I love a quiet, early morning start to my time at school. While our school building doesn't open until 7:00, I'm usually there at 6:35 to set-up our outdoor space. The timing works so that I'm done the set-up by the time that my pass card unlocks the front doors. This...
Last year, my teaching partner, Paula, and I moved to a new school. Little did we know that our school would be situated in a very dense snail population. We thought that the rainy weather would bring with it lots of worms, but in fact, it brought along with it many...
As everyone in education knows right now, schools in the midst of a pandemic look a whole lot different than they did before. My teaching partner, Paula, and I continue to play around with our classroom set-up to help "scale that condo wall" and find possibilities in...
I just finished my first summer as one of two site leads for a Virtual Summer Learning Camp. While both of us have been site leads at in-person summer camps, COVID-19 changed our plans for this year. As we started planning...
At the beginning of May, I bought a Kindle. This might not seem like a really big deal. I've been reading e-Books for a while now. When Kindle and Kobo e-Readers became popular, I was skeptical. I love to read, and do a huge amount of reading especially in the...
School’s over. And with distance learning for the past three months, and “school” operating through a computer or tablet screen since the end of March, these words seem to take on a very different meaning. My teaching partner, Paula, and I only entered the school...
At the beginning of April, I read a wonderful blog post by Doug Peterson, where he shared ten things that he learned as a result of COVID-19. Doug’s post inspired me to write one of my own. As our Coronavirus reality continues to exist, and as I seem to spend even...
Back in 2016, I wrote one of my most well responded to blog posts on The MEHRIT Centre Blog. The postaddresses that tired feeling that seems to deplete us even on the best of days, and how exploring this feeling through a Five Domains of Self-Reg lens might help us...
Today we should be going back to school. We should be hearing the exciting stories about March Break vacations, playdates, and adventures. Everyone in kindergarten always has something to share. Many kids will be eager to see their friends again, continue...
Thursday morning. The kids were just entering, unpacking, and getting ready to head out with us to the back field. That’s when a teacher arrived at the classroom door. “Can I speak to you for a minute, Miss Dunsiger?” Oh no! The minute that she told me...
Last week, I had my own mini-adult temper tantrum. It was the end of the day on Thursday, and as part of our current phase of Work-To-Rule, we all need to be out of the building in 15 minutes. Like others, my teaching partner, Paula, and I are working through these...
I didn’t grow up celebrating Christmas. As many of my friends and classmates prepared for the holidays with a Christmas tree and stories of Santa Claus, I lit the candles on the menorah. Sometimes Hanukkah overlapped with Christmas. Sometimes it didn’t. I remember...
Friday. My teaching partner was away for an appointment, and I had duty and period 5 prep. We also wanted to have students help us switch around our building space and begin to create a school in our dramatic play space. In order to get everything done and the...
As many people know, I’m a strong advocate for play-based learning. Real, authentic, student-driven and led play. Free play. I’ve called this play many things over the years, including “free exploration time” and “work time” — for play is a child’s work — but this...
This is my 19th year of teaching. I’ve taught at 8 schools in our Board, and worked with hundreds of students. But sometimes, no matter what previous experiences you may have had, a child’s comment stops you. It makes you think differently. This is one of those...
As we go back into the classroom this week to get ready for school, I’m doing some thinking around a phrase that I hear quite frequently in educational circles: the need to “prepare children” for the next grade. Recently, I started to look at this...
Recently, I shared my Self-Reg journey on The MEHRIT Centre Website. As I mentioned in my profile here, I now find myself seeing everything through a Self-Reg lens. I was reminded of this recently, as I worked with the other Summer Curriculum and Site Support teacher...
Yesterday started as my day often does, beginning to get materials organized for the week and setting up the classroom space prior to the start of Before Care. Soon after I started though, I noticed that some of our butterflies emerged. On Friday, we had two...