We've taken on a lot, and somehow managed to stay in tact. Living life now as a family of 4!

Everyone, it is finally warm here. So warm, that staying inside during the school day is a crime that I simply cannot tolerate after the winter we had. I took every class I had today outside, and it was glorious. ESPECIALLY glorious, because there is something magical that happens when you give kids good books and then take them outside: THEY ACTUALLY READ. For extended periods of time. Even kids who normally won't read for love or money or even slurpees - you get them outside and all of a sudden they are on task and paying attention! Today was the second day in a row that kid D has been at school. This is remarkable because he hasn't come to school, despite us trying everything we know how to do, since about October of GRADE 8. Which is a year and a half ago. Every once in a while, during that year and a half, he would surface for an hour or two, or I'd find him outside the school building, but he'd never come inside and if he did, he didn't stick around for lo...

Yesterday I forced myself to sit on the couch and read the final 40 pages of Orenda by Joseph Boyden. Usually, if I linger at the end of a book, it's because it's so good I don't it to end. This book, however, was different. I didn't want it to end not because the story was so well-told (although it was), but because the end of this book signaled the beginning of total domination of Aboriginal people's across Canada by the settling Europeans, which is a fact of history that breaks my heart on a daily basis as I watch my Aboriginal students struggle against nearly insurmountable odds, many of which are remnants of 400 years of colonial rule by those in power; indeed, that is still active policy today in many cases (although I'm not going to get into that here). This book has been quite controversial in Canada: it has scenes of unbelievable violence, it paints portraits of various characters of history (fictionalized, but based on real people) in stereotyped way...