goodbye Inukjuak - hello down south

Well - if you can believe it, it's done.

I can't, and I was there.

My last days in Inukjuak were a whirlwind. AN AMAZING whirlwind.

The play was a fabulous success. We moved things into the gym, and did our best to have a rehearsal. It wasn't as smooth as we would've liked, but it was useful, and the show itself was fantastic. We had an audience of around 60-70 people - family members, kids from school, teachers and elders - and they laughed and clapped and seemed to have a great time.

Here are some photos -


Everything is set up in the workshop - ready to begin! Costumes, masks, and props.

Here is the Royal Family - the Queen, the Princesses and the Older Princesses dog.



While the Princesses are picking flowers and berries, two thieves steal their crowns. Here is one of them sneaking out into the audience.


Tracy was the youngest participant in our project - she played the cat.

The Queen, under the influence of the witches spell, is very mean to everyone in the castle.

After being banished and imprisoned, the bunny, the Older Princess and her dog make a plan to break the spell on the Queen.

They realize that LOVE will break the spell, and tell everyone in the castle their plan.

Everyone hugs the Queen!

Everyone hugs again, rejoicing that the Queen is back to her normal state.

The End - the Queen is nice again, the Younger Princess is freed, the spell is broken, the cat and dog hug, and the thieves are caught and put in the dungeon. The crowns are returned and there's nothing left to worry about - except maybe the Witch who at the end of the play runs across the stage laughing...The End?

As soon as we'd finished however, Pam scooted backstage to tell us that some parents had come in late, and should we do it again. I asked the audience if they wanted to see it again, and they responded positively, and the kids were game, so we put everything back in place as fast as possible and then DID THE SHOW AGAIN, immediately after the first. I don't think I've done a back-to-back show like that in a while! It was awesome, and everyone got a chance to see it, and be seen.

We all got pretty great feedback from the audience, and after everyone had gone we went to the kitchen to have a mega-feast.

Then there was the clean-up that had to happen. I spent a while Friday night organizing and cleaning, and then a chunk of Saturday packing everything up, labeling and cleaning and putting stuff away. We now have 19 rubbermaid bins and the big trunk full of costumes that belong to our project - chock full of useful tools, supplies and materials.

Sunday I cleaned the house I'd been staying in, went to a wonderful brunch and packed up all my stuff. My plane was only 3 1/2 hours late, which is pretty typical, and
so I went for a long walk - to the waterfall behind the airport and then out along the tundra. It was really beautiful, and I still feel really lucky to have been able to come up to this amazing place, work with these kids, participate in this community for a while. Here's a couple of photos from my last walk in Inukjuak.




I've spent the last few days in Montreal visiting with friends and loved ones, and replacing the clothes I'd blown out by hard wearing up north. Tonight I get on a train and go HOME. Ahhhhhhh, the sweetness of just thinking that! Awesomeness.

Ok folks - that's all for now - the adventure to Nunavik is pretty well done (I just need to write the report). Thanks for staying tuned in with me - I'll be relaxing for most of June, trying to save money and garden and visit with friends, before starting the next adventure, which is my job working with the Bloorview Summer Camp! More on that soon.

Nerd Out, my friends!

whooo! where I am pooped by the evil queen

Ok folks - it's the night before the big show! The kids are doing amazing things, the story has come together, we even have COSTUMES, and I am tired. I'm feeling really good, much better than I was at this time last week - there is hope, being are being real nice, things are in good shape (including myself). I am just pooped, that's all.

Here is an update on the Puppet Project - in the form of the script for the play and some photos from after rehearsal today. The script will be narrated in Inutittut and English, and maybe even French if I can pull it together tomorrow - but the beauty of this piece is that it's visual theatre, and therefore visual, and you can pretty much get the story even if you don't hear the words.

But anyway - here are the words, in English -

The Happy Ever After that Almost Never Was

One day, the Queen and everyone were out picking flowers and berries.
Two thieves found the princesses crowns and STOLE THEM.
A huge wind blew everyone away, except the Queen, and a witch appeared.
The witch cast a spell on the Queen.
The next day the maids tried to help the Queen.
The princesses discover that their crowns are missing.
The evil Queen sends the princess to the dungeon.
The bunny tries to help the princess escape.
The bunny meets the princess's dog.
They make a plan.
With LOVE we can break the spell!
The spell is broken.
Everyone lived happily ever after...maybe.

Thus, you have the bare bones of our story. Unfortunately for you all - you don't get to see the hilarious Samantha being the witch, or Savaana who can't stop laughing try to clean the windows, or just how funny the cat and the dog are as they chase each other around through the audience. It is a really strong piece of work made up by girls in a remote northern community ages 7 to 15, and I am so so so proud of them and of how it's come together. WOW!

No wonder we're all so tired!

And here are some photos - I'm going to try to take more tomorrow during the rehearsal, so we have a record of the action - but this'll whet your whistle.


So clearly, this is the evil Queen, complete with sparkly crown...



After I cleaned up the workshop, I had to take a photo of most of our set and the evil Queen just hanging out...ahhh, so restful!



This is a shot of the witch's spell from backstage - secrets revealed!!

Ok - I'm going to crawl home now and make something to eat. Tune in soon for more on the play, and wish us all merde and broken legs and wonderful times tomorrow!

nerdy outy!

wow! shadow puppets!

Today we finally got to playing around with some shadow puppets - the thing I was most excited about bringing up here! The kids ooohhhed and aaahhhed at the light and colour and I was deeply gratified by that.

Here are some photos - of all kinds of things...

Here we are making some shadow puppets for up against the screen, and on the overhead projector...



...and here's some beautiful playing around with shapes and colour.

Over the past few days we have really banged out the important points of the story of our play - and almost have a script. Here's a photo of me trying to map out the points and some of the action. As you can see, it's the age old story of good Queen turned bad by witch's evil spell, missing crowns, heroic bunnies and dogs and, of course, thieves and servants. Eat your heart out Disney - the kids at Innalik Public School are kicking your butt!



I have been through this process no few times, and I love it when the story grows organically out of the participants imaginations and art. Really, this story grew out of the masks the kids made - and all this reminded me of Teacher Tom's recent Pre K Play - although we've had a lot less role-switching than he did. A LOT of bunny masks were made (for some reason) and they all mutated into other things like villagers and castle workers, and the thieves just turned up out of nowhere one day, causing a huge and awesome plot twist.

Let's not forget the days (and days and days and days...) of effort spent on getting the handpuppets together. Here is a photo of a few in action - at some point in the play, all the villagers get blown away by a strong wind while out picking flowers - and I think we're going to do that with the hand puppets, as they all turned out to be pretty much regular looking people, with the odd dog and bunny thrown in to boot.

Yes! I love the stylish hair on all of them.

My dear friend Jane has run programs like this for year in Toronto, and has documented an amazing continuum of imaginary development in children. We have laughed and laughed at the regular re-occurrence of heroic animals and princesses wrongly accused. The kids of Inukjuak aren't any different, and it's a treat to see those common themes of childhood running so strongly across cultures.

Ok - enough for now, more shadowy goodness tomorrow - OH! Except for at the end of the session, because we'd spent so much time in the dark, the kids wanted to tell ghost stories instead of play games, and so we turned off the lights again and pretty well instantly had 24 kids screaming for the next 15 minutes. SOLID. Ha!

Shadowy nerdness out!

whoooosh - and a week goes by in a flash

I can't believe that it's been a week since I posted - I'll blame sporadic internet access and a very busy time - and it's only week TWO!
We continued working on our masks - and some pretty amazing creations have been coming alive under our fingers.

Here we're using papier-mache to build our masks and in the next photo we're cutting out the eyes. I feel really good about encouraging these kids to use tools, and do things for themselves - a few of the younger ones start out by saying "I can't do it!", but after some encouragement to do it on their own I often get to say "Hey! You said you couldn't do it but you did!" I LOVE saying that.



Masks are really incredible things - you get to make whatever kind of face you choose! Even before they're painted, they are fun to put on and feel different.

We painted the masks with a base coat of white paint - to cover up the print of the Scholastic catalogues we used in the papier-mache. That base then frees us up to be able to use all kinds of light or dark colour to finish off our masks.





We've been playing some pretty awesome games too. The girls from Kangirsuk taught us a game called Mrs. Mumbles, where you make a face like someone without their dentures and try to ask the person sitting next to you "Have you seen Mrs. Mumbles?" without peeing your pants from laughing. It took us almost a half an hour to make it all the way around the circle when we played this, and some of the girls were laughing so hard they were crying...

We also started making some hand puppets - sculpting heads out of more Scholastic catalogues and masking tape, covering them in papier-mache and painting them.



This is what the hand puppets will look like - head and body together - and some may even have clothes!



And these are some of the heads in process - some painted and some on the way...



It is still very amazing being up here. The snow last weekend was a bit of a twist, as my home rhythm is full of daffodils and tulips and springtime. Add to that a dramatic northern event - last Thursday a man was lost out on the tundra. AND THEN IT SNOWED FOR FOUR DAYS. Early Monday morning however, he was FOUND. He'd spent the blizzard out in the elements, keeping close to his snowmobile (it had run low on gas, which is why he got lost in the first place) and had burned parts of his t-shirt to stay warm. He's apparently fine, and was on the radio telling his story that very morning.

Ummmmm. Wow.

This is something that happens to people up here. Makes me not want to leave the school.

Ok - one last thing. Since the puppet project is only open to the kids in Grade 3 and older, over the past few days I've been working with the Grade 1s and 2s in their classes making paper-bag puppets to include them, and to also get a bit of a little kid fix. Working with older kids and youth has been pretty great - but I've been missing the younger ones - being in school has really gotten me into a groove.
The sessions were only a half an hour long, so there wasn't much time to take many photos, but I'll leave you with this monster that I used as an example, and inspired several creatures with pointy tongues and multiple eyes.



Nerd OUT!

hah! it's SNOWING! Welcome to the Arctic...

Hello May 7th - it's snowing!

Last evening, on the way home from the school I took this photo of some really beautiful clouds.

I should have guessed that they were carrying something special for us. I was chatting with a woman in the Co-Op yesterday who said that February and May have swapped places!
The Co-Op was for a long time the only commercial centre in any Northern community. It's a huge department store, carrying everything from groceries to hardware to furs to carvings to bicycles - here in Inukjuak there are the Co-Op and the Northern - a chain store that provides another choice. The Co-Op is pretty cool - it's home to the bank, the Post Office, Hunter's Support, and a carving shop.
Anyway - back to the present that the clouds brought us - SNOW. I don't know why I'm so surprised - we were told to expect this kind of weather...but still! It's pretty hilarious to hear about t-shirt weather back home and then not be able to see across town because of the blizzard here.
It's hard to see in this photo - but fine snow is drifting down and blowing all over. The boy next to the snow mound in the schoolyard has tied a rope around his waist to pull the little qamutik (snowmobile sled) he's got behind him.


Thinking thinking thinking about learning up here - what is appropriate, what is needed, what the expectations are and need to be...huh. No easy answers, and I'm lucky as I'm an option - presenting a choice to participate in something fun and enriching (hopefully!). Onwards...

Nerd (brrr!) out!

masks week...and more thoughts

This week has turned out to be pretty much about masks, which is great, and the kids have made some really beautiful things. But before we get into the masks, I'll tell you a little preschool story.

I was walking out to the waterfall on Tuesday before heading for the school, and I saw a group of really happy kids off the side of the road. They looked so happy that I had to go talk with them. It's kinda hard to see them in this photo - but it does show the land nicely...if you click on it you can see it better.



Annie and Elsie had brought their 4 and 5 year olds out to pick last years red berries, freeze-dried by the winter. Everyone was smiling and scampering around picking exquisitely tart berries (I tasted them - kinda like cranberries) and having a good time in the sunshine. Talked with them for a while, and I may go on over and do some puppet stuff with them too - it was really great to be around younger kids, and made me realize how my life has really focused in on preschool, and how comfortable I am with that age-group in particular now. It felt AWESOME!

But then, so did the rest of the week, pretty much...

We continued working on our paper plate masks, elaborating them and coming up with rudimentary characters...such as Qulliq's cat...

and others...

We played some fun games this week too. The group is still all girls, although we had one boy come and play some games with us, but he couldn't convince his friend to come in so he ended up leaving, even though he was really having a great time - I could tell by his huge smile. Things are pretty gendered here, which is cultural...and when I think about it, I'm glad to be providing something different for the girls to get up to. I have a feeling it's a bit weird for them to have a male educator showing them this stuff - and I think that's pretty great. World wide there is such a challenge to ensure girls are even allowed ACCESS to education - so I feel pretty good to have about 28 of them coming to the workshop.

The first two photos are of a mirroring game, where kids in pairs follow each other, build body awareness and create physical vocabularies. The last photo is of a new game to me - the kids call it Snakes and Ladders, and it's a relay race we played in the gym today. The kids sit with their feet touching in a long ladder-like line, and one by one pairs race each other to one wall, around the ladder, and then as fast as they can up the ladder to the next pair and sit down. The first side to complete it wins. WOW! Lots of enthusiastic screaming to this one.

That big face in the background of the first picture has some potential - we'll see what it becomes. I made it this afternoon to show the kids what else we could do. And look at all those bins!! Those are our once lost, now found treasure boxes - thank goodness we found them, their contents have already made the workshop a million times better.

This is how the papier-mache masks progress - we build them on plaster casts of faces from previous years - alternating paper to make them strong and also so we know which parts we've done. Then we build up different features on the mask and do a final layer on top of that to seal them all in. Tomorrow hopefully everything will be dry, and we can cut eye-holes and paint them! Zowee!



I'm feeling more at home here...and becoming more friendly with both teachers and folks around town - walking everywhere and smiling at my good fortune to be up here experiencing all this really helps.

Ok - supper time - more soon!

reading and reading and reading...

I will catch up. This is possible.

Everyone I talk to in the field and at school - they all agree with me. Placement semester is a gong-show. We have so much to do! A full course load + two days a week of placement + jobs to help us bolster our much appreciated but not-quite-adequate student loans = a lot to do. Not to mention homework, projects and papers.

So the academic powers-that-be invented Reading Week, so that we can attempt to catch up on everything and not become blubbering basket-cases.

HOWEVER, if you're nerdy like me, and get obsessed with all you're learning and immerse yourself in extra projects to explore and inquire even further, and go to your placement on your break so you don't lose connection with the kids (lose your place in placement) because really, is two days a week enough to learn all that this opportunity presents? And read inspiring books and articles and blogs that get you even more excited, ever more sure that you made the right choice, even though your brain feels like it's overheating sometimes.

Then, OH THEN, you need to remember to breathe. And make space. And not get too thrashed up over things. And that way you - I mean I - will become the teacher I want to be and not a burnt-out bonglehead.

And then, when I am that teacher that I want to be, I'll go on to maybe inspire a kid who'll in turn go on to invent a time-machine or something that will enable us to get all the things we want/need to get done in the time allotted to us, or add a couple of extra days onto the week. Or something.

Anyways. in my readingreadingreading, I have bumped into something I like thinking about - in my Creative Arts course text Art & Creative Development for Young Children by Robert Schirrmacher and Jill Englebright Fox (2009), in the chapter about designing early childhood art programs they talk about 4 important elements to include. I think they're all really important -

1.sensory experiences - situations that engage and enliven kids through stimulating all of their senses
2. beautiful and creative experiences - exploring nature, culture and art to create a relationship with beauty
3. time, space and materials for making art - provide a place and long enough periods of uninterrupted time for kids to express themselves, and enough interesting materials to explore and play with
4. an introduction to the world of art, artists and a variety of art forms and styles - what is art? Who are artists? Why do they do it? Beginning to ask these questions, even in early learning, is useful and important.



I really enjoy thinking about this, and picturing how to shape curriculum to incorporate them. Starting to understand different ways of thinking about curriculum, from the very structured plans that seem to be expected in our school systems here, to the more almost philosophical stances, open-ended questions or points of inquiry that seem to underlie emergent curriculum.

OK - I gotta get back to homework. BREATHE and DIVE.



NERD out.

chalk murals

wella wella wella -

These are some photos of the chalk murals I did in the classrooms at my placement at Bloorview Nursery School - High Park. I'm real happy with them, particularly when we were discussing the new tiger one and one of the girls in our class said "What happened to the boat?" Well, sweetheart, don't worry. It's still in the other classroom...all chalkboards are not the same chalkboard.



This is the Tiger I did for Chinese New Year - I peeled away the blue corro-tint to find a green chalkboard wreckage beneath. It was covered in tape and the sticky remnants of some teacher's great idea. It took the better part of an hour, a scraper, goo-gone, two steel-wool pads and a shit-load of elbow grease to get the gummy residue off, and leave an easily chalkable surface. I'm happy to say I feel like it was worth it.




Because sidewalk chalk is so light, and doesn't come really in black, I had to get inventive -- and erasing the tiger's stripes worked really well.

This other mural I did in the classroom we were in at the time, when the kids were captivated by pirates and treasure. It was pretty gratifying to hear the kids talking about mermaids and islands a couple of weeks after it was up - amazing what enters the kids' stories.



I was a bit more aware of my language today - that is going to be an ongoing thing. Good thing it's so worth it, and awesome, and I'm into it. It's a challenging thing, though, and being aware in that way of how I'm speaking and framing things takes a lot of effort. I talked about it with Isabel, who said she'd be happy to back me up if I'll do the same for her. She framed it as having an inside voice and an outside voice, and letting your inside voice say what it needs to -- "NO!" "Don't do that!" or "Hey, buster, don't sit on the table!" -- IN YOUR HEAD -- and translate it into your outside voice saying "Hey, friend, it looks to me like you're thinking of sitting down. Let's go get a chair or a beanbag instead." Awesome. Demanding. Fake-sounding? A little, but I think that's just the constructed clarity and intensified intent that grates on my ear. Practice that for say, ten years or so, and it oughta come out more naturally. It's a good goal to point towards, anyway.

Always learning, even when it feels against my will! Positive attitude, check. Sense of humour, check. Loads of stuff to do, check. Groan!

Nerd.OUT!

reading week...

ARG - just found out that my sister and nephew AREN'T coming to visit this week - which sucks, but there is a silver lining in that I can get the schoolwork done that I need to, study for my other midterm which is coming up, and work away at my projects. It was going to be complicated but worth it that they were here, and now it'll be a bit easier.

I did decide to keep going to placement, and I'm really glad I did. My new project at placement is a personal one, born out of noticing that the language I use when talking to kids is not really the kind I want to be using. Not like I'm swearing like a sailor (do they swear that much these days?), but I'm not always clear and my speech could be a lot more helpful, more conducive to communication.

Teacher Tom, one of my blog education heroes, wrote about it here, and here, and also along the same lines here. Check out his great great blog Teacher Tom. It's on the blog list over there in the sidebar, too. It's chock-full of good teacher stuff, told in great narrative, with real kids and real teacher action.

So, today, I kept messing up how and what i was speaking, and after a particularly wonderous blunder (done out of earshot of the kids, and I'm still chewing on it embarrasedly) I resolved to really really REALLY be mindful about how I speak. Good thing, too.

We also changed rooms again, and this week are in the room I started placement in. I'm not really sold on this room-switching business - I mean, I see some logic (fresh environment, fresh materials, new perspectives) but it just ends up feeling like a whole of transitions for everyone. All the kids did was wander around and explore, really, except in the House Centre where things were familiar enough to dig in and really have a feed-the-babies-wooden-birthday-cake love fest. However, switching rooms means four walls that i haven't really been able to have much effect on, so here we go! Got at it after everyone was gone, and spent most of the afternoon doing new chalk mural for the Year of the Tiger. Again, I forgot to effectively document the thing, but will do better next time, and take some photos of it to post tomorrow.

Also, even tho my mouth wasn't up to par, my play was - totally inspired by Vivian Gussin Paley, I played with the kids in a really engaged way today. It felt great, and a boy who's shy and a bit anxious blossomed and had fun with me after a unusually short interval of shadowing one of the regular teachers first thing. AWESOME.

Nerd Out - for now!

PS - Had a great time in Montreal over the weekend, and went to the ridiculously gorgeous Waldorf school stuff store, La Grande Ourse on Duluth. Wood wood and wood, lovely toys, and wonderful colours - those anthroposophists sure know how to make fetching felt fairies and wooden gnomes. Check it out if you're ever around there, and look at this gorgeous photo of the wooden kitchen, all kid-sized, that they have for sale for an unfortunately enormous price. I found the photo on flikr at pleasurecraft's site.