Creative Passion Projects

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When the pandemic first hit and closed down schools in March, I was grateful to continue working from home for Treaty Education Alliance, who I was employed by at the time. We spent the spring months hosting regular PD meetings with teachers trying to develop the best strategies for keeping students engaged in learning from home with help from their teachers to guide the process. I thought, what better place to start than to engage students in creating projects around what they are already good at, most interested in and/or passionate about.

At the time, I was hosting weekly PD’s with an awesome group of middle-years teachers through the Teams platform. I decided to update an inquiry-project template that I had used earlier in my teaching career and adapt it to engage student passion and interests.

Treaty Education Alliance has made this a free resource for others to utilize. The hope is that it can help spark creative passion projects for anyone to take up in their own lives. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have a passion project that you’d like to see featured on this featured blog page, and I would be happy to share it with a wider audience here.

Here is the link to the PDF version of the template:

Passion Project WorkbookPDF

Learning the Land TEA & NCC Partnership Showcase

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It was an awesome experience having spent 2014-2020 coordinating a Learning the Land partnership between Treaty Education Alliance (TEA) and the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) that included many different projects and initiatives over that time-span, some of which are featured in the video above.

Background Information on Video:

Back on June 10th of 2020, we released this video to celebrate and showcase some of the projects and initiatives that were developed and delivered in partnership with TEA, NCC and our affiliated schools and first nations, including:
Before shooting this video, each group of students were asked:
  1. What word or symbol would best represent what your group would like to see more of in this world?
  2.  What key land locations around your First Nation best represent who you are and where you come from?
The video reveals the answers to those questions, while set in time and in tune with three songs produced and created by N’we Jinan Artists and the talented youth from Kawacatoose, Cote and Ocean Man first nations, (played in the following order): “MANY PATHS” // Kawacatoose First Nation: https://youtu.be/Qpbw6UvB21U “LOOK AT ME” // Cote First Nation: https://youtu.be/C5FVxXzK8Hs “HUNGER FOR MORE” // Ocean Man First Nation: https://youtu.be/rk9fIVSMVHg
Hope you enjoy it, like, comment, or share!

Learning the Land TEA & OBC Partnership Showcase

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From 2017-2019, I had the opportunity to coordinate another Learning the Land partnerships between Treaty Education Alliance and Outward Bound Canada.

The video below highlights our second trip up to kâniyâsihk Culture Camp run by Outward Bound Instructor Dr. Kevin Lewis.

Throughout the two-year partnership, educators from Treaty Education Alliance affiliated schools had opportunities to attend of series of outdoor camps and training modules. The camps were intended to build greater capacities of teachers to offer strong land-based learning programs to their students.

The following video highlights some of that training and features a few of the awesome educators that were able to take part.

Active Citizenship for Sustainable Communities

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Back in the 2012/2013 school year, I was invited by my mother, Dr. Carol Fulton to get involved in a project to document the learning experiences of a group of Grade 8 students at Ecole Massey Elementary School who would be engaged in a series of Active Citizenship projects and around and exploratory theme of sustainability, planned out and facilitated by their teacher, Laurel LaBar-Ahmed.

What came out of it, was a three part video series and resource manual that is intended to help teachers in the planning process of creating and engaging students in some active citizenship projects of their own.

Here is the link to the Active Citizenship for Sustainable Communities Manual along with the three-part video series below:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Setting the Stage for Creative Classroom Connections

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To help set the stage for all kinds of creative and inspiring projects that I hope to share through this page, I wanted to share with you a song that I wrote that had me thinking about my own creative passions and interests in life and pondering questions like:

  • What drives the creative process?
  • Where can we find the levels of resolve needed to stoke the creative fires within us?
  • What types of activities would allow us to tap into a sense of purpose, passion, play and exploration through creativity?
  • How could I best help guide and support this process?
  • What would an ideal creative learning environment look like?
  • How best can I help spark the creative spirit within us all?

Click on the video below to hear this song, and while you listen, I invite you to scroll down and read about the inspiration and songwriting process that went into this song. 

 

Songwriting process unique to this song:

This first part of this track initially came to me as a loop that I had playing in my head while driving home from a day out at a school I was working with. I had been interested in acquiring a loop station for a few years. When this loop came into my head:

Don’t stop if you really wanna make it

Don’t stop! Keep on asking why?

Don’t stop, if you really want to make it,

Don’t Stop! Keep on asking why!

I decided it was a good sign and time to purchase an RC-300 Loop Station to play around and explore this groove a little more. Keep on asking why. And what a great driving inquiry question; ‘why’ can help you uncover a sense of purpose in why you are here and what you are drawn to seek and explore in this life.

The second part of this song came to me after hosting a Nation-builder Youth Forum while working with Treaty Education Alliance back in November of 2019. For this section, I was reflecting on the words of the Honourable Senator Murray Sinclair.

Education is the key to walking on this journey of reconciliation. Teachers, in particular, have a sacred responsibility to ensure that all their children, regardless of their heritage, are able to think about four key questions throughout their education: “Where do I come from?”, “Where am I going?” “Why am I here?”, and most importantly, “Who am I?”

– The Hon. Senator Murray Sinclair, Chair for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

 

And thus, the lines that came out in the song:

Why am I here?

Where am I from?

Where am I going?

As we remember who we are

For the third part of the song, I was beginning to envision what the answers to these questions could mean for sparking creative potentials within us:

Creativity class, how’re we gonna pull this through?

Creativity class, think up what your mind can do?

Creativity class, you’re body, heart and soul count too,

Creativity class, dreaming, am an eye on you

To finish the song from here, the final verse is intended as a freestyle to be guided by the moment. The final verse becomes an invocation to the students to come forward and add something new to the song’s loop. From here, all things are possible, and I’m excited to see what happens as I build the Creative Classroom Connections passion project from the ground up that started with a simple tune in my head.