Au Nord Du Quebec

Happy Halloween everyone!  This post will be slightly shorter, but filled with pictures because I have had requests for more images of where I live and my adorable puppy.  I have been training Lily and taking her on a long walk almost every day and she is learning so quickly! She can sit, give her paws and even wait for her food until I tell her "okay". When we go on long walks, they are still in the community but we go more into the woods and on ATV or 4-wheeler paths. This way I am able to let her off-leash so she can run and play with her doggy friends if we walk together. My mom runs a wonderful small dog rescue in Massachusetts called Yellow Rose Animal Rescure (check it out  here ) and she sews bandanas and chew toys to fundraise for the rescue. In the picture below, Lily decided she didn't want to sleep all the way in her bed, and she is showing off one of my mom's bandanas!  The picture below was taken on Sunday morning when my neighbor and I...

I was lucky enough to attend the "Achieving Excellence for Indigenous Canadian Learners" Conference in Montreal this past week. The conference lasted from Wednesday to Thursday and was excellent. It is so important for us to realize how we are putting our indigenous youth at risk by believing they are at a disadvantage. In many situations, the best way to up the success of students is the response to intervention and put a system in place to simultaneously catch students up while teaching them grade-level material. It is a challenging feat, but with support, good teaching and early intervention more students can be successful. The conference featured many keynote speakers and breakout sessions dealing with various aspects of teaching and learning. I found it very interesting the idea that a toxic school environment and staff/admin relationship can sink a school very quickly. The students are the most important part of a school, but too often decisions are made based on what t...

I cannot stop staring at the sky. I know that my last post was about the sky but I want this one to be about it as well because I saw the Northern Lights for the first time last night! At first I thought it was just some clouds laying low in the sky, but then I noticed the stars peeking through. I was in my backyard and right away I called my neighbor over to look at the sky. He also said it looked like the Northern Lights, so we drove to a spot outside town with no lights and stared at the sky for 45 minutes. The lights were breathtaking. I couldn't get any pictures because everything was so dark, but the lights were shimmering and almost dancing across the sky. There were clouds of the lights and they looked like they were alive in the sky. A couple came to the spot we were at and set up a tripod to get some long exposure shots and those caught the lights in the most amazing way. This evening on my way to the gym, the sky was glowing yellow, orange, red and purple. The pictures...

Another week gone by and we are one short week away from Canadian Thanksgiving (Columbus Day for you Americans). In Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving in a very similar way as in the US, but the holiday is on the Monday, so celebrations are typically Sunday dinners. This time of year is the best time to hunt moose, so many students in all grades are absent from school to go in the bush with their parents to hunt and trap. I only have 10 students in my class and 2 of them were in the bush this week! Although I only had 8 students, it was still an active and busy week. Friday was Declaration Day for the Cree School Board, meaning that the school gets a certain amount of funding based on how many students are present that day. Since we want to encourage students to be present for the day, we organized activities and snacks throughout the day. Each class got hot dogs and rice crispy treats just before lunch! Once the weekend started, I knew I wanted to take advantage of the fall weather....