In the State of Gratitude

I belong to a School of Thirds – most events are 1/3 anticipation, 1/3 experience and 1/3 reminiscing. This approach to life is a very real experience of the dimension of time in our cosmos as past, present and future all in the NOW. 

Last week was my final week of EJ School for 2013-14. Reflecting on the year fills me with gratitude I must voice. Gertrude Stein said “Silent gratitude isn’t very much to anyone.” 

Ever since I left the more conventional classroom in 2002 for my role leading site-based education experiences, I have toned down my joy to a private revel and quiet thankfulness that I have no year-end progress reports to prepare.  However, I do miss the accumulated satisfaction of accessing the growth and witnessing the learning that 10 months can produce in a collection of students that make up any given class.

I will visit the classes that came to EJ School this year and deliver the glossy Front Pages the Edmonton Journal loving prepared for each student. I will collect students’ comments on things like their biggest surprises from the week, their favorite activities, anything bad that happened and what advice they would give a student coming to EJ School next year. I will get a rush reading through those student evaluations of the program.

But on the planet of Inquiring Minds Edmonton, like most other places in the education universe, we are thinking about next year. At the Greater Edmonton Teachers Convention booth I had the pleasure of connecting with amazing teachers I have worked with in the past. Some of them introduced me to new teachers.  I will be helping a couple of other sites get ready to try the site-based, week-long, inquiry approach and fine tune elements of their programs.

Bringing students into direct contact with the world of journalism has opened my eyes to many things about the nature of inquiry, accurate information and the burgeoning uses of technology. The risk the Edmonton Journal took in opening its doors during this time of dramatic changes for them to a program like EJ School speaks to its deep commitment to the community of Edmonton. Barb Wilkinson and Karen Unland observed the use Linda Hut was making of just one morning a week for her City Hall classes and knew it was good. They have nurtured me these past 2 years and I am so grateful.

I shared classes and experiences with City Hall School and U School this year. I can’t say enough about those chances to collaborate with Linda Hut and Amissa Jablonski. I attended the U School Convocation for our joint class and the experience of watching students at Convocation Hall will be a culminating highlight of my year. I look forward to Linda's Citizenship Fair that celebrates City Hall School's year end.

Brian Dunsmore and the volunteers at CKUA designed a wonderful afternoon of learning for EJ School classes this year.

SAGE (Rachel Tassone and the Senior’s Association of Greater Edmonton) and Kevan Lyons, the Poet of Churchill Square played such an important role in the connection of students to powerful true story.

The Stanley Milner Library and community librarian, Angie Mills took us around the world and into the past with their newspaper collection.

The Marian Centre opened its doors to share its mission with Edmonton’s less fortunate.

The changing downtown of Edmonton was our landscape.

And my biggest thanks goes to the staff of the Edmonton Journal who were so welcoming and forth-coming with students who watched and interviewed them. The Edmonton Journal is more to our community than a source of accurate information.

The brain research says it takes a village to raise a healthy, resilient child. In the past, present and future it is so and in my EJ School village there is a state of gratitude.

Holy Temporal Anomaly – where does the time go?

I have been itching to write a post on this blog for the last couple of weeks and when I come to finally start, I discover I have not added a thing since Aug. 2012. When I read that last post, it seems like it was just yesterday.

Don’t get me started on where that time has gone.

What I am excited about these days is how much good stuff just keeps happening in the universe of Edmonton’s Inquiring Minds. Applications were up all around and 2013-14 looks like another great year.

In my little corner over at the Edmonton Journal, EJ School hosted 6 weeks of remarkable learning and lots of that learning was mine. In spite of (or maybe because of) the constant, unrelenting pace of change in the world of journalism, EJ School combined the opportunity to develop the tools of media literacy with exploration of the business of journalism in an engaging environment surrounded by history, current events and the downtown world of work. Together with the great teachers and the students who came with them, I got to explore downtown Edmonton and the Jasper Ave “retro-fit”, observe the sports department through the NHL lock-out, dig into the history of many downtown buildings, check out the view from the Castle Rock offices high up in Manulife Place, stand next to the Pulitzer Prize won years ago by the Edmonton Journal, view a thought provoking photo exhibit titled Inclusion & Exclusion at Enterprise Square, watch an epic curling match at the Brier, discover the spirit of service to others at the Marion Centre and celebrate the 100th birthday of the Edmonton Public Library.

I also got to know some of the journalists at the Edmonton Journal. Monday, every week the class on site was treated to a tour by Karen Unland, orchestrator of the innovative project called Capital Ideas. Then Karen would demonstrate good interview techniques on some staffer. Tuesday and Friday mornings during an activity that came to prove itself a classic for understanding the basic skills of observation and interview and metaphorically titled “Fly on the Wall”, small groups of students spend ½ hour in some working area of the building. Crime desk, the morning editors' meeting, advertising, marketing, front desk, security, publisher’s office, Block 1912, linotype machine, Capital Ideas and the occasional journalist’s desk became perfect practice locations for students. Then the process of the small groups sharing what they discovered helped everyone understand the nature of distilling and refining interesting information to communicate to others. Friday, after the editors' meeting Barb Wilkinson would drop by to explain the process of designing a front page for the print version and the class would get its writing assignment to create their own class front page.

Some afternoons were spent sketching in the Atrium or mining the wealth of riches inside Malcolm Mayes’ editorial cartoons.  At least once a week an opportunity was devoted to a more in depth interview with a staffer. Learning about the skills of storytelling in photography from Ryan Jackson, the insatiable curiosity that powers Paula Simons, the unusual route to crime reporting taken by Jana Pruden or the memorable sports events covered by Curtis Stock proved to be inspiration for page after page of student notes in their reporter style journals. For me, hearing Paula recount the story of Morris “Two Gun” Cohen reminded me that often truth can be more astounding than fiction.

I am already incredibly excited about a new group of teachers and the classes coming in 2013-14.

Holy Temporal Anomaly.