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McLOLcat

11 Mar, 10 tweets, 2 min read

My previous thread talked about course offerings & education cuts = less high school courses.

And it reminded me of some of my favourite optional high school courses!

So here's a🧵about awesome Ontario HS courses your child should consider.

Teachers feel free to contribute!

Before I start, a brief explanation about course codes.

First 3 letters is the course.

Number that follow is the grade. (Grade 9 = 1, grade 10 = 2, etc.)

The letter denotes level. (E.g. open, applied, college, university, mixed, etc.)

Example: ENG3C = Grade 11 College English

I'm an arts/English teacher so I like my general art courses, but you know what gets me super excited? Specialty courses.

Ceramics (AWC3/4M) is great. Clay is an expensive material most people can't afford, but in school you get to learn about this satisfying medium for free.

Fashion and Textile Design (AWI2O/3M/4M). I teach my students how to sew by hand & with a machine as well as fashion history and critical thinking.

Get physical with your art in Printmaking (AWO3M/4M) where you learn lino printing, silk screening, and more!

Math for Work and Everyday Life (MEL3E/4E) is a course I always encourage students to take. You learn about statistics, budgeting, taxes, investments, etc. Basically math...for your work and everyday life. :)

Counts as one of your compulsory math credits for your OSSD!

I'm going to throw out Nutrition and Health (HFA4U), but the Ontario curriculum have a ton of food and nutrition courses. There's also Food and Culture (HFC3E), Food and Healthy Living (HFL4E), and others I probably don't know about.

Learn about what you and others eat!

Learn about planet Earth in Earth & Space Science (SES4U)! Learn about Earth's place in the solar system, about what the earth is made of, and the history and future of the universe.

Pretty relevant considering we all live on this planet that we're rapidly destroying.

I taught Media Studies (EMS3O) for a few years and it's such a fun and relevant course. We live in a media saturated world, bombarded with messages that we need to critically understand and examine.

You're reading this on Twitter. Need I say more? :)

Canadian and International Law (CLN4U) is a popular course with our students. Most of my students are eager to understand their own rights as well as the history of Canadian law, who made those laws, and the very relevant human rights and social justice issues we face today.

There are other fantastic courses out there so if you want to share your favourite Ontario course, feel free to. :)

If your child has an interest in something, chances are the Ontario curriculum has a course for it. Don't be afraid to ask and expand your search!

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More from @mclolcat

McLOLcat

@mclolcat

11 Mar

@Sflecce

The #OntEd system offer a HUGE variety of secondary courses & now we can add ASL and LSQ.

But you'll never be able to take any of those courses if @Sflecce go through with the billions in education cuts.

A brief🧵to explain why and how course offerings work.

The most important thing you have to understand is your local high school's obligation is to offer enough courses so that your child can graduate with a diploma.

Your local school are assigned a certain amount of Instructional Units (IU). Each unit represents a course.

Your school would have asked your child what courses they would like to take next year. That's taken into consideration, but the IUs will first be used to create compulsory courses like English, grade 9 math, etc.

The details here can become tricky.

Read 14 tweets

McLOLcat

@mclolcat

9 Jul 20

@Sflecce

I missed today's provincial press conference because I was busy working on my AQ course. I was told that apparently @Sflecce now hates online learning?

A large part of why remote learning was a nightmare was because of Lecce.

It's disingenuous to act as if you're not involved.

I don't envy the job of politicians. Inevitably, some people are going to disagree. Some of those people will be angry even.

But I respect politicians who put a genuine effort for public good & own up to their actions. It's a sign of strong leadership.

Lecce was the one who touted out remote learning like he invented it. While teachers scrambled to make it work, Lecce tried to present our efforts as well as a stripped down version of TVO online learning as his efforts and his plans.

He also made our jobs more difficult.

Read 10 tweets

McLOLcat

@mclolcat

25 May 20

People are worried about the abuse of paid sick days. Let me tell you as a teacher with 11 paid sick days:

1. Not everyone will take their full allotment of sick days.
2. It'll take a lot more than paid sick days to change our toxic work culture.

Let me explain.

Why are schools a cesspool of germs? It's simple:

Everyone goes to school sick.

Not only is it more work to take a sick day, we disapprove of teachers taking them. From our politicians to punitive attendance policies, we send the msg that you're better off going to work sick.

So teachers drag their sick butts to school. We role model to students that a hard worker is one that comes to work sick. We think positively of the sick teacher in the classroom & cast suspicion on anyone who takes a sick day.

How sick are they?

Are they REALLY sick?

Read 9 tweets

McLOLcat

@mclolcat

1 Apr 20

In my virtual staff mtg today, admin stressed to focus on reconnecting w/ students as oppose to assess/evaluation.

Oh, BTW OUAC might want marks in late April.

Wait what?

Also: remote learning does not work well w/ Growing Success, the gov't's own policy doc on assess/eval

I teach all art courses. The last minute announcement to school closures meant that most of my students left behind half-finished art pieces in a building that now no one can access except once for 15 mins.

I have a half full kiln of unfired clay.

It takes 10 hrs to fire clay.

But even with that, I can manage. I am creative, resourceful, & teach blended learning. I can figure things out. I can be flexible.

Just as soon as:

- the gov't figures out what they want w/ assessment/evaluation
- I find out the tech & supplies accessibility of all my students

Read 6 tweets

McLOLcat

@mclolcat

9 Mar 20

https://twitter.com/sabrinananji/status/1237006647001833475

This is problematic on so many levels that I need a thread to explain.

Background: I teach at a blended learning school. Many of our students work during school hrs so our flexible timetable allows for it.

https://twitter.com/sabrinananji/status/1237006647001833475

I'm not necessarily opposed to students working in itself. There are many reasons why students need to work:

- Support their family
- Support themselves
- Extra spending cash

But it takes a particularly disciplined student to successfully balance work/school.

I say this b/c not many teens are good at it. They either overschedule themselves or their work does. Then they skip school or come to school too tired to learn.

At my school I'm always cautious when a student tells me they got a job. There's a chance they'll drop out of school.

Read 10 tweets

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