Library Staff Cuts: A Review

            Recently in The Chignecto school board in Nova Scotia the librarian were let go as part of an attempt to resolve issuers from a budget cut. You can read an article on it here. This means that all the schools in the school board will no longer have a working Liberian in the schools. The article states that the libraries will stay open, however this is not 100% known.

Sex? A Healthy Sexuality Resource: Reflection 5

In class we discussed how sexual education is being taught in schools and our experiences with sex education when we were in school. When it came down to it the experiences were not great. Many facts were left out and most people from out class were taught the bare minimum, while some had not been taught any sexual education at all. This interested me because sexual education is something that I believe should be much more important in schooling.

Ideal High School: Reflection 4

In class we created our versions of what we believe to be the “perfect high school”. This was a fun activity that also helped do demonstrate some forms of critical pedagogy. This activity helped us think and reflect upon our own high school experiences and what we thought could possibly make it better for high schools today. The lessons helped us use our own critical thinking to make ways for high school students to think critically easier.

Best Friend Ban: A Review

Recently in the United States there has been some banning of “best friends’ in schools. I stumbled upon this new ban that is happening while watching my usual YouTube videos. You can watch the clip here and the article about the ban here.

I agree with all the points that are made during the video. In my opinion banning having “best friends” isn’t going to do anything productive. To me it seems like a way to over shelter children. The purpose of the ban is to protect children from the pain of losing friends. I don’t see how losing a best friend is really all that bad of a thing, everyone loses a friend at some point in their life, and I hardly believe that anyone is traumatically scarred from it, at least very few people. One the other hand I see how the ban would encourage children to work in groups better and not to rely on one friend in particular, but I don’t believe a ban in necessary for that.

Matilda: A Review

When I was younger one of my favourite movies (and books) was Matilda. I remember my dad read the novel by Roald Dahl to me when I was in elementary school and later when the movie came out I watched it on repeat because I loved it so much. At the time the movie and book was just something that I found fun and light-hearted. I liked that Matilda was around my age and loved to read like I did as a child. Today looking back on Matilda I see how it is more than just an adorable story about a little girl who comes to stand up for herself, but really reflects on teaching styles.

Web better than parents for sex ed, some teens report: Review

After I wrote my reflection about the class discussion we had about sexual education in schools I decided to do some research about how well Canada is doing with this subject. I had some high hopes that the education was doing better than it was when I was in junior high and high school, but as it turns out my hopes were nothing other than hopes. I found this article that documents the results from a study done in Ontario that was meant to find how much teenagers knew about sexual education, and the results were not great. If the test given to the students in the study was a real test most of the students would not have passed it, something I find very disheartening.

Schools should be open to cellphones in class: A Review

            A few months ago I was watching the news on television when one of the topics that came up was cell phones in the class room. At the time I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it but over the past few weeks I find myself going back and thinking about what I watched that one night. I went out in search of the news article and found it on the Globe and Mail website. I found this article very interesting. It talks about more than one side to the issue of kids using cell phones in schools instead of either agreeing with it, or disagreeing.