson High School. Together, they wondered about how to make staff meetings at their school better. Read on for their reflections on a worthwhile journey. I see you at the staff meeting secretly marking. I hear you saying, “this all could have been said in an email.”  I feel your exhaustion from a day of supporting students and know that you have an evening of assessing their work and contacting parents. Sensing all of this inspired a new way of doing staff meetings last year at MM Robinson High School. What Research Says We knew we wanted to invite change and innovation in the way we were doing staff meetings, but before deciding on how to do that, we began with looking at the existing research. There is a lot of research out there, but the ideas below are what resonated most with us. What We Tried St...

  Aaron Neal is a mathematics and physics teacher at Burlington Central High School.  After attending some professional development around “Finding Your Why” he was left with some questions about the ingredients that go into great teaching. This is his first guest post for The Shift. Teaching is not a solved problem.  I love that about it. Every conversation with a student, parent, colleague or administrator is an opportunity to get closer to the solution.  I will never stop hunting for the right way to teach.  It is out there, I just need to keep hunting.  My first thought I ever had about teaching was that a good explanation was all I needed.  Now I know that sometimes the best explanation is no explanation at all. I have grown and changed, had more thoughts and ideas about education than I can remember; however, I am still on the hunt… Just because I have never even caught sight of my prey doesn’t mean that I don’t know the scent of it.   I...

  Bijan Nagji is an elementary teacher at Viola Desmond Public School. He has 19 years experience as an educator in the Halton District School Board. His favourite thing to hear in a school is ”sure let’s give it a try!”.  His least favourite thing to hear is “I can’t do this, it’s too hard” and “This is just a new education fad”. He is passionate about student voice, empowering students and building a strong classroom and school community.  This is his first contribution to the Shift Blog. The idea of Knowledge Building came across my radar in the middle of the 2017 school year. Ms. Hanmer , one of the Vice Principals at our school, dropped by my classroom to introduce me to a document.  Being open minded, I glanced at it and said “Sure, I’ll take a look”. I put it on my teacher's desk (I still had one then). Life got busy, you know how THAT goes!  And so, despite best intentions, it stayed there. As I reflect on this, I can still hear that voice inside my he...

  Sarah Cronin is a teacher for the Halton District School Board and the program leader for Special Education at Milton District High School.   She has written previously for us, sharing her work leading other teachers through their own passion projects .  You can learn more about her journey on her blog . After reading about teacher passion projects in the book Hacking Leadership ,  I wanted to support professional development in this meaningful and purposeful way with members of my team.   Teacher passion projects are when teachers take control of their own professional learning through choosing an area of education on which to focus.  Topics are varied and learning is centred around working toward becoming a better teacher overall. Learn about it here !   When I started leading this project I focused on my inspiration, implementation and leadership strategies.  As the project began, we had 5 people participate. Topics included Di...

  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...