Finally tackling the Finland thing

It's been three months since I was in Finland and this is a post I've been meaning to scribe since I arrived back in Canada after the trip. The fellowship ended, work resumed, and here I am now scribbling out some thoughts.

The Grade 5 class (our third concert of the school visit)

The Canadian Journalism Fellows had the opportunity (at my request and insistence) to visit Oulunkylän ala-aste in the City of Helsinki on April 14, 2011. Apologies for the link in Finnish, it was the one we were provided with. The school is home to approximately 600 students in Grades 1-9, who attend one of three campuses. The campus we visited hosts the younger students as well as the school's musical option. Once students start attending this school they can qualify for an instrumental and voice music program starting in Grade 4, upon completion of an aptitude test.

We were spoiled on this visit, given our musical tastes, as three separate classes played various pieces for us and displayed a musical talent far beyond my own (this isn't very hard to accomplish). We also toured the entire school, met with a gaggle of teachers over recess to have a Q&A and even had lunch in the school cafeteria (wiener soup-- or a vegetable-based soup with cut up hotdogs). I felt so fortunate to have a full morning in this building, soaking up everything that my little mind could absorb. We do like to tout how well Finland does on international rankings and depending on which side of the spectrum you hang your hat you salivate over the no-standardized-testing reality in that country. Or you realize that Finland is an extremely homogenous country (five million people total, only five percent are not of Finnish origin, one of the highest standards of living in the world, etc.) where the other foundational societal investments do much more than the specific what's and how's of classroom management to determine how well children there are learning.
Anyway. Things that struck me, in no particular order:

• This school of 600 has a full-time principal and part-time teaching vice-principal over three campuses. In this case, that teacher was the school's special-education resource teacher. Most schools of this size in Ontario would have full-time principal and vice-principal. We also don't do the multi-campus thing, for the most part.
• As we observed classrooms (and we visited every grade), the physical spaces looked and felt like many, many other classrooms I've been in.
• Teachers in Finland must have a graduate degree (ex: Masters) in order to even qualify for teacher training. The training program itself lasts longer than eight months.
• Curriculum guidelines are set by the federal department of education (which we don't have in Canada), what teachers actually teach is, in some cases up to them, in others has the additional input from their local city school board or principal. On the face of it, this isn't that different than in Ontario-- the province sets curriculum expectations. How the curriculum is taught is still, essentially, up to the individual teacher-- though Ontario's Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat, Ministry of Education, school board program departments, teachers' federations and principals also shape much of how a teacher chooses to teach in her/his classroom.
• There are no standardized tests, but teachers and schools still use the same variety of assessments that are used in our classrooms. Students still get grades. Interestingly, given how standardized-testing opponents latch on to this, Finland still participates in the PISA testing regime, which I would note is a form of standardized test.
• Finland is an extremely literate culture. It has among the highest newspaper readership / media engagement in the world. Due to the uniqueness of the language (its closest linguistic cousins are Hungarian and Japanese), Finns read a lot in their own words. We asked different people for their thoughts on this literacy rate and received a variety of answers. One that stuck out for me was that the language is written very phonetically-- ex: what the word sounds like when spoken is what it's spelt like in Finnish. Another was that due to its small population, many of the TV programs are still subtitled, so in order to understand their Saturday morning cartoons they have to read well (this one I don't buy as much, given there are other nations where plenty of TV is subtitled that don't have the literacy rates the Finns do).

Now admittedly we were shown a school chosen by the Finnish foreign ministry. Given the competing wide array of interests we were trying to touch in a short five-day visit in Helsinki a morning was a massive amount of time and I was able to get a lot of information in my little head as mentioned above. I did ask about school financing and I know I was told how it works but for the life of me and without notes I don't remember the details.
Just like my visit to the school in Berlin, I was happy to leave the school with the feeling that there was no magic at work. There was no visible "one thing" or group of things even, that could tell me in a morning why this school system is so admired. Like in Berlin, I was reassured, assuaged, etc., in seeing a lot of the practices I've witnessed in many of the schools in Ontario that I've visited.

Last post from Massey College / Upcoming hiatus

The view from my Massey College suite, in more verdant times this past fall.

This will be the last post I'll write from my perch at Massey College, as pictured above. The past few weeks has been a flurry of activity as we wrap the academic term and prepare for the last Canadian Journalism Fellowship activity, a two-week stint in Finland and Denmark (to which I'm adding a week split between London, U.K. and St. Petersburg). This past Monday the selection committee met to shortlist the applications received from Canadian journalists for the 2011-12 edition of the program. After the committee meeting its members were joined by various funders of the program (including the Fisher family, who funded my fellowship) and this year's fellows. We had an opportunity to speak to the assembled crowd for five minutes or so, reflecting on the past seven months, the courses we'd taken and the experience as a whole.
I will be forever indebted to this college-- the past seven months have been exactly the personal and professional refresher and readjuster that I was seeking when I applied for the program. I doubt any words I could say or type would ever truly explain this experience and the impact that it will have on my career in time. 
The seven months have just flown by and though very excited for the travel that lies ahead, I am moving out of the college before leaving for our European adventures. Will split my time between various locations upon returning to this continent and I'm due back at work on May 2, just in time to cast my vote and then cover the results as they come in that evening.
I am particularly delighted the fellows will be visiting an elementary school in Finland, so I can see first-hand what the school culture looks and feels like in that most-revered of countries (at least when it comes to their educational system). I'm going to be particularly curious to see what elements look and feel the same as some of the classrooms I've been fortunate enough to observe in this country.
Sadly for this space, it means an extended hiatus. So the issues that I've been touching on -- particularly with the grants scheduled imminently for release -- won't be updated in this space until at least April 24 if not beyond then and into early May.
Please come back after that date so we can continue the conversation.

My long goodbye to OISE

Last week I attended what will probably be my last formal class of this Massey College Canadian Journalism Fellowship at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. It's one of a few things in this final term of the program that is a somewhat mournful reminder that this wonderful experience is coming to an end.
Aside: Another is that the program is now accepting applications from working journalists for its 2011-12 year, with a deadline of March 1, 2011 (hint, hint to any ed reporters out there...).
Additional aside: Another is that we're headlong into planning our second European travel adventure, which will take us to Finland (Helsinki and Turku) and Denmark (Copenhagen and likely Samso) on 'official' travel with possible personal side travel to St. Petersberg, Iceland and/or London, U.K.
It was always a personal and professional goal of mine in this experience to take advantage of OISE's location. Massey College is only hundreds of metres away from the hulking 12-storey building that houses the University of Toronto's initial teacher education programs and graduate-level institute. From the application process onwards, I have to be quite complimentary to the deans and associate deans at OISE. Former dean Jane Gaskell pointed me towards associate deans Mark Evans and Kathy Broad, who've met with me numerous times since August.
As readers here know, I spent the fall auditing two courses -- a graduate-level course on the battle over history education and a Masters of Teaching (a two-year initial teacher education program) course on issues in numeracy and literacy.
This term, I was allowed to shadow -- as much as my schedule permitted given some conflicts with non-OISE classes and fellowship commitments -- the fourth year Victoria College / primary-junior cohort of OISE's concurrent education program. The program is still very much wet behind the ears as the students in the cohort I'm following are the first ever admitted to this program at OISE.
After a wickedly busy five weeks, these ConEd students are now at primary schools throughout the region in their first long-term classroom practicums that last until the very end of March, just as we're about to depart for Europe. They get another one in their fifth and final year of the program (compared to the four that the MT students get, or the two month-long practicums most B.Ed students get over eight months).
The term was instructive to my continuing curiosities about what we're teaching our teachers and how well they might be prepared to face the reality of their first classrooms.
As the literacy / numeracy course wrapped up, I heard about those students' late-fall placements. A good number were frustrated the things OISE was asking them to think about in terms of their pedagogy and philosophies on teaching ran headfirst into established systems and procedures in their placement schools. A number mentioned stark differences of opinion with their associate teachers, the people who welcome teacher-education candidates into their classrooms. I felt a little sorry for those as I have seen the practices in use in the program at OISE being used by teachers when I've shadowed classes for assignments. I also wondered whether the teacher-education candidates 10 years from now would say the same things about these folks as they were saying about their associate teachers today.
If they're patient enough, tactful enough, these candidates will bring change to the classes and schools they end up teaching in.
Though I haven't seen the ConEd students return yet, I'm very curious to see what their practicum experience will be like. I may only see them once or twice more before the end of my program. As they headed out, I wondered how many of them were really ready for what they were about to experience. My curiosity also leaves me wondering if they'll come back with the same feelings as the Masters of Teaching students.
Lastly, for now, I am encouraged by the quality of the faculty I've seen in the initial teacher education programs. I would have been glad to have any of the four instructors I've seen and am reassured that they're teaching teacher candidates-- if some of what they're doing at OISE rubs off on the students then that's great.

A caring adult makes the difference: Berlin trip

Welcome to 2011!
While the fellowship program is pretty much an 'off-the-record' experience -- it's not apropos for me to be writing and quoting every moment we experience for public consumption -- I've been using this space to write about some of the highlights. Our December travels definitely count among these.

Principal Ulf Schroder / Neumark-Grundschule

We had an opportunity to travel to the Neumark-Grundschule during our fellowship trip to Berlin Dec. 5-12, 2010. The school, built at the turn of the last century, is now in a central Berlin neighbourhood, surrounded by high-density housing. According to the principal, pictured above behind three of my colleagues, there are approximately 240 students registered. Approximately 98% of the student population come from immigrant families and either accompanied their families to Berlin or are first-generation to their new country. It's a small, urban elementary school -- nothing earth-shattering in that concept as there are countless small, urban elementary schools in this country and elsewhere around the world.
What I was most impressed by -- again, as I am whenever I see this during a school visit -- is how much of a difference one person can make. Ulf Schroder did his teacher-training placement at this school, has taught here for the bulk of his career and now leads this school. His wife also teaches in the building. A musician, he brought his passion for musical education into the school and the pair run two instrumental student orchestras, the Blue Elephants and the Green Elephants.
The students appeared engaged, enthralled even. Student achievement results, Schroder said, are on the rise.
As the group reflected on the visit, we kept coming back to Schroder. That school has developed into what it is because of who he is. What he's brought to the school. It was a delight to meet him and he was very accommodating with his schedule -- even allowing us to witness one of the Elephant groups play some short Christmas carols (Jingle Bells, if memory serves).
That, I've found, is also pretty universal. Get the right, caring adult in front of a classroom (or school) and it makes all the difference in the world when it comes to touching every aspect of school life. A caring adult was one of five key things for the healthy development of children when it comes to recreation (see Parks and Recreation Ontario's High Five program), it's no different in education.
We're off to Finland and Denmark in April under similar fellowship-travel arrangements, where I also hope to have a similar visit-- or at least a chance to speak with people about elementary / secondary education.

This semester is off to a flying start.
Thanks to the welcoming flexibility of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, I have been shadowing the year-four cohort (the first ever for this program) of the concurrent education program at OISE/UT. I won't be auditing all their sessions, but have been appearing at the Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment (for primary / junior) sessions as well as the Mentored Inquiry and Teaching (Victoria College cohort) sessions. With some of the other non-OISE courses I intend to audit and the leftovers from the Master's of Teaching Issues in Numeracy and Literacy from the fall term, January is going to be hopping. Given the OISE ConEd students are in a seven-week practicum starting in early Februrary (which I obviously don't do) the weeks ahead are going to be far more OISE heavy than the months following. The teacher candidates will just be flying though, as they complete about 30-35 hours of class a week and then go home and work on their homework assignments. It's intense, but then again, so is teaching.

Battle over history education ends in a stalemate

This was the witty line I came up with at the conclusion of this course that I've been auditing this term. As per the requirements of our program, I chose this course to be the one where I completed all the course requirements-- which meant doing all the readings (three to five hours a week, a 'graduate' level), leading the discussion in one of the seminars, writing a literature review and completing an end-of-term project.
For the end of term project, as mentioned below, I wrote about the Equestrian Statue of King Edward VII located at Queen's Park, a short walk from Massey College.
The last class of my 'Issues in numeracy and literacy' course of the term -- it continues in January -- is early this afternoon.
The Battle course taught me a few things. First, I'm not an academic. The readings in this course, as previously mentioned, were at times thick. Or 'dense' to use a more academic language. The course centred on the so-called history wars of the late 1990s and how the resulting change in academia hasn't successfully filtered down to history classes in our schools. As we contemplated the end of the course over some beverages Tuesday evening, we came to the question of whether or not the reform that's underway in the teaching of history would be successful. System-wide reform through a standards-setting process was a failure south of the border in the 1990s (one of our readings for this course), and it's met with various levels of success in other countries.
Currently, the Ministry of Education is updating the 2005 history curriculum to include concepts of historical consciousness (alternately called historical thinking), as pioneered by UBC historian Peter Seixas. Teachers have already been advised the updated curriculum will feature the Benchmarks of Historical Thinking that have been slowly developed over the past 15 years.
I thought the revision could meet with some success-- despite the pessimism of some of my classmates. I accept there will always be teachers who will not reform their practice from however they've established it. But most will, if this reform has the support of the ministry, school boards and teachers' federations-- all of whom are supposedly involved. Plus, to this reader, looking at the current curriculum and the benchmarks, there are already a number of common features. There aren't too many bridges between it and the world of academia, which I'm sure based on my takeaways from this course means that academic historians will have plenty to continue complaining about when it comes to how history is taught in our schools.
The funnest reading we had recently was one edited by Christopher Dummit and Michael Dawson. The history wars in Canada are over, they argued, since the 'old guard' has been replaced within the academy. The article, published in 2009 by the Institute for the study of the Americas at the University of London, was deliciously vicious in poking the Canadian academy for what it's forgotten and what it's not doing well. It was a great way to end the term.
Next term
Not all the i's and t's have been dotted and crossed, but I'm hoping to spend all my OISE time in the winter term auditing the courses from the fourth-year of the faculty's concurrent education program. The cohort I've arranged to attach myself to is the first of the new program, so it should be interesting.

What this fellow has been up to

Equestrian Statue of King Edward VII at Queen's Park

It's been some time since I've posted about fellowship activities. Things are puttering away at a somewhat frenetic pace as we approach the end of the fall term. This includes re-writing a paper for one of my courses (seems I wasn't paying close enough attention to what was required) and prepping for the submission of the end-of-term paper in the same couse -- hence the photo of the statue of good ol' King Edward VII. That class (Battle over history education) continues to be a source of some frustration and immense reward as we discuss our readings every week. It has continually reminded me of the reason why I'm here despite how it makes my brain hurt some weeks.
The journalism fellows are about 10 days away from our first international travel. The German foreign ministry and the Goethe Institut are bringing us to Berlin from Dec. 4-11 for a packed itinerary. Some of the highlights:

• Meeting with architects to discuss city design and planning.
• Visiting a cultural media festival.
• Taking in an opera, a philharmonic or both.
• A better-than-tourist tour of the Reichstag.
• A visit to, hopefully, Humboldt university.
• Visits to museums-- history, Jewish and others.
• Spending some time with a Berlin food critic, as well as at Der Speigel.

After our official itinerary in Berlin is complete, myself and two of the fellows are off to Prague for three nights. Following which, they return to home soil and I travel to visit family in Portugal from Dec. 15-21.
With all this excitement it's very easy to skip over the amazing things that have been happening at Massey in the last month. We had the Feast for the Founding Master this past Saturday, honouring Robertson Davies, one of the three people (with former Gov.-Gen. Vincent Massey and the U of T president of the day) who founded Massey College in 1962-3. The Massey printshop always does a fantastic job with printing keepsakes for the extra-special high tables, and this was no exception with a Davies' quote.

Pretense is wonderfully stimulating to the artistic mind which is why some people lie for fun rather than from necessity! -- A Mixture of Frailties

The dinner was followed by the reading of a Massey College ghost story penned by Davies in his fifth year as master of this college.
As usual, we've had our Thursday guests for lunch with the journalism fellows and selected Massey junior fellows. The lunches are off-the-record chats over good food and beverage and the guests this fall have been:

• Matt Thompson
• Charles Pascal
• Christopher Hedges
• Stephen Jenkinson
• Kim Echlin
• Abraham Rotstein
• Kevin Stolarick
• Sabine Sparwasser
• Michael MacMillan / Alison Loat
• Austin Clarkson

The past weeks have also been an opportunity to shore up some options for the winter-term courses I hope to audit. I've already lined up a joint-program course on the latest evolutions of urban form, an interdisciplinary course on mobile-phone application design and, of course, thinking about what OISE stuff I'll loiter in.
The blog may be a bit quiet as a result (more so than it already has been) in the next month or so.

Fringe fellowship benefits

One of the many (oh so many) benefits of the Canadian Journalism Fellowship program is that we get the opportunity to do some travel, meet people and have conversations we wouldn't normally be able to do if we were all still working in our newsrooms.
One such opportunity arose earlier this week as the fellowship travelled to Kitchener-Waterloo and spent just over day in the twin cities as guests of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. The itinerary: Morning welcome and quick introduction to Perimeter (at PI), followed by a roundtable and tour of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo. Lunch was held at Communitech, where we had the pleasure of meeting officials from Christie Digital Inc., Desire2Learn, the Canadian Digital Media Network and RIM. Following a brief rest, we trekked down to Waterloo Collegiate Institute to hear MIT's Seth Lloyd (I'll link the feed of the lecture once it's posted at PI) speak about quantum physics and photosynthesis. That wonderful lecture was followed by dinner at PI's renowned Black Hole cafeteria, where I had the pleasure of being seated across from Lloyd and one of the physics guys long-associated with PI, Lee Smolin.
This was a light-speed (no pun intended) jaunt through the region, a nice return for me since I started my journalism career there in 2002 and am a frequent return visitor-- though never with the access and experiences we had Wednesday.
The day was a stimulating series of conversations with people about the intellectual conversations and community construction that continues to happen in that region. From the academic and scientific gains being made at the institutes to the work being done at places like Communitech to enhance collaboration and invest in innovation and new-business incubation.  From the mathematical to the physical, technological, digital and intellectual, the day had all of our synapses firing continually. It was an eye opener for some of the fellows as well who had only a passing familiarity with Kitchener-Waterloo and were impressed at how the area has transformed itself. PI was compared, on several occasions and by ourselves, as the sort of meeting place that Massey College is-- although Massey is interdisciplinary and PI is for the brains of physicists.
It sets up our group for the pending travel-- we are off to Berlin for a week in December courtesy of the German government, and to cap off the fellowship in April we are (now confirmed) travelling to Finland and Denmark courtesy of those two countries' governments.
After the past day, even coming back to Massey seems like falling into a slightly lower level of the stratosphere.

History battles

Though my last fellowship update really centred on the "Issues in numeracy and literacy," I didn't want to take away from the fun I've been having in my other course, "Battles over history education."
It's a master's level seminar with only four people (myself included). This past week (Oct. 19) was probably some of our best discussion this term. Our readings, heavy on the Peter Seixas, concentrated on how to bridge the gap between the changes that have happened in the study of history -- I kept calling them "academic historians" -- and those who first teach history to us as students. We've been reading a lot about the history wars in Canada and elsewhere, where on one side you have those who argue for teaching history as part of a national narrative, a set of dates, places, people and events from the past that help define a collective identity. On the other, those who hold the historical process as what should be emphasized-- the ability to research and study primary and secondary source documents, analyse them and then draw conclusions from that analysis that are supported by your evidence. For example, as this class is the class I'm auditing where I have to "complete all the course requirements," on Oct. 12 I led a good portion of the evening's seminar and then had to write an eight-page paper (yikes, it's been a while since I did that) that analysed and critiqued the night's readings. Why, I'm currently stalling on reading this week's assigned readings as I type this post on the very debate.
It's largely a debate that seems to have taken place among Master's and Ph.D's in history, with little input from the very people who are tasked with first teaching history to students. It's an interesting paradox (if that's the best term), where academics complain about the quality of students and how those students have been taught, but don't -- on a large enough scale -- really contribute much towards improving the very instruction they lament. If history teachers in public and secondary schools are the ones that build the foundation upon which we find ensuing generations of historians, then why are they, in many cases, being left out of this discussion? Are they? I've had the privilege of meeting some top-rate high school history teachers, but I don't know if many of them would tackle this sort of existential debate over how they inspire learning about history and historical thinking in their students. This is where our last discussion went as each of us wondered where the emphasis should be placed to improve historical knowledge and thinking.
I must admit, as I have to the instructor, the readings in this course are sometimes, um, dense (poorly written?) -- ex:

Ironically, less than twenty-five years ago, the historian Pierre Nora asserted that the function of the science of history -- and therefore of the historian -- was not to collect memories but to protect people against them through the application of 'instructive reason,' that is, through the analytical and critical activity of the historian, debunker of myth and of all other obstacles to our proper understanding of reality. (Laville, Christian (2004) "Historical consciousness and historical education: What to expect from the first for the second," in Seixas, ed. Theorizing Historical Consciousness, University of Toronto Press, p. 172)

They make my brain hurt. But every week I leave the seminar with my brain abuzz, oft-neglected neurons firing away with the week's discussions. Then I realize-- this is what I came here for. This is the stimulation those neurons don't often get in the day-to-day rhythms of my work. This is what makes it worth it all.

Massey update

It's been a while since I posted about life here at Massey College, so I thought it apropos for a few quick thoughts.
It looks as though this term I'm settled into two courses-- The Battles over History Education and Issues in Literacy and Numeracy -- both at OISE. Some recent attempts to join some interesting courses elsewhere are being met with either erroneous information / incorrect time tables or, in one case, a professor who perhaps rightly stated I shouldn't have waited until week five of a 12-week term.
I am adoring the two courses I'm auditing, and perhaps auditing them with enough vigour (OK, that does sound odd) that any person watching over my shoulder at the college won't get too pissy.
Battles over History Education has become a weekly conversation on why we should be teaching history in schools. Guided by our readings every week (including reading a whole book in a week for this past week's seminar -- what the professor would call a "graduate-level" pace), we hash out what each has to say about why history should be taught in schools and how it should be taught. I've left class on a couple of occasions with my brain just bursting, but have come to realize that's why I'm here. I want my brain to hurt a little (I certainly don't have the academic reading-retention skills I may once have attained) because the reality of my newsroom life right now is that it doesn't get challenged in this manner.
The six-week numeracy section of the literacy and numeracy course has simply been devine. A good portion of this is the professor -- who instructs the class in such a manner I wish I'd had this prof throughout all of my math courses and my entire B.Journ. program. Each Wednesday morning, she keeps pushing this group of teacher candidates to forget all the bad ways we've been taught math and learn how to teach math in a way that keeps students involved and creates / continues a collaborative, conversational culture in classrooms.
Both of these courses are feeding my policy wonk / article I will write before leaving journalism desire to gain a better understanding of what we're teaching our teachers and even providing a tentative first few steps towards evaluating whether we're doing it well.
In the meantime, the journalism program components are just flying by. We've already organized and hosted two lunchtime seminars -- with Mozilla Foundation's Matt Thompson last week and Charles Pascal this week -- and have guests confirmed until the last week of this term and several weeks into the next term. I've volunteered to be the point-person in the group as we organize and liaise with the German consulate for what will undoubtedly be a very fast-paced trip to Berlin from Dec. 5-11.
College life has continued to be superb. The founders of this college and those who have guided it since have created a wonderful environment for interdisciplinary exchange at all levels. I've pretty much decided that should I ever decide to pursue graduate-level education, I will be taking a serious look at the programs here at the U of T and applying to be a fellow at Massey College.

Meeting the fellowship

On Monday night, the six journalists who are part of the Massey College community were formally introduced to the fellowship. Massey is a college that prides itself on a number of traditions-- the journalism fellowships being one of the things that has always been a part of the fabric of this corporation.
I'm not offhand sure how long the journalists' reception has been part of the calendar here, but we had ours last night. The master, John Fraser (think Saturday Night), invited a number of prominent members of the journalism and media communities to come have dinner at Massey. Dinner here is a somewhat formal event, with all the members of the college in their gowns (yours truly wears a simple black gown with the red rose on the back-- senior fellows have some additional red stripes along the shoulders of theirs), graces in latin, etc.
Afterwards, the journalists proceeded to the Upper Library where after an elegant introduction from Fraser, each of us was given some time to speak to our background, why we wanted to come to Massey and what we hoped to get out of the year.
We are a very eclectic group with a diverse background. I learned a little bit about each of my colleagues here-- both the other Canadian Journalism Fellows and the two associate fellows who will be sharing large portions of our journey with us.
Given the amazing breadth, depth and accomplishments of the graduate students here at Massey, it was humbling to be put on the same stratosphere as them for part of an evening.
In other fellowship matters, the courses are beginning to narrow down. I've decided to continue auditing the Battles over History Education as well as Issues in Numeracy and Literacy. I still need to find a third (or fourth) course to audit this year-- likely something non-OISE. However I'll be back in the undecided boat come January as the two OISE courses I am following are only fall term.

Closing in on the final two...

After a week that felt like "Waiting for Godot," I've begun attending classes this week at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education as part of my Canadian Journalism Fellowship. I had short-listed four and have one remaining this evening before deciding which two I will keep auditing / attending for the remainder of the fall term.
Some details on the courses I've selected to-date.
"The battle over history education in Canada," would involve selected readings, seminars and discussions on how history is taught in Canadian schools.
"Issues in numeracy and literacy," a Masters of Teaching course. It's a cohort from this two-year program with students in the second year of studies. Centres on examining the way math and reading/writing skills are being taught and challenging these teacher candidates on the methods they can use to teach these subjects in innovative ways.
"Cognitive development and learning," an intense study of how changes in children's brains as they age affects learning.
"Historiography and the history of education," which I haven't been to yet, examining the main issues in educational history.
I've also had another meeting with the associate dean and the director of the initial teacher education program. I left the meeting with another small pile of things to read and consider as they're strongly recommending I sit in on some of these courses as well. I agree, given my stated interest in earlier meetings has been to get an opportunity to observe what we're teaching our teachers.
J-fellow activities also chug along, as we gathered for our second lunch today. These lunches will be our off-the-record opportunities to invite guests of our choosing to the college for food, a beverage or two and some discussion with the four of us. We are responsible for booking these every week during term in the fall and spring. We're meeting Friday for lunch to take a stab at some division of labour on this and other tasks that we have to complete to organize the various fellowship program activities. We await confirmation from the German government regarding the trip to Berlin in December, but all signs point to this taking place. The relationship the college's journalism fellowship program has with the Finnish government also continues, and this appears to be confirmed as the destination for the April trip, with potential inclusion of Norway.
The others have also been dropping into a smorgasbord of courses this week, taking them for test drives to see which ones they might stick with through the rest of the term of year. Under the fellowship program, we do have to complete all the course requirements for one of the courses we choose to audit. I'm hoping to borrow one of their courses for my third/fourth course to audit, but we've not yet really shared what each of us has seen and done this week to move forward with that.
Myself, after attending tonight's course (historiography), I'll need to consider which ones I'm going to continue attending and which I might take a pass on. I also need to start thinking of what I may line up for the winter term, as all the OISE courses I've engaged with are only on for the fall term.
In other college life, it's the first high table of the year at Massey College Friday, which from what I understand is a more formal dinner (well, more formal than the existing formal dinners where fellows wear their Massey gowns) where guests of the master sit at the high table, actually elevated, and then are introduced by the master to the fellowship.

Testing the OISE framework

I usually enjoy breaking the mold. It's becoming apparent to me as I navigate through the course-selection process that the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), where I hope to still audit the bulk of the courses I'll be sitting in and observing, isn't used to such things.
I have been working, via e-mail and a few in-person visits, with an associate dean on course selection, but it's been a slow process. Understandably, I show up in August and have all these questions and am well aware that there are other far more important priorities than holding the hand of a journalism fellow (especially when I can find my own way).
The masters' level courses have been fairly easy to navigate and find. It was suggested I also follow a selection of the mandatory initial teacher education courses that a B.Ed. student would take on starting at OISE. There's been a little more difficulty connecting on this course and finding out what sections I might be able to drop in on without freaking out a professor.
Still to be decided are any non-OISE courses I might follow, although I'm willing to follow the lead of some of the other journalism fellows to see what courses they're auditing. Hopefully by the end of next week or shortly thereafter I'll have my selections nailed down for the term.

First j-fellow fun

After months of anticipation it's finally begun.
We had our first journalism fellow lunch today in the private dining room at Massey College today with the master, John Fraser, and the college administrator Anna Luengo. My fellow fellows (har, har) are Elizabeth Church from the Globe and Mail, who's written most recently about post-secondary education, Susan Mahoney from CBC Radio, a senior producer for Tapestry and Ideas, and Jeff Warren, a freelancer who's written books and was a founding producer for CBC Radio's The Current. We're joined by associate fellow Yong Ho Kim of the Kookje Daily News in Busan, South Korea. In a special treat, Ann Dowsett Johnson, freelancer but formerly of Maclean's (think university rankings, which was her baby if I've understood it correctly), who is this year's Atkinson fellow, has an office here at Massey College and will be joining the j-fellows at our lunches and other events throughout the year.
As the only fellow (aside Yong Ho, who moved to Toronto with his wife and family) who was not working in Toronto, I am the only one living at Massey College for this coming academic year. I've already had my mind blown by some of the amazing graduate students who call Massey home as they're completing their studies and we've only had a few meals and one evening activity to-date.
The task of the moment however is to start wrapping our heads around course selection. EC has narrowed down some interesting polisci and arts courses, JW has a smorgasbord of philosophy and arts, SM has found some neat music stuff and YHK is heavily into climate change. I've had some discussions with the associate dean at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, but today was a big realization that it's been a long time since I last did this. I should have prevented some disappointment by reading the course schedule before the course calendars as some of the descriptions I was most intrigued by are not scheduled for the coming academic year. Three out of four graduate-level courses whose calendar descriptions had me salivating are not on the schedule.
So back into the course calendars I go...