Telling Tales Out of School

with Nick Martin

• Away for a bit, and lots of other stuff

  I don’t know how you’ll ever survive, and it’s really callous to just spring this on you suddenly, but I won’t be posting for a few days — we’re off to Upper Canada to visit the kids and watch some university volleyball.

  Meanwhile.......

  View Full Post | 18/11/2009 4:10 PM | 0

• No Allan insights looming

  I hope you haven’t been holding your breath until you read my first interview with new Education Minister Nancy Allan — it won’t be happening.

  An aide to the minister says Allan’s much too busy to give media interviews, and plans to spend the next few weeks meeting with stakeholders — that awful word that suggests that the pod people already have her, and implies that Allan is out and about dialoguing with stakeholders about achieving consensus on positive learning outcomes.

  View Full Post | 10/11/2009 1:50 PM | 3

• Free advice for the new minister

  I’m sitting by the phone eagerly awaiting a return call from the spin doctors on my request for an initial sitdown with Education Minister Nancy Allan.

  It’s not as though Allan is walking into an easy job that has no issues on the table.

  View Full Post | 5/11/2009 12:25 PM | 6

• Take your kids to the fair

  If you’ve got a kid in Grade 11 or Grade 12, do the whole family a favour and get over to St. John’s-Ravenscourt Wednesday evening or Balmoral Hall Thursday evening.

  The city’s 12th annual universities recruiting fair is way down in numbers, to about 30 schools from the 48 or so of three or four years ago, but it’s still so, so valuable to go.

  View Full Post | 3/11/2009 4:01 PM | 0

• Scary, scary university nights

  One of the neatest memories I have of university — at least, of the ones I’m willing to share with strangers — was the night a bunch of us tossed cushions and sleeping bags on the floor of Glendon Hall to watch scary movies.

  There were huge windows looking out on the thick, leafless forest that wound down to the athletic complex and Don River way below, and the atmosphere was appropriately spooky.

  View Full Post | 29/10/2009 4:27 PM | 1

• Some schools just prefer to be left alone

  I watched quite the nifty DVD the other day and then talked at length to the parent who’d sent it, the short documentary extolling the benefits that her child and other kids had gained from enrolling in the Laureate Academy.

  The mother wanted a feature article on the private school, currently located in St. Norbert after shifting around a bit over the years. She wanted the article to include an upcoming fundraiser for the school’s endowment fund, without which, she said, her family and others could not possibly afford the tuition.

  View Full Post | 27/10/2009 4:00 PM | 1

• So close to a blockbuster story

  I was this close — THIS CLOSE — to a National Newspaper Award.

  The message on my voice mail was a career-maker.....the caller self-identified as a U of M employee and told me that the root of the University of Manitoba’s financial challenges is that all the employees sit around in the campus coffee shops all day, or play solitaire on their university computers, and don’t actually do any work, and would tell me all about it.

  View Full Post | 22/10/2009 3:15 PM | 4

• Private school students, public school jocks?

  I found some pretty interesting stuff on the MHSAA website, especially a bid by some unnamed faith-based private schools to get their kids places on nearby public high school football, hockey and rugby teams.

  The bid was defeated by the MHSAA directors.

  View Full Post | 15/10/2009 3:07 PM | 12

• What if the Tories had won in 1999?

  I got asked a pretty intriguing question last night, when I was speaking to a graduate students’ seminar at the Univeristy of Manitoba faculty of education.

  One grad student wondered how things in public education might have been different had the Tories won the 1999 election.

  View Full Post | 6/10/2009 2:28 PM | 16

• A policy printed in pencil?

  Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

  Hours after our story appeared in Wednesday’s paper, reporting that schools would not be notifying parents if there was a confirmed case of H1N1 or an unusual level of absences, Education Minister Peter Bjornson announced that school division websites would henceforth list any school with a high absentee rate that day.

  View Full Post | 1/10/2009 12:13 PM | 1

• When there’s no teacher teaching

  All these years that I’ve written about issues involving substitute teachers, and nary a syllable did I ever hear about school divisions somewhat regularly using unqualified non-teachers as substitute classroom staff.

  So, of course, I eagerly turned to my story in the Free Press last week to learn what I’d written when first this came to light in our paper, particularly with its connection to H1N1 and an anticipated greater need for subs this year.

  View Full Post | 28/09/2009 12:27 PM | 5

• The lost art of doing your sums

  Yo, math teachers — could my adventures as a soccer referee actually be a teachable moment?

  My watch, it goes without saying, is the only time-keeping that matters on a soccer pitch. Players, especially in the second half, are constantly asking, “How much time left, ref?” and I always instead tell them, “24 minutes played.”

  View Full Post | 24/09/2009 11:28 AM | 6

• Schuler doesn’t get an answer

  Quite the exchange earlier this week in question period between Tory education critic Ron Schuler (Springfield) and Education Minister Peter Bjornson.

  Asking about H1N1 plans, Schuler raised the possibility that there should be a temporary ban on school and community sports teams doing the ritual handshakes before and after the match.

  View Full Post | 17/09/2009 3:55 PM | 5

• Nothing new, and other school and soccer stuff

  I continue to be ever-vigilant on your behalf, and late last week bugged Education Minister Peter Bjornson yet again about the Gordon Bell High School sports field.

  In this breaking news update — pause for suspense — there is nothing new.

  View Full Post | 14/09/2009 3:35 PM | 1

• Letting go

  I've rarely been in as joyful and exuberant a place as the university campus on Labour Day.

  Nervous, apprehensive, some farewell tears to be sure, but the overall feeling of young people making their break from home and taking on the world was exhilarating.

  View Full Post | 8/09/2009 4:04 PM | 0

• Off to campus

  I’ll be vanishing once again back into the dark places from which I slithered, at least for a week or so.

  We’re taking child the younger off to university.

  View Full Post | 27/08/2009 4:26 PM | 1

• Stop the presses! Union disses NDP!

  The Manitoba Teachers’ Society website takes a shot at the province’s compulsory grades 11 and 12 phys ed credits in a current online feature entitled Mowing for Marks.

  It’s often quite humourous, and talks about how students can mow the grass or do housework to earn high school credits without breaking a sweat.

  View Full Post | 21/08/2009 4:05 PM | 8

• Who’ll be first to plagiarize this blog?

  I’m going to go so like totally beyond the ultimate daredevil move here — I’m going to agree publicly with my boss.

  I’ve been waiting almost 38 years for an editor to tell readers that other media steal our stories and pass them off as their own work.

  View Full Post | 17/08/2009 12:55 PM | 8

• We promise not to print the T-word again...

  This isn’t the-entire-planet-needs-to-know news on the scale of today’s latest 387 alleged revelations about Michael Jackson, but Canadian Mennonite University wants everyone to call its southwestern facility the Shaftesbury campus.

  Gasp.

  View Full Post | 12/08/2009 11:23 AM | 2

• The paddle calls my name...

  I hope I’m out kayaking or hiking when you read this.

  I’ll be on vacation until the morning of Monday, Aug. 10.

  View Full Post | 23/07/2009 4:44 PM | 0

• A good idea from Gimli, and other stuff

  I saw a really good idea in the Evergreen school board minutes.

  Up in Gimli, trustees take a recorded vote on motions.

  View Full Post | 17/07/2009 5:24 PM | 0

• Start practising staying awake all night

  It was 4:10 a.m. on the last Saturday in June, and about half a dozen of us rapidly-aging parents were sitting around the convention centre, bleary-eyed, our partied-out kids flopped out on sofas and awaiting their chariot home.

  I’m thinking right now, if you’ve got a kid going into Grade 12, and you’re the kind of parent who’s always been part of your kid’s school life, gone to the events, attended the meetings, volunteered to drive and chaperone, know all the teachers, you’re likely going to be involved with safe grad from the first meeting this coming fall, and you’re likely to read this blog the rest of the way.

  View Full Post | 10/07/2009 5:10 PM | 7

• Winnipeg can’t do that because...

  We were staying overnight in New Liskeard last week on our way to a big family bash in Upper Canada, staying in a hotel right on the shore of Lake Temiskaming, a couple of hours north of North Bay.

  My wife and I went for a walk on the mile-long boardwalk at the base of downtown. People were walking, cycling, out with their dogs, 1.6 km of shoreline boardwalk, past ball diamonds and soccer pitches, a day care, all right along the lake.

  View Full Post | 7/07/2009 3:03 PM | 19

• The last day of school

  Sometime towards noon Monday, when child the younger walks across the stage at the concert hall to get her diploma, our 17 years as parents in the Winnipeg School Division will end.
   
  It doesn’t seem that long ago that we took child the elder off to his first day of nursery at Ecole Robert H. Smith School.
   
  Everything seemed so straightforward — the kids would go to school a couple of blocks away, and go to the wonderful licenced non-profit day care kittycorner to Robert H.
   
  Then in a few years they’d walk a couple of blocks to Ecole River Heights Junior High, and after that, walk 10 minutes or so to Kelvin High School.
   
  This was years before I became education reporter, and before I started writing stories about Kelvin’s having the province’s longest schools-of-choice waiting list. We live in the catchment area and the kids were entitled to go to Kelvin, and we just assumed they would.
   
  Come the winter of Grade 6, and that’s when I first became aware of the recruiting that goes on to attract kids to schools offering Grade 7. Our son either visited, and/or was visited by, staff from River Heights, Gordon Bell, Earl Grey, Churchill, and Grant Park.
   
  About the same time, he started talking about how he’d feel more comfortable being able to take math and science in English. In the neighbourhood, there’s a stigma attached to being in English when there’s French immersion available in the school, and a stigma in switching from French immersion to English — unfair, certainly not institutionalized, maybe more from some parents projecting it onto their kids in French immersion than from the kids themselves.
   
  But it’s there.
   
  And when he wrote the entrance tests for the Advanced program for Grant Park High School about three kilometers from our house, we started realizing that maybe plans could change, and friends who’d gone through Grant Park themselves and who had kids going there were telling us what a great school it was.
   
  Come June of that year, reality was occurring to a lot of kids in Grade 6, some just turned 12, many still 11, that going to Grant Park meant being with grades 7 to 12 and some students who were already adult.
   
  Cold feet abounded.
   
  Come on in and chat, said the Grant Park junior high vice-principal, who was lining up appointments for a lot of Grade 6 students and their parents.
   
  She took us on a tour, showing how the junior high was in its own wing and had its own gym. She brought in the head of the junior high language arts program, who hauled out all these amazing Grade 7 projects and talked about books and writing and imagination and absolutely awesome stuff. Our son’s eyes lit up. Our eyes lit up.
   
  Back then, child the elder was kind of shy. His sports were soccer and hockey and running, volleyball still ahead of him. So in comes the athletic director, asks about his level of physical activity, manages to elicit that he’s just taken part in the division’s fit run in Assiniboine Park. How’d you do?, says the AD; first, sort-of-mumbles our child. In your class?, asks the AD. No, just first. Oh. Let me show you our all-weather track and the other athletic facilities, says the AD, and off they go.
   
  Forward three years to child the younger being in Grade 6, and by then she’d spent a lot of time at Grant Park. She felt comfortable there, had even had her first glimpses of the senior gym, knew her way around. And she was interested in the flex program, the multigrade program which her cousin had so thoroughly enjoyed at Gordon Bell.
   
  So off she and I go to the interviews that the flex teachers conduct, and when they start, my jaw hits the floor at the adult conversation going on between the teacher and the 11-year-old, and I ask the one sitting beside me, who are you and what have you done with my daughter?
   
  Child the elder was 12 when he started at Grant Park, but child the younger was 11 through the first four months of Grade 7. But she was always completely safe in that school, and not just because she had a whole pile of friends in higher grades, and a big brother and buddies who were six feet tall and bigger by the time she got to Grade 8. It’s as safe as any school can be.
   
  The kids have excelled at Grant Park, excelled academically, athletically, socially. We have never regretted for a second the decision to send them there.
   
  If you think your kid’s school is better than Grant Park High School, you’re a very, very lucky family.
   
  I remember doing an issues story with a group of high-calibre senior students at a large high school, and they told me that each door at the school was unwritten-agreement designated, one entrance for academic kids, one for athletes, one for goths.
   
  The kids have always had an eclectic mix of friends and have always moved comfortably among different social groups. I’ve written before about how many of the students attend both the academic and the athletic awards nights as major recipients.
   
  When each started Grade 7, they knew some kids from soccer or other community activities — many of the Grant Park students came from Brock Corydon, J.B. Mitchell, Montrose, very few from Robert H. — but made friends quickly. Child the elder still has buddies from Grant Park who come to the house when he’s home from university, and whom I see around town or at the local campuses. I expect it will be the same with child the younger when she comes back from university to visit.
   
  And there are a lot of kids at GPHS who live outside the catchment area, some from outside the division. We weren’t schools of choice — it was catchment for Advanced and flex, but not for regular — but many of the kids we know are schools of choice and scattered over a wide area.
   
  I know that every school has troubled kids and drug dealers and some violence, and I have no illusions. But we’ve had nine great years at Grant Park, and tremendous opportunities for our kids.
   
  They talk about their courses in world issues, law, psychology, having all the maths and sciences available, challenging social studies and language arts programs, the great options available. Yes, I know all about our taxes in Winnipeg School Division, and the impact of enjoying an enormous commercial assessment base.
   
  The years of honour rolls, the projects and trips and conferences and intellectual engagement, the varsity teams and provincials and MVPs and varsity athlete of the year awards for both of them, it’s been nine wonderful years.
   
  They’ve had many teachers who are nothing short of superb.
   
  It’s perilous to say thanks to teachers and teacher/coaches, because I’ll inevitably forget to mention some of them, and there are others who remained formal and I don’t know or remember their first names......so I’d best not say such a heartfelt thanks to Kathy, Jamie, Dennis, Karl, Marijus, Donna, Shelley, Glenn, Dave, Mike, Bobby, Chuck, Brian, Doug, Chris, and so many others, because I don’t want to forget anyone.
   
  I can’t believe it’s over.
   
   
   

  View Full Post | 28/06/2009 10:01 PM | 3

• Riling Winnipeg’s soccer world, one call at a time

  It took about 145 youth matches over three years, but I finally had a parent come after me following a soccer game this week.

  He was angry, and quite patronizing and condescending, but I didn’t feel physically threatened — it wouldn’t have registered on the scale of abuse and even physical threats I faced in 10 years of coaching kids.

  View Full Post | 26/06/2009 12:34 PM | 2

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