Professional Development Minutes

In southern Ontario, snow is outside my door. All this snow has me  dreaming of being at the cottage in the summertime. This is a picture I took at the cottage one August morning.  Lessons I've learned:  A chlorinated pool does not compare to a lake.   " specular " 

When you think about the  history of art, what do you think about? P aintings and sculptures?  Do you ever think about the beauty industry? How we decorate and adorn our bodies is also a form of art that dates back centuries.  Visit a museum. Check out exhibits on clothes, shoes, jewellery,  make-up.  What is deemed beautiful has a lot to do with culture and time period. What did "beauty" look like in Victorian England? 

I was sad to hear about the death of Sir Ken Robinson (1950-2020). His work on teaching inspires me everyday.   An excerpt from  Robinson's  TED Talk:  I have an interest in education.  Actually, what I find is, everybody has an interest in education.  Don't you?  I find this very interesting.  If you're at a dinner party, and you say you work in education --  actually, you're not often at dinner parties, frankly. (Laughter) If you work in education, you're not asked. (Laughter) And you're never asked back, curiously. That's strange to me.   But if you are, and you say to somebody,  you know, they say, "What do you do?"  and you say you work in education,  you can see the blood run from their face.  They're like, "Oh my God. Why me?" (Laughter) "My one night out all week." (Laughter)  But if you ask about their education, they pin you to the wall,  because it's one of those things that goes deep with people,...

You're hungry. So, you go to the grocery store and buy some fruit and vegetables, maybe even some dairy, bread and meat products. But where does this food come from? I mean, how is it grown and produced? How can we build a better understanding of the agriculture industry?  CropLife Canada offers documentaries of real Canadian farmers. You can check out Seasons 1-3 here.  Not everyone has equal (economic and geographic) access to healthy food. Activists like Ron Finley in south central LA are changing lives and communities through community gardening. Watch Finley's TED talk here . It will change how you think about food.

don’t look at me  with those eyes i know what  you’re planning: to discard  and  replace me when i’m old  and  outdated  worn and  torn scratched  and  broken and no longer  modern  and in season. 

For years, I have been talking about needing more benches in my local community. So, this week I was happy to find out about the new  "Happy to Chat" bench in York Region . Have you heard about the "Happy to Chat" bench movement ? Chat  benches can be found all over the world, including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. The purpose of these benches is what their name implies: to get people talking. These chat benches support mental health in an age of social isolation.  The pandemic made social isolation a necessity. Social media largely remains an anti-social experience.  So, when you see one of these benches in your community, try them out. Sit and chat. Tell your story. Share. Learn together.

Lloyd Dobler's   boombox serenade is why people search for love but are never satisfied  when they find it.