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Morning Check-Ins
I am planning my week, and putting together my slides and one of my favourite things is the different ways we start each morning in my class. In fact, over the last two years, whenever I ask for student input on how they think things are going at school, what they are enjoying or not…
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Before I was Born
**NOTE: This is my mood today; kind of a weird surreal feeling. Last night there was a huge snowstorm that included lightning and thunder, and I haven’t been able to shake how weird it was. So I wrote weirdly.** Have you heard of Brantford, Ontario? No. I hadn’t, either. Not until I was born there.…
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Vivid Dreams
Lately, I’d say I have been having the most vivid and compellingly odd dreams for the last month. It’s almost to the point where I remember every day. I am not sure if this is a normal thing, or just my REM sleep kicking it up a notch, but sometimes they haunt me throughout the…
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The agony of friendships
“Don’t read that letter!” There was sunset woven in your hair and feigned panic on your face as you ran toward me. Your sandals crunched in the grass where a soft swoosh should have sounded, but it was early August, and we hadn’t had rain in weeks. “uh…” You grasped my forearms to sit down…
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One/first
There is a loneliness to writing. This moment, even though you have community around you, where inevitably it is you and your keyboard (or pen). The clicking echos off of the quiet of your mind, because you are also sitting on the first word. page. time. to write and to begin to pull apart and…
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“What would happen if…?” Navigating students wanting to have hard conversations
Conferencing with a student during independent reading, one of my students, I think they thought they were being funny, said, “What if a two-year-old pressed a button that set off nuclear weapons?” They sort of smirked but held my gaze to see how I would respond. Another student glanced over the top of their book…
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An open letter
Dear ______________________, I am writing you today because I have no one else to write to. I am also writing you to lament that the art of letter writing has long since passed. No one does it anymore. Only because they feel they have to. Some cordial process one must not abandon. As in the…
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The photographs I didn’t see
The photos all had one thing in common — me in them. I was 5. Then 10. Then 17. I was always smiling, but never with my eyes. When I opened the envelope, not expecting pictures at all (but, then, I remembered a phone conversation with her. She was sorting all of her photographs. “I…
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Can math play be a part of trauma-informed care?
Need more information on trauma-informed teaching? Check out Alex Shevrin Venet’s resource round up blog. They were wooden blocks, and they were smooth. My fingers slid over the edges, so precise, and met at the corner of the cube. The teacher was talking, that I was aware, but my attention was on the soothing beauty…
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My Personal Why: Why I am writing my thesis with a focus on trauma-informed education
Picture a fancy art gallery. You know the kind I am talking about. They’re small, with narrow, cluttered hallways. Art of various sizes all over the walls. Shelves and display cases askew around the room. Sculptures of varying breakable material in every direction you turn. You kind of shuffle through and do your best to…
Heidi Allum
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Heidi Allum 