Girls' Access to Ice Time: One Critical Literacy Issue After Another...

When I first started hearing about the Leaside Girls' Hockey Association's concerns with equal access to ice time, I immediately sympathasized. I assumed that they weren't getting the same amount of ice time as their male counterparts. Turns out, that's not the case. It just so happens that the girls have some not-so-great times, like 5:30 am practices. Why is this time more acceptable for boys, who have been doing it since (what seems like) the beginning of time? Anyway, in reading a bit more about this rather interesting case that is set to go before City Council, I found out a few things that now have me singing a different tune. This is no longer an issue of equal access for girls. This is actually a case of power and class. It so happens that Nick Lewis, a senior economic development advisor to Mayor David Miller, is one of three coaches of a Leaside hockey team this year. What's more, Lewis' team is part of the competitive branch of the organization. Kinda adds a different dimension to this whole issue, doesn't it? In an editorial on November 16, 2009 for the Toronto Star, Christie Blatchford questions why the mayor's office is even taking an interest in this case as it seems far-removed from day-to-day responsibilities.

Stories like these provide us with the resources we need to infuse critical literacy into our classrooms. We can get a wealth of materials just from cracking open a newspaper, so why are there so many piles of neglected papers sitting in our staffrooms?

Remembrance Day: A Lesson in Civic Literacy

At 11:00 am all across the Nation, Canadians stopped for two minutes to give thanks for their freedom in memory of the men and women who paid for that freedom with their lives. A high price to pay...



The artist performing in this video is Terry Kelly. He was inspired to write this song for Remembrance Day in 1999. The following is an excerpt from his website:

On November 11, 1999 Terry Kelly was in a drug store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. At 10:55 AM an announcement came over the store’s PA asking customers who would still be on the premises at 11:00 AM to give two minutes of silence in respect to the veterans who have sacrificed so much for us.


Terry was impressed with the store’s leadership role in adopting the Legion’s “two minutes of silence” initiative. He felt that the store’s contribution of educating the public to the importance of remembering was commendable.

When eleven o’clock arrived on that day, an announcement was again made asking for the “two minutes of silence” to commence. All customers, with the exception of a man who was accompanied by his young child, showed their respect.

Terry’s anger towards the father for trying to engage the store’s clerk in conversation and for setting a bad example for his child was channeled into a beautiful piece of work called, “A Pittance of Time”. Terry later recorded “A Pittance of Time” and included it on his full-length music CD, “The Power of the Dream”.

For me, this action of a single person is what civic literacy is really all about.

Civic literacy is defined as follows:

*Participating effectively in civic life through knowing how to stay informed and understanding governmental processes;

*Exercising the rights and obligations of citizenship at local, state, national and global levels; and

*Understanding the local and global implications of civic decisions.

This diagram highlights the ELEMENTS of civic literacy...



... and this diagrams features the various civic literacy SKILLS.



Civic literacy has been identified as one of the key interdisciplinary themes of 21st century teaching and learning. What it basically comes down to is knowledge of how to actively participate in society for the greater good. In times of global chaos, and we can find it wherever we put our fingers on the world map, we should all be helping our students to come up with ways to be in the world peacefully. It's not just about voting in elections, because frankly, even in democracies, governments are sometimes powerless against external forces. It's about developing a conscience about issues that are not just important to individual people, but to the collective.

I think the benefits are obvious. If all teachers made a concerted effort to incorporate civic literacy in their disciplines, we would see:
-increased participation in community and civic affairs
-communication and improved solidarity among people across racial, gender, religious, economic and ethnic lines
-increased curiosity to learn more about various cultures and world affairs

Civic literacy needs to be the basic and foundational culture that is established in a classroom. It encourages participation because it is rooted in basic democratic principles and can even foster effective conflict resolution and peer mediation.

The 21st Century Learner: Part One of the PLS for Teachers

I love, love, love my time at work when I can spend a day dialoguing with teachers about the craft of teaching. Today, Cathie and I ran part one of our Professional Learning Series called The 21st Century Learner. Today we looked at what categorizes 21st century learning and we asked some really tough questions (peruse the power point and you can find them in the first few slides). One of the goals that I had for this session was to demonstrate that 21st century skills as a concept is kinda gimmicky. Yes, I said it! When you really drill down to what defines a successful learner in the 21st century, it's all the "stuff" we're already doing - front-loading content with skill and teaching those "soft skills" (valuing and accepting diversity, collaboration, tolerating ambiguity and encouraging risk-taking so as to foster resiliency) that are seen as unimportant in the face of evaluating overall expectations. I think that participants were somewhat releived to know that not all 21st century learning is reliant upon technology, that most of these skills are skills for living and interacting with living, breathing people. Teachers built a timeline to show the evolution of the profession - in practice, pedagocially and technologically. It was neat to listen in on some of the conversations as they were remembering what it was like to be a student. Here are some of the photos:











One really interesting discussion that kept coming up throughout the morning conversation focused on whether or not it was important to teach a lot of stuff, or to simply drill down on few things. A debate arose whether it was necessary that English teachers cover so many works in a semester (thinking they are facilitating a rigorous program), as opposed to choosing one or two and really going to town in teaching a number of different skills through fewer works. Something to definitely chew on...



The afternoon session consisted mostly with "mucking around" Blogger and learning about the different ways to incorporate blogging in the classroom. I was pretty miffed that the Board's network blockages were at work. I think we need to have some serious conversation about the fear behind allowing (at least teachers) access to certain online spaces.



All in all, it was a terrific start to the series. Next time we meet on December 3, we are going to be focused on the Inquiry Model and Powerful Questioning. I think it'll be great!

Part One

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