Thursday 21 January 2016

This is the first Blog post I'm putting here.

To introduce myself, I am a junior high school teacher living in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I am starting this blog to chronicle the life and times of a teacher, to be a place to store stories and tales from the blackboard jungle, and to share my triumphs and more than occasional failures.

I am passionate about a few things in life. One is my interest in menswear in general and most specifically the "Trad" genre if such a thing actually exists. I've been diagnosed with OCBD. I am an iveterate scrounger and love to mine for fins in thrift and second hand stores. Truth be known, I'm pretty sure that the old saying "They don't make them like that any more" is pretty true. The thrill is in the hunt and in the satisfaction of grabbing something rare and in great condition. Of course, it has to be useful. Living in an apartment leaves no room room for extraneous junk. Therein lies one of my challenges, my eyes could easily be bigger than my closet space.

Kindness matters, so do manners. I may rant here from time to time about the degenerating lack of civility I find in our society. Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself - not do unto others before they do unto you. Sometime this requires patience, especially with teens who mimic the examples they see and tend to shoot first and aim later.

I like to travel and to try to include visits to farmers, wineries, and little out of the way eating spots along the way. Perhaps I'll share some of the photos I take in my travels.

People who know me know that I am most happy when I am around dogs. All animals are like little kids to me, but dogs are my favorite. My wife goes gaga over babies and little kids. For me, I get the same feeling from being around anyone with 4 legs, poodle or pitbull.

The intention of this blog is also to throw out teaching ideas I come across which either I use and can comment on, or which I have heard about and haven't yet tried. Today's student needs a wide variety of teaching techniques and modalities. You have to change it up and try different things to get the buy in, gone are the days of textbooks and group projects and notes off the overhead. I've been around long enough to have made copies on a Gestetner, but I am more than open to the latest ideas too.

Anyway, if you care to you can follow me on this blog. I have it connected to my about.me page as well. I can be found on Twitter @MrWiersma

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