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I have a bucket list, but it's not the one derived from the movie of the same name. No, my bucket list is a compilation of all the household chores that I'm unable to complete in a cursory manner. The things on my bucket list, generally speaking, require a bucket—as well as warm soapy water, scouring pads and a lot of elbow grease. Like many of you, these are things that, while not necessarily appealing at the moment, end up leaving us with a feeling of deep satisfaction and pride.

Late last week, inspired by weather that far exceeded my expectations and accompanied by a brand new bucket, a selection of cleaning supplies, my iPad and an afternoon beverage, I headed to the backyard to tackle one of the dirtiest jobs on my list. I know, I really should have done this late last fall, but I assured myself that I would continue to cook outside during the winter months!

I purchased a new grill last year, justifying the extra cost by making a firm...

Well, folks, we may be in for some rain.

Much as we here in Nova Scotia tend to get our weather from the West, so too do we often inherit educational practices and policies. Much of what we “create” in education here at home is borrowed from other jurisdictions, such as Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan. Although we do often get to put our own colloquial spin on things, many times the price we pay for being a have-not province is that we must clad ourselves, to the best of our ability, in the educational hand me downs of our more well to do cousins.

Now, I for one have always been against this trend. I hate the thinking among some policy makers that ideas must come from somewhere else to be any good. Our province is full of top-notch educators, right from the Department of Education on down, and I often wish that we would tap that particular resource a bit more often to find educational leadership. I recognize that there is a good case to be made for not re-inventing the...

Every year at this time, right when the cherry blossoms are reminding us that the grey days of winter are almost gone, my Grade 8 students go crazy. They start taking a really long time to settle down into the silent reading period that starts most of our classes. They can’t help but talk to a buddy across the room. They squirm around in their desks and look to their groups for conversation, until I remind them to open their books and start reading. And then I remind them again. And again.

A couple week ago I realized that I had turned into a nag: I do Not. Like. Nagging.

Once they were quiet I spoke in this voice that I only use when I’m really upset in a stern way. It’s my “teacher voice” and I cannot invoke it on demand. It just comes naturally in these situations – and it silences a room in seconds.

“I’m going to leave the room and you are going to figure out what needs to change. The way I see it, two things can happen. We can put these tables in rows and...

Growing up, I knew a whole lot about Anteaters, Aardvarks and Africa.

Walla Walla and Zanzibar? Not so much.

You see, beyond the walls of my school, the only consistently accessible sources of information were the 3 sets of encyclopedias that graced our living room bookcase. The challenge was that they were somewhat incomplete. We owned four volumes of the Columbia Encyclopedia; the first volume of Funk & Wagnall's New Encyclopedia, 1968 and 1969 and, curiously, Volume 'M' of the World Book. My best explanation is that the latter was spirited away from our elementary school library during a project on either Magellan or Madagascar! The only inspiring thing about our little collection was the spine of one of the Columbia editions: Volume 4—DARE to DREAM. (Admittedly, that may only resonate with those steeped in encyclopedia culture!) I kept that one close to me.

It seems that in the 1960's, grocery stores had forged occasional...