Backpack for a classroom - #yegdtkids

George Couros has been encouraging me to get back to my blog today (via Twitter - he and I have never met) and I am shocked to discover, not for the first time, that much time has past since I wrote something for this purpose.

Back in late April, just after the deadline for Inquiring Minds Edmonton applications had past, my friend and colleague, Linda Hut of City Hall School fame reached out to ask about a collaboration for 2016-17. She knew how to hook me because she was talking about rookies/veterans in her collection of applying teachers and she wanted to be sure that if she took rookies some of those vets would have a week somewhere. She knows I love master teachers and am always wanting to challenge them.

So we offered 6 of them (2 sets of pairs sharing a class and 2 singles) a week in downtown Edmonton (#yegdt) under my guidance with no fixed address or even much of a plan. They all accepted, without hesitation I might add, which filled me with nervous anticipation.

Could we make it work?

Jon Hall

Linda started sending me contacts from her deep metaphoric mental (cellphone connected) Rolodex for city-shapers and change-makers in #yegdt and I started beating the pavement – walking downtown as many different ways as I could and having lots of coffee with great folks from her list.  I did a Jane’s Walk with the mayor of 104 St., Jon Hall, in early May then visited inside his wonderful old warehouse turned lofts building during Open Doors Edmonton in July. One of my early connections was Chris Gusen of Make Something Edmonton who asked me to consider connecting with my teachers on 100 in 1 day (June 4) as an exploration project. I created an invitation and asked Diane Gurnham of ICE School fame to include her piloting teachers prepping for ICE School 2.0 which she was developing for her new classroom in Rogers Place. I also invited my EJ School teachers. This crew of 20 educators had an amazing morning, walking, talking, sharing ideas, looking at Edmonton past, present and future, loads of public art and imagining all kinds of curriculum connections.

I knew I could count on CKUA and the Edmonton Journal to share their spaces. I found out the Downtown Edmonton Community League (DECL) did not have room in their small offices but a door was opened across 103 Street at All Saints Cathedral Hall by Chris Pilon, their community engagement guy and DECL member. The roof stressed folks of EPSB Archives and Museum at McKay Ave were excited to cooperate. On a walk north from the Neon Sign Museum and Rogers Place, I discovered I could be at the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre in 10 minutes and the resources of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment Museum and the City of Edmonton Archives became a key part of each week.

Medicine Wheel
Garden

I learned we could daily acknowledge that the land we were exploring was Treaty 6 territory and traditional meeting ground for many Indigenous people: from Beaver Hills House Park thru the Medicine Wheel Garden to Iron Foot Place, from Alex Decoteau to Sharon Pasula, downtown resident and Indigenous Cultural and Educational Helper. We experienced Alberta’s birth as a province through history made real during Mr. Puffer Goes to Parliament. We talked hockey (I love to talk hockey history) and connected the first sitting of the Alberta Legislature to the old Thistle Rink among other hockey highlights. Maybe you heard they officially opened a new state-of-the-art NHL arena in downtown Edmonton.

Linda shared City Hall, Edmonton City Council and let us join her for a great view from the 16^th floor of the EPCOR building. I discovered the folks at Edmonton Emergency Relief Services Society were happy to speak about their story helping those touched by poverty, homelessness and disaster. We interviewed parents of kids at the DECL Urban Playgroup and we met with Michael Phair at the park named after him.

Chris Gusen at
Make Something Edmonton

We saw things that allowed us to touch on hard topics like war and homelessness. Then Edmonton Economic Development Corporation (EEDC) and Make Something Edmonton gave us hope when they asked students to create a model of something missing in downtown Edmonton.

This great group of teachers and their adventuring students walked and walked and walked. We lived out of our backpacks with journals and pencils at the ready, interviewing, observing, sketching and wondering. We ate lunch in a different location every day of the week. And no one complained. We gained a real appreciation of what such an unrooted lifestyle might be like. We were greeted one afternoon on our return to City Hall to catch the bus by a scruffy man who broke into a smile as we past and sang “Jesus loves the little children”. More than one student included that in their end of the day reflection.

There is one week left. And then this grand experiment will be over. I have learned so much and I am very grateful for the help and encouragement of everyone who believed and helped make it possible. Chiefly but not exclusively I feel Tolkien got it right – “All who wander are not lost.”

Free-Range Brain

My brain lined up elements of my universe in an amazing way these last few weeks. My summer reading has taken me through a number of fascinating books and my brain started rolling around the phrase “free-range” to connect the diversity of topics. The bread crumb trail started when I hunted down and pecked at This Explains Everything by John Brockman, thanks to the bookshelf at Brain Pickings. Each short essay in this book is illuminating I am sure, although I did not read them all. That is the nature of hunting and pecking. But there is one I turned back to several times: Benjamin Bergen’s Metaphors are in the Mind. I wandered from it to a Berkley website where I learn, George Lakoff and others are studying language and there are courses to explore how the “human physical brain composed of neurons that function via chemistry, can give rise to human concepts and human language”. Complex, abstract this-is-how-your-brain-functions stuff explained by making connections to what is real and tangible –metaphorically. Which these folks are saying is how we “think”, really metaphorically.

And then, in that way life just takes over and if you have your eyes and ears open, the seemingly abstract becomes, via a great metaphor, the real and day to day. On July 9^th, two “free-range” stories converged on my laptop. Early in the day I read one by Sarah Boesveld of the National Post that says “the unforeseen consequences of allowing hipster farmers to raise chickens in their urban backyards” is abandonment of the animals because “People don’t realize how much work they (chickens) actually are.” In my quest to support agriculture of all kinds, I have been saying this over and over. The more people experience what it takes to produce food, the more they will appreciate farmers. Sadly, many people launch down a path of relationship with another living thing (chickens, rabbits, dogs, cats, spouses and even children) without having contemplated what it will actually require of them to make that relationship healthy for both parties.

Not long after, I receive an email about the Boesveld story from my friend in agriculture, Dave Fiddler, who suggests a course in chicken-care followed by licencing J This sends my brain scratching to the outstanding learning resource developed by the Community Standards Branch of Edmonton called Make a Better City.

Not to be confused with the Make Something Edmonton movement which is getting wings in ways no one could have predicted. And in spite of the volumes of sarcastic, ironic or lame Tweets that evolved into the absurd side story MacheteSomethingYEG, actual, interesting projects are beginning to fly. In practise free-range fowl are not known for their ability to soar, so here the usefulness of this metaphor may break down.

Hunting and pecking, I take a slight meander because a shiny little Tweet has caught my eye. It is from Paula Simons and is about her column of July 9. I love the way Paula writes and she opens this particular article with the phrase “I am a free-range Edmontonian.” Because I get “free-range” as a metaphor, my brain screams “So am I!” and I fire off a Tweet. I want to know if anyone is working on a T-shirt. As I read on, I see she is encouraging fellow Edmontonians to throw aside nationalistic attitudes to our little corners of the city and discover some new part of Edmonton. She says, “So here’s my challenge to you. Let’s call it Yegquest — #yegquest on Twitter and Facebook.” And in a matter of a day it is trending. I smile to myself as I follow it. I have, to this point in my life, never been part of something “trending”; as a matter of principal I have avoided trendy things. But this makes me feel good.

And now the whole Yegquest thing is “Storify”-ed. Thousands of the free-range Edmonton flock are out there hunting and pecking away at their city.

Free-range brained and Edmontonian. Where to next?