Catholic educators must be ‘voices that challenge’

To effectively engage and evangelize the students in their care – catholic educators need to take the time to nourish and nurture their own souls.

The recent When Faith Meets Pedagogy 2009 conference in Toronto provided such an opportunity. From the richly inspiring musical stylings of the talented teacher-choir, to the animated youthful Haitian dancers, the grand ball room of the Double Tree hotel was alive and charged with the spirit of God.

The opening keynote address by Father Thomas Rosica, CEO and founder of Salt & Light Television Network, challenged catholic educators to be ‘Prophets, witnesses and lovers of life’ and to be true to the theme (‘Voices that challenge’) of the 2009 conference.

Craig and Marc Kielburger of Free the Children took center stage on day two and held 1,500 catholic teachers in the palms of their hands. Poignant stories of their teacher-parents and details of their precious encounters with such great souls as the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Mother Teresa of Calcutta moved many teachers from laughter to tears.

The Kielburgers urged their teacher-audience to tell their students that they are leaders and implored them to teach the 3 C’s – “Compassion, Courage and Community” – the keys to inspire our youth to make the world a better place.

The closing comments of Father Rosica’s keynote address are a passionate call for all catholic educators to be champions of hope and voices that challenge:

“Let us not be afraid to open our hearts to Jesus and to proclaim him to those around us.  We are his friends, ambassadors, witnesses, servants and prophets.  Your playing small in the Catholic School System of this great Province and in Canada doesn’t serve the world, the Church or the educational system.  Each of you is called to make manifest the glory of God.  And that glory is nothing small!”

Paint Your Dream in 2009-2010

Like an artist’s fresh canvas, the official start of the school year is usually rife with the promise and potential that new beginnings offer us. This year is no different. 

As a JK-12 Technology consultant for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board some of my main duties include:

1. Chairing the elementary and secondary software committees.

2. Co-ordinatoring the Elementary Skills Canada Regional Competition in
partnership with my Waterloo Region District School Board counterpart.

3. As the DeLC (District e-Learning Contact), I will assist student success
teachers as they use the ministry of education’s LMS (Learning Management System) to help students recover their credits.

4. Supporting teachers in their efforts to integrate technology in curriculum delivery. This includes technology such as interactive whiteboards and web-based resources (e.g. Learn360 video streaming, ExploreLearning interactive Gizmos, Adobe Connect etc.).

Other plans for the upcoming school year include:

- more blog posts

- refining my PLN (Professional Learning Network) on Twitter

- presentations on Using Web2.0 to develop a PLN at: the Educational Technology Conference at Nipissing University (Brantford), When Faith
Meets Pedagogy Conference (Toronto)

- completing the final course for the Master of Catholic Thought Program at St. Jerome’s University, then starting my thesis.

What will your painting look like? Carpe Diem!

Photo Credit: immarkcz

The Book of Negroes: To Hell & Back

I always began the same way. Unrolling a map of the world,
I would put one finger on a dot I had drawn to represent my village
of Bayo, put another finger on London and say: “I was born there,
and we are here now, and I’m going to tell you
all about what happened in between.”

And so it was how an elderly Aminata Diallo, the female protagonist in Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes, always began to retell her life story to her daughter’s students during her Friday morning tales.

What happened “in between” is a soul and heart-wrenching saga. It begins when 11 year-old Aminata is captured by slave traders and brutally torn from her African village one day in 1745.

During the next three months she is marched on a grueling trek to the coast of West Africa, branded, sold into slavery and imprisoned on a slave ship that carries her and hundreds of her fellow Africans on a harrowing journey across the Atlantic Ocean.

Sustained mainly by her courageous spirit, intelligence, memories of her loving parents in their African village of Bayo and echoes of their stories and precious life-long lessons, Aminata witnesses unimaginable horrors during her ocean crossing at the height of the 18th century Atlantic slave trade.

Everywhere I turned, men were lying naked, chained to each other
and to their sleeping boards, groaning and crying. Waste and blood
streamed along the floorboards, covering my toes.

A seamless blend of historical fact and fiction, Lawrence weaves an intricate tale of human joy and misery that, at various points in his novel and in almost the same breath, evokes in the reader a potent mixture of hope, pathos, anger, burning indignation and despair.

Like a solitary cork bobbing and buffeted in an ocean current, when she reaches America, Aminata is used, re-sold numerous times and swept from one emotional abyss to another. Caught up in the last days of the American revolutionary war and between claims of southern plantation owners versus British loyalists, Aminata describes the humiliation.

I despised the Americans for taking these Negroes, but my greatest
contempt was for the British. They had used us in every way in their war.
Cooks. Whores. Midwives. Soldiers. We had given them our food, our beds,
our blood and our lives. And when slave owners showed up with their
stories and their paperwork, the British turned their backs
and allowed us to be seized like chattel.

In spite of the profound pain and unfathomable losses in her life, Aminata finds a way to move forward. It is this paradoxical clinging to life, light and the flickering hope of freedom in the face of crushing odds and, at times, impenetrable darkness that propels the reader head-long into the novel and to its compelling conclusion.

No doubt The Book of Negroes will ensure Lawrence an honored place in the pantheon of contemporary Canadian fiction writers, now and for many years to come.

Photo: eir@si

Harry, we hardly knew you

One never completely ‘gets over’ the loss of a parent, so much as adapts to the gut, heart and soul-wrenching void, and eventually learns to live with it.

31 years ago today (August 5, 1978) my father, George (Harry) Redfearn sailed off this “mortal coil” all too soon at the young age of 50.

Born in 1928 – my father was the first of three sons whose father was a gregarious, hard drinking, one-eyed (no, he wasn’t a pirate; he had a glass eye) great lakes’ captain (Capt. Ralph Redfearn) and mother, a tea-totaling Christian fundamentalist lady (Pearl Edwards). Proof that opposites do attract.

Here’s a photo believed to be of my dad taken when he was about seven years old. As you can see from the photo, a number of the Redfearn clan commandeered sailing vessels on the great lakes. My father would have likely followed in the footsteps of his father and become a great lakes captain as well were he not color blind. To become a captain one must be able to distinguish the various colors of flags on sailing vessels.

One of the few treasured memories I have of my grandfather Capt. Ralph (seated just behind and to the left of my father) was the result of the time I threw a glass of milk in his face for no apparent reason.  Instead of beating the daylights out of me (apparently I was one of his favorite grandchildren) without skipping a beat, he wiped the milk off his face and all he said was “well that was one hell of a smart trick”.

Thinking back on this incident now, I can laugh and see the source of some my own father’s incredible patience and good humor. Another favorite memory of mine is the time my father took us aboard a massive lake freighter in about 1968 (one of the Misener freighters) on which my retired grandfather ‘kept ship’ a few winters. I loved losing myself in the cavernous engine room imagining that I was in charge of the humongous vessel.

My dad met my mother (Kathleen Mary Woods) on a blind date in Colborne, Ontario and they eventually got married in 1949. My mom and dad are located in the foreground of the photo, my mom’s foster parents (Gerald and Gladys Fox) behind her and my grandmother Pearl behind my dad. I’m guessing that Capt. Ralph was sailing somewhere on one of the great lakes at the time or maybe he took the picture.

Like many young men of his generation, Harry’s parents could not afford to fund a post-secondary education for him. He worked for a time in a canning factory as a teenager and, when he had the chance, loved to golf, play hockey and baseball, all sports that I would also enjoy playing and watching to this day.

As a young husband he worked full time for a few years as a teller in a number of bank branches around south-western Ontario.  His forte for numbers and managing finances landed him a job as treasurer of Superior Sanitation Services (later acquired by Laidlaw Waste Systems) in Kitchener, Ontario in the early 1960’s.

My dad got me my first job on the back of a waste disposal truck in 1971. It was back-breaking, grueling work, the ‘best’ education I could ever have wished for. I will be forever grateful to him for that incredible life-long lesson.

In 1977 my father accepted a position as general manager of Capital Sanitation in Ottawa and moved there with my mom. They lived large in the nation’s capital for awhile. My wife Barb and I were able to visit them and spend a few memorable nights out on the town.

Less than a year later he began complaining of horrendous headaches, fell ill, was diagnosed with an inoperable giant cerebral aneurysm on the basilar artery and within a few short months and two unsuccessful operations, passed away, though not before instilling in me, my two sisters and older brother a strong work ethic, love of family and enduring zest for life.

Other gifts my father gave to me were a love of: reading, history, political figures (e.g. JFK, RFK, Winston Churchill etc.), space exploration, sailing vessels, Scottish bagpipes and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.

We hardly knew you dad, but your influence lives on.

“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.” – Ecclesiastes

Photo: Harry Redfearn as a dashing young man

Dare to dream

“Magnificent desolation” is how American astronaut ‘Buzz’ Aldrin described the lunar landscape during the historic moon landing on July 20, 1969.

Like millions of other people on planet Earth, I was riveted to my TV set watching the grainy black & white images of the first men on the moon.

“Whew, boy” exclaimed CBS -TV news anchor Walter Cronkite as he wrung his hands and grinned like a tongue-tied giddy schoolboy when the lunar lander finally touched down.

I must admit that I was an impressionable wide-eyed 12 year-old who hung on every static-ridden word and each awkward movement beamed by NASA around the world.

In retrospect, this monumental event in the history of humanity was worth the immense cost in material, human effort and lives.

Much of the technological and scientific progress all around us that we enjoy today is due to bold initiatives such as the one that was launched by the late president John F. Kennedy’s daring challenge in 1961.

Since the historic lunar landing, we do not look at the moon or the stars in the same way. Indeed, the glorious photos of the earth taken from the moon have caused us to view our planet from a completely different perspective.

Almost every astronaut who has viewed the magnificence of earth from the desolate blackness of space has described it as a spiritual experience that has forever changed their life.

God speed to the astronauts currently living at the international space station. God speed to the tens of thousands of people around the world who have contributed and continue to contribute to the noble endeavor of space exploration in man’s quest to exceed his grasp.

God speed to those born and unborn who will walk upon the face of Mars in the years to come.

“To strive, to seek to find and not to yield.”
Tennyson, Ulyssess

Photo Credit: NASA Image Gallery