Category Archives: radical sabbatical

Education, Flexibility, radical sabbatical, teaching, Wordsmith

Be Talking about “Herbstferien”

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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

author, Boys, God, home learning, musings, Parenting, radical sabbatical, Wordsmith

Be Willing to Talk to Anyone at Anytime

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I am a bit of an enigma in my blue crew. I will honestly talk to anyone at anytime. It has become somewhat embarrassing to my lovely teenage boys. My heart in doing this is to help: Help people feel seen and connected to the community around them.

If I walk by something and I feel God prompting me, I will strike up a conversation by saying hi or sharing something I “notice”: A beautiful scarf, something about the environment around us in the moment or recognizing that we may have crossed paths before. 

The other way I have used this choice to talk to anyone at anytime is that I will reach out to friends or friends of friends to help my boys on their journey to learn and find out what their passions are. I believe my job is to expose the boys to as many different situations and people so that they can make the best choices for themselves. This is a benefit of not having to sit six hours per day in a campus school building and is something I don’t take for granted. 

Sidenote: I believe that when you are looking at a career, you need to actually talk to people doing the work you want to do to learn about what it entails and the friction points. Every job has friction and it’s all about deciding if you can deal with the heat it creates.

In our five year home learning journey, the boys have been fortunate to talk to:

A friend’s son who works for SpaceX.

A cousin who is the CEO for a mutual fund company. (I just learned he was a CEO after talking to a random stranger on a plane that ended up working for my cousin. HAHA)

A friend’s brother who is a Conservation Officer in the Yukon. (We even did a field trip to visit him in person.)

Friends who payed off their mortgage early and manage their money very well. Thanks Bubba and Shane for sharing your wealth of knowledge.

A friend who owns an Engineering firm in San Fransisco and does work for Google, Ebay, Stanford, to name a few well known companies.

A friend of a friend of a friend who works as a Conservation Officer alongside his hounds at the head office in Kamloops.

A friend of the above Conversation Officer who works in B.C. Fisheries.

A husband of a colleague that I worked with in Vernon who is a truck driver.

Two friends who are RCMP officers who we currently message frequently.

A Gymnastic/Strength and Conditioning Coach.

Currently, I am talking to people to find someone that works as a mechanic in F1, F2 or F3. I cannot wait to see how this shakes down.

I love how God wants us to be connected.

It’s fun to see who He brings across our paths, especially when we are open to talk to anyone at anytime. Humans have incredible stories to tell and the connections between us are often very deep and sometimes hilarious.

Happy Sunday (and blessed back to school, for those heading back tomorrow). Love what you do!

xoxo Joanna

Aging, health & fitness, musings, radical sabbatical, Wordsmith

Be Doing Five things for Fun! (Happy 2024)

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I love listening to podcasts when I fold laundry or am doing some other routine tasks. One of my favourites right now is Mel Robbins. I listened to this particular podcast on the weekend. The focus was on six questions you can ask yourself to have the very best 2024. I won’t get into the nitty gritty about what she shared because you can dive deeper and listen, if you are compelled, but I did want to convey that for 2024: I am going to bring the FUN! (And yes, I have a fondness for fine alliteration, so prepare yourselves for this linguistic journey..)

Here are five things that I want to do for pure FUN in 2024:

1️⃣ Fitness : This fall, Sexy Neck and I went back to the gym together for the first time since we lived in Bad Saulgau, Germany. YIKES! That was interesting to think about and realize how long again that was. For my personal fun fitness routine, I want to lift weights three times per week and then have fun adding in walking, cycling, skate skiing and downhill skiing. All just for fun!!!

2️⃣ Have Fun with Friends: I want to host, organize or become involved with a game night or book club again. When I lived in Vernon, I organized a wonderful book club with seven other very diverse, intelligent, fun women. We chose eight books to read and we met to talk about one per month. Once a year, we also met to do a retreat. Moving to KCity in 2013, while having a 2, 4 and 6 year old, plus supporting my mom with cancer, made the book club fall to the wayside. I simply lacked the mental space to continue to organize it. Let’s see what I can make happen for 2024.

3️⃣ Find Fantastic Fiction: I love reading books, but I often bend towards non-fiction as I love to grow myself. This year, I want to find some fun and fantastic fiction books to put into the mix. I already Gael 10 good old “mind candy” books on hold from our fabulous library.

4️⃣ Flourish in the Fine Art of Frosting a Fabulous Cake: My mom always made the best cakes for the boys’ birthdays. Two years ago, my goal was to simply make all the boys cakes from scratch. This year, I want to be able to decorate them well too! (Anyone know someone that could teach me? I don’t want to use fondant, but good old icing!)

5️⃣ Frolic across Canada (Yukon + Quebec) and perhaps even enjoy a far-flung trip to enjoy the beauty of skiing in Japan: These are three trips that are on our radar for 2024, on top of our regular jaunts to Vancouver for sports. I am wanting to do these three trips as JC goes into grade 12 next year and these are places we have always wanted to go together as a family. Bring on the 2024 frolicking!

And that’s it folks. Enjoy these last beautiful days of 2023 and pray about what the future of the year two thousand and twenty-four, since Christ, could bring. Our Heavenly Father loves you so much and has a beautiful plan and purpose to your life. My one ragged, righteous, and radical life is proof of that. I am skidding into the end of 2023 with a smile on my face at all the non-coincidences that have happened this year.

Happy Wednesday and love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

radical sabbatical

Be Writing a Christmas Letter 2023

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I have ALWAYS sent out Christmas cards. I love the physical act of looking for and purchasing special cards plus writing a personal note as I think of the friend that I am sending the card to.

This year, I was inspired by my friend, Rae Swire, to write a Christmas letter. Last year, I really appreciated reading the update on her family and the highlight from her year.  I believe that everyone has received theirs in the mail now, so here goes the digital Christmas letter.

Drum roll…. the first ever Cann family Christmas letter! I pray it brings connections and community through what I chose to share.

Merry Christmas 2023

Family ~ Change ~ Fun

These are our words from this year!  We have made changes to create more family fun time and we are reaping the benefits as we finish off the year. We continue to love spending winter weekends at our Apex ski condo overlooking the t-bar, summertime around the background pool as well as time golfing, biking and horseback riding at a trailer we inherited from Steve’s family that is on the sixth hole of the golf course at “The Ranch”.   With the age of the boys, we feel grateful to have found the perfect balance of activity and leisure time.  We enjoyed a fifth summer hiking adventure with our good friend’s, the Sharpe’s, who have kids the exact same age. Both Steve and I moved into new jobs this summer. We were devastated by the wildfires in our city, which burned down the church camp the boys have been attending the last few years.  In the fall, we enjoyed a 3 day trip to Disneyland and clocked over 70,000 steps and went on over 50 rides! 

Family Update:

  1. Steve – continues to love backcountry skiing, the Canucks, spending time with the family and is now coaching U14 Club volleyball. After spending time in International Educational since 2004, Steve resigned from his position in Kelowna and now works up the road as a Vice Principal at North Glenmore Elementary School. He even has a song about “Mr. Cann”.   Steve took his last International work trips to Germany, Halifax and Thailand last spring.  He dearly misses this calling, but is enjoying this season at home and working on his health. 
  2. Joanna  – I am in my  fifth year homeschooling the boys and I love every second being able to design their learning. I added on a new role to my work with Heritage Christian Online School  and I am now the Regional Administrator for the north overseeing 15 teachers and 400+ students north of 100 Mile.  I had the opportunity to do a northern road trip with Colby and Owen for work in October.  It’s been a dream come true! With the busyness of all the boys, health has taken a bit of a backseat, but we have joined a gym so that we workout regularly now and we are loving ski season, both alpine and nordic. 
  3. JC (Grade 11)  – attends school at Kelowna Secondary part time doing Math, Science and electives plus HCOS doing online English, SS and other electives he can’t get at the campus school. He played ultimate frisbee at KSS and got his Learner’s license in April.  Since starting Trampoline gymnastics two years ago, Jackson has had incredible success. He competes in all three events: trampoline, double mini and tumbling. In July, he qualified and competed in his first Nationals, which was held at the UofA.  He stayed in my old residence at Lister Hall and competed in the Butterdome.  This year, his goal is to qualify for his first International competition.  In Jackson’s free time he loves making movies, refereeing soccer and hanging out with his brothers. 
  4. CC (Grade 9)  – currently has many diverse interesting including: spearfishing, F1, racing go-carts and doing taekwondo. Colby is two belts away from being able to test for his black belt.  He competed in Trail, Salmon Arm and SFU. This year, Colby started his journey with braces, refereeing soccer, found a wonderful Youth Group, finished his red cross swim lessons and continues to work with his voice teacher, Janel, to write his second album. Colby sang a song live on the radio  and got his first stitches in a ski crash!  Colby continues to learn at home, but this year he is attending a one day class that covers Science and Social Studies. 
  5. OC (Grade 7) – loves Lego building, Star Wars, RCMP, dogs, playing with his brothers, skiing and soccer.  This year, he also tried taekwondo and is playing Club volleyball for the first time.  He also decided to start playing the trumpet and takes weekly lessons.  Owen also loves learning at home and attends a one day in-person class. 

In 2024, 

This summer, we are excited to be taking a trip to the Yukon with our new-to-us 16 foot Hybrid Cubs trailer.   Both Jackson and Colby will be in high school. We don’t foresee any work or school changes, other than that!  

As we move into this new year, we pray that this letter finds you full of hope, peace and love!  As the boys grow older, we truly see how precious each day (and year) is and are really living each day to the fullest!  We are grateful for your friendship in this world we live in.  

Xoxo Joanna + the blue crew. 

Sidenote: This is post 48 of 50 for 2023… Eeeek, I am going to reach my goal of writing 50 posts this year. Thanks for coming along on the ride.

Boys, mom of boys, musings, Parenting, radical sabbatical, Wordsmith

Be Watching A Phenomenal Amount of Youtube (Mom of Boys)

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I remember shortly after my boys were born that a mom friend advised me to try to join my children in their play. We were already an active family that loved to cross country ski, walk the dog, eat together, read together and play board games together. This very sage mom friend who was a few years ahead of me was very wise in her advice as she knew what was coming:

Technology.

Screens.

Computer games.

Movies.

Minecraft.

And yes, “Youtube”.

I am very grateful that I learned a long time ago, when the boys were little, to try to always join them in their “play”. It’s been a truly and very fun unexpected journey.

Our current favourite Youtube channels are:

Mark Rober = An engineer who used to work for Nasa and Apple. You may have heard about the backyard squirrel maze or glitter bombs. If you haven’t definitely check him out.

Dude Perfect = A group of five Christian men who met in University and now do trick shots and short skits. We did a “Dude Perfect” birthday for our oldest 16th birthday this year. It was a hit!

Jet Lag, the Game = This is a group of three young men who play real life “board games” around the world. We support and watch them on the streaming platform Nebula and always watch the new shows together. *Some swearing and one of the young men often gets drunk as part of the game.

Fidias = We got hooked when Fidias was trying to get a hug from Elon Musk. It is interesting to see what he comes up with and how positive he is.

Mr. Beast = I am sure everyone knows about Mr. Beast and his huge budgets for making videos. He is a young man who has a passion for creating and has been blessed by this creativity. He has so many channels and the main one is good, but there are some videos we don’t watch. The boys are excited to try his chocolate bar: Feastables.

Max Fosh = This is a new favourite from England because of his wacky ideas – sneaking into things, “Welcome to Luten” sign, buying a traffic circle… He’s light and fun!

On top of these channels, all of our boys have started their own Youtube channels following their passions. Their work is my ABSOLUTE favourite as I watch them film and edit these pieces of art sharing from their heart.

OC (11 years old) = Our youngest loves Lego and doing creative custom builds. Here are some of his amazing creations at “Brick of Lego”: https://www.youtube.com/@BrickofLego

CC (14 years old) = Our middle guy thoroughly enjoys talking and sharing his love of cars! He’s got a channel called C Cars that he started many years ago and has recently started adding to: https://www.youtube.com/@CcarsYT

JC (16 years old) = Our oldest doing what he loves most, flipping! jcanflip is his channel and he flips for every subscriber he gets and posts nightly at around 10:00pm PST. https://www.youtube.com/@Jcanflip

What are your current favourite Youtube channels? Please share as we love adding to the things that we can watch together as a family.

Have a funday Sunday folks and love what you do!

xoxo Joanna

homeschooling, radical sabbatical, Teaching, Wordsmith, writing

Be a Hard No to Retention and Acceleration

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My current occupation as a teacher is as an Online Teacher with students in Kindergarten through grade nine. I help set-up individualized programs for my students, suggest resources, provide weekly feedback on learning samples, do home visits three times per year and write two report cards. In my world as an online teacher, everything is individualized for the student. Yes, every little thing! Parents are free to use any resource from any grade, with some supplementation when needed. Students can work on their individualized plan throughout the year or intensively for months and set-up the schedule that works for their family’s rhythm and any activities that they choose to schedule.

Sidenote: I LOVE THIS HOME LEARNING LIFE!!!!!

In the last three years, I have worked with over twenty-five different families, totalling almost fifty unique students. Out of these fifty students, I have had four students whose families have wanted their children accelerated through the grades that they are currently in. This means that they felt that their child was exceeding what was expected for that particular grade in the nine or ten subjects that they were enrolled in with me: Math, English, Social Studies, Science, ADST, Art, Careers, Christian Studies, Physical Education and a Second Language, if they were in grades 5 through 9. Yes, they believed that in every single subject their were not only above the grade level, but they needed to be in the higher grade. This has put me in a terrible position as the educator “gatekeeper” for this process to happen. I have had a mom scream in my face, inches from my face. I have had a mom have every email and ever conversation revolve around acceleration. I have had mom’s question why I didn’t think their child should be accelerated. And I have had to get really crystal clear on my thoughts around accelerating children, which was never a discourse that I had had in the years I spent in the public campus schooling system.

First, I think all children are amazing with unique gifts and talents. Truly! I see such gold in all the students that I have the privilege to work with over my 23 years of professional teaching and many years before that through coaching and camps. I have never met a student that I didn’t genuinely like. I see preciousness in all of them.

Second, I believe that if you are in favour of and allow for acceleration that you must also be in favour of and all for retention. And, I would NEVER encourage retention for any reason. I have worked with a student in grade seven that was born with part of his brain missing that functioned intellectually as age five, but whom fit in completely with his grade seven class with the support of an EA. (Educational Assistants or EA’s really are saints!) I worked with a hard-of-hearing student in grade six, who had difficulty communicating, but could write like Shakespeare. I also had a student who couldn’t sit in his seat nor focus when someone was verbally speaking to him. He needed to move and have visual cues. Imagine if any of these students’ were “retained”. What needed to happen is that, I as the teacher, needed to be “retrained”. I needed to see what supports and programs needed to be put into place to support this student and their learning style so that they could be with their peers. Retention would not have solved anything. Retraining of me the teacher changed everything.

If we have this flexibility in the online learning world plus I fully believe that retention is never an option, how can I support acceleration?

If a child is bored, try hands-on learning or games.

If a child is flying through their resource, choose a different one or let them fly.

If a child needs greater challenges, have them take an online course or write their own problems to solve.

If a child is wanting to be with a friend in an older grade (yes, a parent has even given this reason to me for acceleration), they can learn patience to meet with their friend after school or at other activities.

Retention.

Acceleration.

These two words really mean to me that we need to retrain ourselves to see what the child is needing to do to learn in the best way possible.

Stepping off the soapbox today!

Have an epic May long weekend and love what you do!

xoxo Joanna

blogger, radical sabbatical, Wordsmith

Be Astounded by Top-Down Wipers

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I was 49 and 3 days years old when my son pointed out a Lexus with a back wiper that came down from the top.

Astounding.

Revolutionary.

Mind blowing.

Why don’t all wipers come down from the top?

The wiper was hidden up at the top under the overhang of the car. I didn’t even notice it! It wiped away the equal amount of the window as a wiper coming from the bottom, so why don’t all cars have this?

Imagine scraping the snow off the window in the winter without a wiper to contend with at the bottom?

Imagine not having that back wiper sticking out to grab onto an oversize sweater you are wearing?

Imagine less wear and tear on the wiper as it doesn’t sit in the snow/rain/hail/sun every single day?

I am guessing in the next few years that every single car will have a back wiper that comes down from the top, unless someone can tell me some negatives from this really revolutionary idea.

And that’s my random thought from this week.

Have a sunny, relaxing Sunday and love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

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

Be Learning Nordic Skiing before Alpine Skiing

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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