Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved to write, short stories, songs, poems, diaries, and really anything that constitutes a pen and a paper. I have also always loved to draw, paint, and create with my bare two hands. As a young child, throughout most of my years, and continuing into my adult years, I have always found difficultly in verbalizing my thoughts. I always felt as though there were too many things floating and zigging across my mind to put them into concrete sentences and words that made sense, thus, I drew and I wrote. I have always felt as though writing and drawing has been an outlet to express myself wholeheartedly and unafraid, to not worry about what those around me think, to let my emotions spool out of me like a tipped over ink pot, like anger, love, sadness, depression, anxiety, and many others emotions no longer kept behind closed doors, but for society to acknowledge and comprehend.
Growing up with two parents who are teachers, I always thought that I would end up teaching in a formal institution. Not to say that I do not love to teach, but I love to learn even more. As I tried to navigate my way through post secondary education focusing on teaching, I found the necessary cohesive and communal learning from both student and teacher missing from implemented curriculum and classroom discussions. Instead, I began to view school systems as a dictatorship, a merely telling of knowledge by teacher to student. How are community issues integrated into formal learning? How is positive and critical change enacted? Are critical discussions about a variety of multidisciplinary conversed upon in educational settings?
After half a year, I decided to leave the department of teacher education and found my way into interdisciplinary studies, appreciating the ability to connect certain issues together, rather than studying or reading about them as singular topics. For example, not only discussing rising prison populations in North America, but critically analyzing and discussing its interconnected components to the War on Drugs, institutional racism, and colonization. Under the guise of an incredible professor Dr. Carr, I began working as his research assistant and writing, discussion, and creating articles and books about 'democracy' here in Canada and its interconnectedness to education. I write 'democracy' in quotations as I do not truly believe that we live in a democracy here in Canada. Do we truly have engaging and meaningful avenues to raise our opinions, voices, and choices? Do we have much choice within our own lives? A life condemned to debt and paying taxes. A country that fails to recognize its dark continued history of cultural genocide, the appropriation of Indigenous lands and life, and one that continually supports the environmental threatening of the Athabasca Tar Sands, Keystone Pipeline, and other government funded and privatized interests of neoliberalism. I could go on, and many people may argue that 'HEY! we have it pretty good here in Canada' with healthcare, education, etc.. but I ask us to stop, to truly open our eyes to what is occurring not only in our own country, but around the world. How much money is continually spent on wars and militarization around the world? What is Canada truly doing to critically assist in the global refugee crisis?
I am thankful for my opportunity to work for the DPLTE (Democracy, Political Literacy & Transformative Education) project (http://www.education4democracy.net/homeeng) for the past 4 years or so, and the creative opportunities that I have had during my time at OISE (Ontario Institute of Secondary Education) to create stories, research, and podcasts while obtaining my Masters in Social Justice Education. I have included a few poems and pieces of work that I created collaboratively throughout my years at Lakehead University, OISE, and working for the University of Quebec and Montreal. There are also a few poems and stories that I have written while I have been on the subway, in the car, or on my travels.
Growing up with two parents who are teachers, I always thought that I would end up teaching in a formal institution. Not to say that I do not love to teach, but I love to learn even more. As I tried to navigate my way through post secondary education focusing on teaching, I found the necessary cohesive and communal learning from both student and teacher missing from implemented curriculum and classroom discussions. Instead, I began to view school systems as a dictatorship, a merely telling of knowledge by teacher to student. How are community issues integrated into formal learning? How is positive and critical change enacted? Are critical discussions about a variety of multidisciplinary conversed upon in educational settings?
After half a year, I decided to leave the department of teacher education and found my way into interdisciplinary studies, appreciating the ability to connect certain issues together, rather than studying or reading about them as singular topics. For example, not only discussing rising prison populations in North America, but critically analyzing and discussing its interconnected components to the War on Drugs, institutional racism, and colonization. Under the guise of an incredible professor Dr. Carr, I began working as his research assistant and writing, discussion, and creating articles and books about 'democracy' here in Canada and its interconnectedness to education. I write 'democracy' in quotations as I do not truly believe that we live in a democracy here in Canada. Do we truly have engaging and meaningful avenues to raise our opinions, voices, and choices? Do we have much choice within our own lives? A life condemned to debt and paying taxes. A country that fails to recognize its dark continued history of cultural genocide, the appropriation of Indigenous lands and life, and one that continually supports the environmental threatening of the Athabasca Tar Sands, Keystone Pipeline, and other government funded and privatized interests of neoliberalism. I could go on, and many people may argue that 'HEY! we have it pretty good here in Canada' with healthcare, education, etc.. but I ask us to stop, to truly open our eyes to what is occurring not only in our own country, but around the world. How much money is continually spent on wars and militarization around the world? What is Canada truly doing to critically assist in the global refugee crisis?
I am thankful for my opportunity to work for the DPLTE (Democracy, Political Literacy & Transformative Education) project (http://www.education4democracy.net/homeeng) for the past 4 years or so, and the creative opportunities that I have had during my time at OISE (Ontario Institute of Secondary Education) to create stories, research, and podcasts while obtaining my Masters in Social Justice Education. I have included a few poems and pieces of work that I created collaboratively throughout my years at Lakehead University, OISE, and working for the University of Quebec and Montreal. There are also a few poems and stories that I have written while I have been on the subway, in the car, or on my travels.