The SHIFT Blog

  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...

"We really don't have a plan". That is the spirit of risk taking and experimentation that Sylvonna Brennan and Andrea De Mendonca took when launching into the unknown and piloting “Engology”, an integrated Grade 11 English and Biology course this past fall. You may have seen their article in the Toronto Star . We were interested in digging a little deeper to get an understanding into the conditions that allowed this great combined credit course launch and where it will go from here.  The basics of their integrated course are easy to understand. Students were offered an English/Biology package of courses in the afternoon. Topics from both sets of curriculum were woven together and both teachers worked closely on creating a coherent experience for students. Both Sylvonna and Andrea were open to admitting that they were working alongside their students in this new adventure. Many times during the semester they empowered their students to advocate for how they ...

Amanda Williams-Yeagers wrote a guest blog for us early this month.  She is also leading the HDSB Empower Book Talk.  We’ve enjoy learning with her every Thursday night so much, we asked her to share her thoughts on learning environments and why the classroom landscape needs to change. I recently held a community circle with a grade seven science class. The students were feeling stressed about looming deadlines and tests, and I wanted to give them a forum to get things off their chest and discuss strategies for coping with management of the feelings they were having.  After a few referenced that this was “Good preparation for high school,” I decided to change the dialogue. I asked them, “If they could change anything about their current school system and the way that they learned, what would they change?” Some students talked about wanting more opportunities for hands on experiences and less tests, some talked about wanting more opportunities for creativ...