Category Archives: Education

Education, Flexibility, radical sabbatical, teaching, Wordsmith

Be Talking about “Herbstferien”

1 Comment

I received a text from a teaching friend in Germany who is on Herbstferien (Autumn break) for the next two weeks. She had been spending time walking in the woods, at a day retreat and then had plans to be with her family after a busy start-up to the new school year.

This one text made me long for the year round schooling schedule for my colleagues working in the campus school system in British Columbia.

Did you know that in most countries in Europe, they have year round schooling, where they shorten the summer to 4-6 weeks and then take more holidays throughout the year?

Autumn break – 2 weeks in October

Ski weeks – 2 weeks in February

Easter holiday – 2 weeks around Easter in late March or April

And oh yes, the usual 2 weeks off for Christmas.

When I taught in Germany and Switzerland, we never went longer than 6-7 weeks of teaching in a row throughout the ENTIRE year.

Did you also know that there were no substitute teachers to phone in to work in your class when you were sick or away? If you “had to” be away, the teacher next door would not only continue to teach their class, but also would cover for you and teacher your class. One thing to note in this scenario is that our “Director” was a businessman, not an educator, so you couldn’t expect them to come and help out in your classroom. This perspective definitely made you aware that you needed to come back from your holidays rested for the next 6-7 weeks of teaching.

The most beautiful thing with this school schedule and the lack of a substitute teacher pool is that overall the teachers, and children, were healthier. These chunks of learning also made for a well-defined learning schedule that helped with planning units.

A season of hard work and then a few weeks of rest. A season for all things!

Have a wonderful Sunday rest day folks and love what you do!

xoxo Joanna

Christianity, Education, encouragement, Family, fun, God, musings, teenagers

Be Shifting a Grump

2 Comments

🤔 Have you ever come across an Air Canada flight attendant that is obviously tired and grumpy? 

🤔 Do you have a relative that has an expiry date of one hour when your family visits and then they turn into a harsh, grumpy person? 

🤔 Are one of your teenagers waking up in a grumpy mood or bringing one home from school? 

đź’« I have encountered all of these things and wanted to share some diddies today on what I like to do when coming across each of these grumps. 

âś… Ask them a question. This was my strategy for the flight attendant. I looked them in the eyes and simply asked: :Where is the best place you have flown?” She talked about when she used to live in Toronto and her trips to Boston, all with a smile. Boom shakalaka.  

âś… Remove yourself. Over the last 30 years as an adult, dealing with grumpy relatives has been a dance I have learned. Sadly, the best thing I have come up with has been to remove myself from the dance. I have tried asking questions or accommodating what they want to do or bringing gifts or food and try to be a lesser version of myself, but alas the removal from that person has been the best way to shift the grump.  A wise counsellor has also recommended meeting at neutral spots, (parks, coffee shops, restaurants etc.), but I have found that this only expands the expiry date by minutes not hours and is often not worth it.  Boo!  

âś… Smile and pray for them (or send them positive thoughts, if that’s more your jam). Ah teenagers. We are currently living with a tremendous trio of boys aged 16, 14 and almost 12. I feel as a parent, my job is to simply hold space for them as they deal with big emotions. Also, I want my teenagers to simply know I am here for them no matter what.  I really feel that a radiating smile and powerful prayers are like a force field that helps them and protects us as parents from being slimed by their “green, mucousy” grumpy ways. Yes, overall in life, I do think of grumpy people as being green and slimy. 🤣💚 

Don’t let anyone get their “stuff” on you.  

Random flight attendants. 

Relatives. 

Teenagers. 

All people that can slime you with their green grumpiness. 

As I say to my boys: Who’s in charge of your emotions? 

I am. 

I pray that my words will encourage you as you “live with” the people in your life with JOY and PEACE.  

Do you have a strategy for living a positive, joyful life no matter the emotional state of the people around you? Let me know. I always love to add tools to my emotional toolbox. 

Have an epic week folks and love what you do.  

Xoxo 

Joanna 

author, blogger, Boys, Education, homeschooling

Be Lacking Socialization in Home Learning

Leave a comment

The biggest question that I get as a home-based learning parent and teacher is: “How is your child going to learn to be socialized outside of a campus school setting?” This genuine, heartfelt and often “worry-filled” question from many people close to us always comes from a place that we are ‘lacking’ socialization in home-based learning. My most recent question about socializing my kids came while sitting in a dentist waiting room. It had me pondering what does socializing mean and what do we actually do to “socialize” the boys. This is a long one, and may shock some, so strap yourselves in folks!

According to Merriam-Webster we have two definitions of “socialization” that fit for this question:

  1. “The process, beginning during childhood, by which individuals acquire the values, habits, and attitudes of a society
  2. “Social interaction with others”

After being at the receiving end of this question for over five years, I now want to laugh out loud, but I don’t because I know that this question comes from a lack of understanding on what home-based learning looks like.

Do we believe that children can be socialized best, “acquiring the values, habits and attitude of society”, by being in a classroom with the same teacher with their same gifts/talents plus the same 30 students for ten months a year for 6 hours per day? *******Remember: These children and their families often have no say with whom their children will share their days with.

Okay then Joanna, how is your child going to learn to be socialized outside of a campus school setting? I simply respond with sharing that I believe that children are best socialized when they are interacting with many ages and generations of people with variegated ideas and passions. Imagine having many “teachers”, on a daily basis, that have assorted gifts? I am going to share what our family currently did for learning activities “beyond the books” and online programs that add to their “socialization” that many people around us are worried about. Strap yourself in, as even I am shocked at what I realized my boys experience on a weekly/monthly basis for “socialization”.

SIDENOTE: Please carefully remember that because my children don’t sit in a classroom all day and have to “live by someone else’s schedule”, we can truly create the schedule that is unique to them, their abilities and their energy levels. They have more “time” throughout their days to do the activities that I am listing plus more downtime to read on the couch, sit in the yard, climb trees and play random games of tennis, soccer, basketball… Learning happens from waking until they go to bed twelve months of the year. Home-based learning is the term that I often use, as home is the base, but learning can and does happen everywhere we go. The ADDED BONUS in this home-based learning lifestyle is that the boys can sleep in when they are tired and we also don’t hesitate to change our schedule or skip things, if they feel a cold coming on or simply need a break.

Here are our list of activities where opportunities for “socialization” occur during this current season (Spring, 2023):

Grade 10 Son’s Activities:

  • Goes to campus school every second day
  • Trampoline gymnastics 3 x per week
  • Trampoline competitions 5 x per year
  • Chiropractor 1 x per month
  • Physiotherapy 4 x per year
  • Ultimate frisbee team 3 x per week
  • Soccer referee 1 x per week
  • Helps our neighbour in her yard 1 x per week
  • Drivers training and classes 1 x per for 8 weeks
  • Talks to our other neighbour about what he is building/doing 1-2 x per week
  • Video editing and making movies (Learning from Youtubers)
  • Play VR with a home learning friend 1 x per week
  • Walk the dog and run into random people
  • Go to his brothers’ activities 3 x per week
  • Dinner/visits/activities with friends 2 x per week

Grade 8 Son’s Activities:

  • Taekwondo 3 x per week
  • Taekwondo events 2 x per year
  • Soccer 2 x per week
  • Soccer Referee 2 x per week
  • Voice/Music lessons 1 x per week
  • Talk to our neighbour about what he is building/doing 1-2 x per week
  • Swimming lessons set
  • Youth Group
  • Speech therapy 1 x per week
  • Tutoring 1 x per week
  • Occupational Therapy 1 x every 2 weeks
  • Physiotherapy 1 x per month
  • Orthodontist 1 x every six weeks
  • Visit the public library 1 x per week
  • Walk the dog and run into random people
  • Go to his brothers’ activities 3 x per week
  • Hangout with a neighbour 1 x per month
  • Dinner/visits/activities with friends 2 x per week

Grade 6 Son’s Activities:

  • Taekwondo 2 x per week
  • Soccer 2 x per week
  • Trumpet lessons 1 x per week
  • Take mail over to our neighbours 1 x per month
  • Drawing/Cartooning class 1 x per week
  • Grass volleyball league 2 x per week
  • Visit the public library 1 x per week
  • Talk to our neighbour about what he is building/doing 1-2 x per week
  • Swimming lessons set
  • Walk the dog and run into random people
  • Go to his brothers’ activities 3 x per week
  • Dinner/visits/activities with friends 2 x per week

This doesn’t include other arbitrary visits with people in the grocery store, when we give friends a ride home, someone comes to the front door and the hours of conversation that we have as a family eating dinner every night together, pouring love onto each of the boys’ lives, building them up, coaching them individually, working through problems and simply being a perfectly imperfect family. We are truly blessed.

If you are personally worried about the socialization of a home-based learning student, ask them: “What do your days look like?”

Many home learning families have more time for interactions with their extended family that adds richness and value and others, like us, bring in ‘experts’ from the community around them with their unique talents to pour into their children. Every family’s learning schedule is unrepeatable and socialization opportunities are truly unfathomable. What our kids experience on a daily basis could never be repeated inside a campus classroom.

If after reading this blog post and talking with your home-based learning friends/ family members you are still personally worried about the socialization, I would turn this worry into the socialization that is happening with a campus setting. We are grateful to be “skipping” many of the social behaviours that are happening in the middle school years in our community.

The moments are endless for home-based learning young people, learning outside the constraints of a campus building, with a schedule that is designed personally designed for them. This isn’t a lifestyle of learning for everyone, but it is for anyone who has the desire and time plus wants to learn from a variety of people with a variety of gifts all year long.

Have a sunny Saturday and love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

P.S. Can anyone tell that my boys were at camp this week? 3 posts in 3 days. I really missed them a ton and enjoyed the time to ponder and think.

Education, musings, Wordsmith

Be Wondering about Water, Garbage and Plastic

Leave a comment

🎶 Fish and Chips and Vinegar, vinegar, vinegar. Fish and Chips and Vinegar. Pepper, pepper, pepper salt. One bottle pop, two bottle pop, three bottle pop, four bottle pop, five bottle pop, six bottle pop, seven bottle pop, pop. Don’t throw your junk in my backyard, my backyard, my backyard. Don’t throw your junk in my backyard cause my backyard’s filled. 🎶

Anyone else remember this song? It came to mind today as I took a 75 kilometre (46.6 mile) bike ride around our beautiful valley this morning. I also pondered a few things about our beautiful, healing planet.

What would happen if every person in the world resolved never to buy a container that was composed of water or was water itself? Shampoo, lotion, laundry soap, cleaning products, juice, chicken broth are a few that come to mind. Imagine if products ONLY came in concentrated pacs or bars or granules and then we added the water to that product once we purchased it. I have no idea how this would work, as I sit here on a Sunday night, but I wonder how much money would be save in transporting costs and how would the world we live in change?

What would happen if everything that a manufacturer churned out, they also had to dispose of on their own property? How would our personal spending habits change if we had to dispose of every single product that we acquired in our own backyard? (Yes, now you see the connection to the song I was singing at the top. HAHA!) How would the cycle of consumerism profoundly change with these two patterns?

What would happen if every plastic product on earth was banned? I am not a scientist, but I have heard rumblings that recycling is the greatest myth of my generation. Plastics are mostly petroleum based and there are some scientists that believe that they are never destroyed, but simply get smaller… and smaller… and smaller…. (Yes, you can see what I am throwing out there!)

And that’s all for this Sunday night folks. Keep thinking, hugging and loving what you do.

xoxo Joanna

blogger, Education, Family, Grief, Teaching, Wordsmith

Be Framing Your Job with One Thought

4 Comments

 My one thought about my job today: I can be replaced in a minute.  The leadership of my school is so remarkable, I could probably be replaced in less than a minute.

Yes, it’s true for me and for you.  No one is irreplaceable in their work.

I recognized this shortly after my mom died and I fully grasped that she was truly irreplaceable.

Gone forever.

Never to be replaced.

Yes, we have had phenomenal people “fill in the vast gap” my mom left, but no one can restore her place in our lives as a mom and super nana.

A job is a unique arena of life as we all need to find ways to house and feed ourselves, but this great loss made me understand the temporality of work and life.

This morning, I am interviewing for a new job for the next school year. I am taking this mentality into my interview and I feel free.

Free to ponder.

Free to choose.

Free to open the door and see if this new opportunity will help me be a better wife, mom, friend, teacher and human being living on this earth.

Free to live!

So folks, as you ponder this next year ahead of you, what would you change if you knew you could be replaced in your job tomorrow, but never be replaced as a mother, father, daughter, brother, sister, cousin…?

Here temporarily.

Never to be replaced within your “family”.

Have an epic Tuesday and love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

blogger, Education, mindset, Teaching

Be on a 450 Day Streak with Duolingo

4 Comments 
Schönen donnerstag

Today marks the day where I have been logging into the Duolingo App to practice my German for 450 days in a row. Almost 15 months of daily practice for at least 5 minutes that has moved me through 23 different lessons on various topics in German. One restriction with my practice is that I have the free account and thus only have “five hearts” per day to work through my lessons. Yup, no paid app that would allow me to have unlimited practice. This means that if I get more than five answers wrong, I have to stop my practice and login later in the day to complete my practice, with usually only 2-3 hearts.

Now, this milestone has me thinking: What other daily habits could I instil into my life and consistently do for 450 days?

Healthy, clean eating? This would be amazing.

Drink a minimum of 4 cups of water? My body would love this.

Get into bed by 10:00pm each night? Ohhh, that would delicious.

Are there free apps for all these things?

I do love the game that Duolingo creates in my mind and I love keeping up with my streak. Why did I decide to use the App? Many of my students use Duolingo to help them develop their second language skills. I was super curious to see how the lessons worked and soon after I started in December 2022, I was hooked. My ultimate goal is to get back to Germany and have a conversation in German with my best friend and her children.

Cheers to streaks of healthy habits!

Have a beautiful Thursday and love what you do.

xoxox Joanna

blogger, Christianity, Education, God, Jesus Christ, life, Wordsmith

Be Having Dreams and Nightmares

2 Comments

I am not sure if you are a dreamer when you sleep or if you have ever experienced nightmares, but I am full entrenched in the dream/nightmare camp. For my entire life, I have always had vivid dreams and nightmares that I can remember even after I wake up. I can even still remember my nightmares from when I was child.

When I was a child, I would often have a nightmare of being in a wooden cabin where the floor would fall open, In other nightmares, there would often be fires in this same cabin. In grade six, I had a dream I could fly. I thoughts this dream was so real, I tried to fly away from a confrontation outside my grade six classroom. Let’s just say that it didn’t work and I couldn’t fly. On top of these dreams/nightmares, I would sleep walk. One time my mom caught me standing in front of my door knob screaming with my hand stretched out. (It was hot from the flames from the fire in my nightmare.) I also once went for a sleep walk out our front door. I don’t remember this, but I have often been told the story. Our neighbour Mrs. Wood was having her “bridge ladies” over for game night when my dad ran out our front door in his “tightie whities”. Mrs. Woods saved my dad and told him that she would turn me around. She gently guided me back into the house. I don’t remember a thing about what happened that night.

On top of some really vivid nightmares, I have also periodically had realistic dreams throughout my life. The main reason that this topic of dreams/nightmares came to mind today was because I have had many dreams about Jesus, the reason we celebrate Easter. If you haven’t checked out the story behind Easter, I highly recommend doing some research and especially learning about Jesus, Judas, Pontius Pilate, Barabbas, the 3 Mary’s at the empty tomb and Joanna. (I was named after my mom’s friend Joanna, but I don’t think it is a coincidence that my name shows up in the bible here!)

Growing up, I didn’t know about Jesus. I attended the United Church a few times with my family and I did piano recitals at my grandparents Anglican Church, but there were no deep conversations about faith or bible reading or any type of spiritual discussions around the dinner table. Once I headed to the University of Alberta to play volleyball (and kind of go to school. haha!), I was fortunate to get connected to Athletes in Action and a very spiritual family that was leaving a very legalistic, rule-based church. They taught me about the love of Jesus and the grace of God. They took me to church where the donation bucket that was sent around was a KFC bucket and the pastor was gay. Remember this was the early 1990’s, so this was rare. This led to a beautiful journey starting at 18 years old involving knowledge and experiences in my waking life and dreams about Jesus when I slept. I have had Jesus driving me in a car and been face-to-face with him in my dreams.

The craziest thing that happened in regards to my Jesus dreams is that I once went to a retreat centre in the early 2000’s in the hills of our city called “Seton House of Prayer” and when I was sitting in the retreat centre, I looked at the wall across from me. There was a painting of the face of Jesus from the dream that I had a year previously. (BTW, Jesus is not caucasian!) In this moment, I actually had to leave the retreat for a few hours and lie down. Shortly after the retreat, I was able to find a print of this painting and it now sits in our house. If you are ever wondering what my dreams of Jesus look like, feel free to come on over.

As we celebrate Easter and all that Jesus did for us as human beings, I pray that your heart overflows with peace, that your mind is filled with knowledge beyond your own understanding and that your body would be surrounded by God’s love. You are a treasure to him.

Have an epic Sunday and love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

Education, Family, health & fitness, mindset, musings, radical sabbatical, Wordsmith

Be Learning Nordic Skiing before Alpine Skiing

Leave a comment

This is a public service announcement for anyone with children or grandchildren that haven’t yet tried alpine skiing or have children under 5 years old.

It is spring break skiing and the season where we see many young human beings flopped on the side of the mountain screaming, usually while wearing a “dog leash” (aka: ski harness). Insert gif here with child flopping like a fish in the snow while making shrieking noises.

Both Sexy Neck and I received kinesiology degrees before we got our education degrees. When the boys were young, we talked about our children’s physical literacy skills as much as their reading/writing literacy skills. We wanted them to be physically active for life. We introduced them to coached programs for swimming, cross country skiing and gymnastics. I also taught them skating shortly after they could walk.

One of the best things we did for our boys was putting them into the “Bunnies” (skinny ski) program when they were 3 years old at our local nordic ski area. It was parent participation and this program gave the children the skills to move bilaterally on skinny skis at a pace that was perfect for their growing bodies. There was no screaming, flopping, or crying from the parents or the kids. They could go at the speed that they felt most comfortable moving at and could attempt the hills when they were ready. Plus placing teddy bears along the track, kicking tennis balls in the track and gummy bears in your pocket can go along way!

Right now, we are seeing many parents strap on the big, thick alpine skis and attach the leash to their young ones. Then off they go. You can see that these young first timers are moving at a speed that they are uncomfortable with and thus the screaming, flopping and crying. It’s very tough to watch. I believe that even if the kids spend only one season (10 weeks) in a Bunnies or Jack Rabbit program, none of these experiences would need to happen for our young alpine skiers.

PLUS the added bonuses when kids start on skinny skis is that when they start alpine skiing those thick skis are easier to balance on and they even get to ride up a magic carpet or chairlift or t-bar instead of having to climb up the hills on skis. The children will really appreciate this new sport and hopefully have experiences on two types of skis that help them be active for life!

Have an epic Sunday folks and love what you do!

xoxo Joanna