“Be OK with Different” has been my calming mantra for the past 5 years when, on the first day back to school in 2015, I promised myself it would be my last year in teaching. Now more than ever, being OK with different has kept me grounded while planning through adversity. While many of my …
There comes a time in everyone’s life where you have to decide what you want to do for a living. When that time came for me I knew two things for sure, I enjoyed being in school and I had an unwavering passion for sports. Teaching Physical Education is what I wanted to do and …
My name is Sophie Draluck, I’m a senior at Highland Park High School, and I’d love to introduce you and hopefully your students to the topics of period poverty and menstrual equity, and suggest ways for all of us to become part of the solution. I took on period poverty in 2017, after reading an article …
Two years ago, I accepted an opportunity to support 14 girl-identified youth who wanted to address sexual harassment in our school community and provide a safe space for their peers to learn, grow and excel in leadership, communication and self-empowerment. An exciting endeavor, but (*gulp*) what large goals. How would I support my enthusiastic students’ …
What shared memories will you build during this time of such change to our regular lives? When we see workplaces open, schools resume and fewer people rushing to buy toilet paper, what might we hang onto and make part of the new ‘normal’? What will we be truly grateful for and what might we just …
At this moment in time, please remind yourself of your strength and positive qualities. A very simple yet fun way of doing this is to create an acronym with the letters of your first, middle, and/or last name. Done in numerous health education courses over the years, this activity allows us to pause and reflect …
We are living in difficult times. Our whole lives have seen dramatic changes around the world and yet, life goes on and we are thankful for that. Some of us might live in countries and continents that are far away from our loved ones, from our families and friends. This pandemic has reached almost the …
As you read this, someone somewhere is dealing with job loss, an unearthing shift in mandate, or the loss of a loved one. Among all of this, millions of folks directly involved in education are scrambling for some form of normalcy. As a physical and health education professional working to support teachers in Canada, this …
It’s ironic that I am writing this blog on a Saturday night while drinking a glass of white wine thinking I really should relax more. Andrew Milne has asked me to describe ways in which educators can benefit from self-care. Before I start the journey let’s start with the core purpose or the why around ‘self-care’. I …
As humans, our workloads are becoming more and more demanding, which means stress, anxiety and burnout are on the rise. In this busy, 24/7 world, our natural instinct is to give, give, give. We give to our career, our family, our future. As well as looking after ourselves, we must take care of each other …
You know what topics we weren't taught to teach in college? Preventing HIV with PreP, vaping cessation, sex trafficking, opiate addiction, and COVID-19 to name just a few. And what does society want us to add to our curriculum to address the latest health crisis? Preventing HIV with PreP, vaping cessation, sex trafficking, opiate addiction, …
