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Posted in education
How Do We Value French as a Language?
Many Canadian parents want their Anglophone children to be in French Immersion. They believe that being bilingual in French and English will give them an inside track in getting jobs with the government and any organisation that deals with the government. And maybe it will.
Reading, conversation and pop music in French
Seducing Dr. Lewis - a charming Quebecois film about a small community on the North Shore trying to find a doctor. Continue reading
Posted in discrimination, education, French Immersion, history, inequities, music, parents, prejudice, pronunciation, Quebec
Tagged acadian, clarence gagnon, French Immersion, history, louis hemon, Quebec
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© Sheila Diane Scaiff and Teachers Outside the Box, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sheila Diane Scaiff and Teachers Outside the Box with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Posted in education
Announcing a new blog: for Teaching Outside the Box
http://teachingideasoutsidethebox.wordpress.com/
The new blog is intended to be an adjunct to this one. While this blog is largely a commentary on education, the new blog will offer practical information. In a few months I will be retiring from formal teaching within a school board but I can’t stop spilling over with ideas for teaching. Rather than leave them to simmer, I will be posting them there. I will also post some of my favorite ideas from the past 25 to 30 years of teaching.
There will rarely be fully fledged lessons or units, nor will they be necessarily specific to a grade. I have adapted grade twelve units to be used in a grade eight class and seen those units adapted to use in a grade five class. Sometimes they will be a full lesson or a full unit or a cross subjects lesson. Whatever they are, I do ask you to give me credit on any written document.
Why won’t they be fully fledged? To be frank, I have never taken a lesson and done it just as it was written, even if I created it and used it satisfactorily the year before. There are always too many new factors such as new information, a crossover from another subject, the class’s interest, different time limits and I am sure you can add to that list. I also got bored doing the same thing twice in exactly the same way.
If you want help adapting or designing anything I post, especially if it is meant for gifted or other IPRC’d students, I would be happy to come and work with you if your school is within an easy distance of Ottawa or Toronto. I am also on Skype and on Skype, I can consult even if you are on the other side of the earth.
What can I help you with? I have taught every grade from two to eight (ages 8 to 13) and as a supply teacher, I taught everything. I have taught adults and I am a qualified teacher of English as a Second Language. I am a specialist in teaching children with special needs, especially gifted and learning disabled. I hold a masters in adaptive education. The best fun I have ever had in education, besides teaching itself, was having student teachers in my classrooms. I loved encouraging them to try new things and watching them grow in confidence.
So, if I can help, let me know.
Diane
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Posted in education, gifted, Learning Disability, SPECIAL EDUCATION, special needs, teachers
Tagged education, gifted, learning disabled, lesson plans, teachers, units
Not Something of which I Want Reminding
My only comment now is that I have been here and I am deeply upset that this kind of thing continues to happen. As a link to this CBC article will probably eventually disappear, I am going to copy the whole article here.
Falsely accused teacher calls for accountability
Accused of abusing students, teacher spent weeks under suspicion
By Kathy Tomlinson CBC News
Posted: Apr 23, 2012 2:08 AM PT
Last Updated: Apr 23, 2012 2:30 PM PT
Teacher Susan Dowell was accused of abusing students after she challenged a boy for throwing out a banana at lunch. (CBC)An Ontario substitute teacher who was cleared of abuse allegations is speaking out, suggesting that parents and students be held accountable for making false accusations.
“Something is terribly wrong here,” said Susan Dowell, who has taught school for 15 years. “Children who do make false allegations – parents who make false allegations – what happens to them in the end?”
The complaint against Dowell came after she told a grade five boy not to throw away an uneaten banana at lunch. Dowell was on lunch room duty, during a one-day teaching assignment at R.L. Graham elementary school, in Keswick, Ont.
“I told him to eat it…or put it back in his lunch box and take it home. His parents paid good money for fruit like that for him to eat,” said Dowell.
Dowell said the boy went home that night and complained, so one of his parents went to the school vice principal.
“The story that the parent heard and later told the administration…is that I had him go into the garbage to take out a squishy banana — eat garbage basically — and humiliated him in front of his friends.”
Dowell said the incident happened right after she had enforced classroom rules, for a group of unruly students – the boy’s friends – that morning.
“They came in with an attitude immediately…like they’re going to see how far they can go,” said Dowell. “I know enough, in a situation like this, I’m not going to get into a battle with students…so I asked them to go to the office immediately.”
Banana incident sparked investigation
The following week, while teaching at another school, she was suddenly sent home and told she was under investigation by Ontario’s Children’s Aid Society.
“I was just shocked and confused,” said Dowell. For over a week, she said, no one would tell her what she was accused of doing.
“For nine days. It feels like you’re waiting to find out a diagnosis with cancer. It’s crazy making…I was told not to speak to anyone.”
Dowell later learned that after the parent complained about the banana incident, the vice principal talked to the other students she taught that day. She said the group of unruly students she’d sent to the office had plenty of complaints.
Dowell was on a one-day teaching assignment at R.L. Graham Elementary School, when the incidents happened. (CBC)“Somehow all these children came up with all these incredible stories of how I had grabbed their wrists and I left red marks that apparently weren’t showing later,” said Dowell.
“Children are getting a lot more savvy these days. It used to be, ‘make the occasional [substitute] teacher cry.’ Now they know they can have you suspended.”
Without talking to Dowell, the school immediately called the Children’s Aid Society, which it is required to do by law, when there is an allegation of abuse.
“I thought I’d be treated as a professional colleague and I’d be given the benefit of the doubt and at least gotten a phone call afterwards to ask what had happened, from my perspective.”
Told to expect police
Dowell was removed from the board’s substitute teacher roster. Her union told her she might even be arrested.
“You are told police could come to your door any moment. What do you tell your family and friends? It’s a horrible situation to be in, knowing that you’re totally innocent,” said Dowell. “I knew I had never been alone with a child. I never put my hands on a child…but it felt like I was guilty until proven innocent.”
Dowell spent a month at home on partial pay, borrowing money to pay her bills, before the CAS concluded the allegation was unfounded.
The Children’s Aid Society concluded the complaints against Dowell were unsubstantiated.(CBC)“The Society…has determined that Ms. Dowell did not use excessive physical force with the students in her class or intentionally embarrass the student during her interactions with him in the lunchroom,” read a letter to Dowell’s lawyer from the York Region Children’s Aid Society.
“The Society is not substantiating any concerns related to the alleged use of physical force or public humiliation by Ms. Dowell, nor would the Society be concerned should Ms. Dowell return to her occasional teaching position.”
Dowell was then allowed to go back to work, but she still faces a probe by the school board, which is standard protocol when a complaint is made.
“These are separate investigations with different standards,” said Christina Choo-Hum of the York Regional School Board. “We have a much closer eye and more detailed approach to our investigation.”
Due diligence
When asked why a minor incident would lead to a full-blown investigation, Choo-Hum said, “If there is the slightest question [about a teacher] we err on the side of caution. It’s due diligence.”
Choo-Hum said no one from the school or the board would comment on Dowell’s case, because it’s a personnel matter. She said the board does not keep statistics on how many complaints against teachers it investigates, or what the outcome is.
Nadia Ciacci, president of the union representing 1800 occasional teachers in the York district, said she’s seen false complaints multiply every year, from none three years ago, to eight this school year. Ciacci said all were unfounded.
McGill University associate professor Jon Bradley has studied false accusations against teachers and said accusers who lie should be held accountable. (CBC)“It’s devastating for teachers,” said Ciacci, who said one has left the profession as a result. “It’s important to ensure the safety of students, of course, but also to ensure the safety of teachers. The message has to get out there – that this has to stop.”
Jon Bradley, associate professor of education at McGill University, has studied false allegations against teachers. He knows one case where the teacher committed suicide. He said careers and lives are ruined, particularly for men falsely accused of sex abuse.
“It’s really a mess,” he said. “We seem to be almost afraid. We seem to be saying – if a kid makes an accusation it must be true. Kids don’t lie. That’s the first thing we say – kids don’t lie.”
He cited one case that should have been suspect from the start, because of how the nine-year-old girl characterized what happened.
“She said ‘he leered at me suggestively.’ I don’t know how many grade four students would use an expression like that.”
No consequence for accusers
He said parents and children involved in false allegations don’t face any consequences, and they should.
“What’s really sad in this is we’ve got adolescents making terrible accusations against teachers and getting off scot-free with absolutely no penalty whatsoever,” said Bradley.
Ciacci of the teacher’s union said she would like to see parents held legally responsible, perhaps through an amendment to Ontario’s Parental Responsibility Act.
“Look at the cost to taxpayers as well for the Children’s Aid involvement,” she said. “Parents need to be held accountable.”
Dowell said the group of Grade 5 students misbehaved and challenged her in class, then claimed she had abused them.(CBC)Choo-Hum said there is no school board policy or standards for dealing with students who make false allegations.
“Students are dealt with on a case-by-case basis [at the school level],” said Choo-Hum.
Dowell said she is confident the board investigation will also find she did nothing wrong. Regardless, though, she said she will never feel the same in the classroom.
“The next time I see a kid throw out a banana I am obviously not going to say anything. And next time I see belligerent, defiant behaviour – am I to turn the other cheek?” said Dowell.
““I feel very much I am damned if I do I am damned if I don’t.”
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The number of false abuse allegations being made against teachers by students is difficult to determine as there is no central database or available statistics about the issue. (istock)

Kathy Tomlinson