Tobias Beale and Paul's Hall on CBC's Maritime Magazine

My half-hour radio documentary on Tobias Beale is now online here.

Tobias is a music teacher who lives near Halifax. And he tells great, great stories.

In some ways, it's been a rough year for Tobias. He's spent 15 years devoted to teaching music, and he finds himself doing it in an environment where it really doesn't seem to be a priority.

After spending 8 years teaching band at his local junior high, Tobias found himself out of a job. Today, he's a half-time band resource teacher who travels from school to school. It's crazy and fun, but not the same. He's also bought an old church hall, and is using it to revitalize a locally focused music culture, and to provide a performance space for teens.

Bonus feature: I've posted the raw audio of the first interview I did with Tobias, when I started working on this documentary several months ago. We were chatting upstairs at Paul's Hall, while three local teen bands prepared for a show downstairs.

The file runs about 25 minutes. Click to listen, or right-click to download and listen later.

The interview covers all kinds of fascinating stuff I couldn't work into the final show. I especially like Tobias's answer when I ask him why kids need performance spaces when they all have MySpace and Facebook pages to promote their music. That comes about three quarters of the way through.

Enjoy, and please share your comments by clicking the "comments" link below.

My school breakfast radio documentary

Breakfast is served three mornings a week at East St. Margaret's, the local elementary school in Indian Harbour, Nova Scotia.

And on those three mornings, you can count on 85-year-old Kay Richardson to be there.

I stopped by recently to speak to Kay and some of the students. Click here to listen to the documentary. (It runs four minutes.)

Internet access at school

Maybe an odd topic for the middle of the summer, but I'm behind in putting this one online.

Back at the end of June, I did a short segment on the local CBC afternoon show with host Carmen Klassen.

The subject was the way the Halifax Regional School Board filters access to the Internet. They use software from a company called Netsweeper to control access to web content that may be offensive or that contravenes board policy.

The problem? The same filters apply to everyone, from 6-year-olds to staff.

The most shocking thing I found in doing this piece is just how reticent -- or maybe even frightened -- school staff are to say anything critical. I came across several teachers who were frustrated with the system, but who wouldn't agree to speak in public about it. The one who did told me she would probably get in trouble. 

Meanwhile, the principals at two local high schools outright refused me access to their premises, even to interview students or to test out the system in their computer lab.

I have to give credit to Gerard Costard, the man who manages the system for the board. He'd been excoriated in two previous pieces on the subject by writer Bruce Wark, but he was still friendly and happy to give me an interview. He even set up a laptop in his office with the filters active so I could try out the system.

You can listen to the segment here.

Sparing the children

The Halifax Regional School Board uses a ridiculous computer filtering system -- one that blocks so many sites that teachers have a hard time finding sites their students can use. (Another absurdity is that exactly the same filters apply for all grades. What's unsafe for Grade 1 is unsafe for Grade 12, apparently.)

One of my kids, for example, says his teacher recommended a science site, but the filtering software won't let students access it. It's classified as "gaming." An unintended result is that the high school kids are learning more about computer science, as they access the forbidden sites they need to do their schoolwork through anonymizers and proxy servers.

Of course there are some sites that are so evil children must be protected from them. This one, for instance -- yes, the good old Muddy Hill Post. Try to access it from a computer within the Halifax Regional School Board and you will see this message: "Access denied. This site has been categorized as occult."

The company that provides the filtering software claims to offer the "most advanced proprietary global filtering and categorization service." That must explain why -- in addition to dangerous blogs that offer commentary on freelance writing, Halifax and Nova Scotia news, music and other satanic topics -- they also block access to certain government web sites, teen health sites, dangerous publications like Harper's and the Village Voice, and anything that will let you check your email. And don't even begin to think about researching a paper on the Second World War. Because Hitler, you know, was anti-Semitic. So sites referring to him are a no-no, apparently.

I wonder if the folks behind this software really think living in a CNN world with other viewpoints considered too extreme for young minds will make for a better society.

NSELC: Leadership in editing needed

Last week, I got a letter from the Nova Scotia Education Leadership Consortium.

The NSELC is... well, I'm not exactly sure what it is -- because when I visit their website and click the link that says "About The NSELC" I'm greeted with this:

Historically, the NSELC has targeted educators already in positions of senior leadership (principals, vice principals and central office personnel) and/or teachers who were aspiring to move into an administrative role. The NSELC is now expanding our Modules/Workshops specifically with teachers as the audience i.e. classroom teachers interested in becoming curriculum leaders, student teachers and beginning teachers who want to learn how to be more effective classroom managers, seasoned teachers who want to develop their instructional strategies to better meet the needs of their students, teachers who are fulfilling the role of coach/mentor in their schools or board. This expansion of our audience is very exciting for us and certainly supports what we have learned about effective schools being those that develop and foster leadership from within the school.

The NSELC was writing to me because I chair the local elementary school's advisory council. In their letter, the name of the school was wrong, the address was a mish-mash of my home address and the school's address, and the name of the road was misspelled. (In an email I just received, I'm told that the Nova Scotia Department of Education is to blame for this.)

School administrators keep talking about excellence in schools. How about some excellence in writing (or even decent basic skills) from those preaching it?

Joe Bishara: Reader's Digest education hero 2007

My profile of Joe Bishara, selected by Reader's Digest Canada as their education hero for 2007, is online here.

In order to write the article, I spent a day with Joe, and it's hard to imagine a nicer guy. What he says in the story about the kid throwing a poppy in the mud in 1984 resonated with me. I could imagine myself having done that at the kid's age, in that era.

Joe personalizes the struggles kids face and gives them some perspective. And it's truly amazing to see a teacher who seems completely committed and enthusiastic, even after almost 30 years.

To the hospital!

Hospital staff in Halifax are complaining about students from nearby Citadel High invading their cafeteria at lunch time.

School cafeteria food has a terrible reputation -- but who knew it was so bad that kids would rather sample the epicurean delights of a hospital instead?

Kids n' Comics

Because I write the Daisy Dreamer comic for Chickadee Magazine, I get invited to visit schools throughout Nova Scotia as part of the Writers in the Schools program.

It's fun. I meet readers, talk about writing comics, answer questions, and learn about the comics kids like to read. I also do my best to encourage them as writers, and to give them some tips on writing their own comics.

I was at a school last Friday, and came home to an email from the principal. In part, it said this:

In talking with the teachers after school, they commented on how children who do not normally become involved in conversation/discussion at school became actively involved in your sessions. This was so good to hear!

We are very appreciative of your visit. Thanks again.

I was thrilled. Why? Because comics provide such a great way for kids to get into reading and to express their own creativity. And also because it is so positive for students who may be seen as the difficult ones in a class to get enthusiastic.  I love walking into a classroom and having no idea who the "good" students are and who the "problem" students are.

I'm not trying to ruin comics by saying they're good for you. Just that kids who may be intimidated by other kinds of reading seem less intimidated by picking up a comic.

PC pink

My kids -- like kids across Nova Scotia -- are wearing pink to school today.

The reason? Two Grade 12 students from a rural high school who were upset about a Grade 9 boy being picked on, teased and threatened for wearing a pink shirt. The older guys went out and bought dozens of pink tank tops and t-shirts and handed them out at school in a show of solidarity. Other kids across the province picked up on the idea, and today thousands of them will be wearing pink clothes to school in a show of anti-bullying solidarity.

What's my beef? (You knew there had to be one.) It's with the media coverage. Every story I've read or heard says that the unidentified boys who teased the kid who wore pink that first day called him "a homosexual."

Now, in most contexts, it's not nice to use the words queer and fag in print. But I am pretty sure those bully boys did not say "You're wearing pink -- you're such a homosexual." In this context, using the bland word homosexual takes away from the bullying act itself. It makes it seem more benign. I understand we don't have a direct quote, but surely someone told a reporter something like, "They were calling him a fag."

Just because we don't use some words because they are pejorative or hurtful doesn't mean we should never use them at all. We may not like the words precisely because they are so powerful. Sometimes, that power is something writers should take advantage of, in order to get a story across as accurately as possible.

Less depressing news from an engineering school

Engineering students at the University of California at Santa Cruz create a three-storey depiction of Donkey Kong using 14,000 Post-it notes.



More here.

Department of Personal Stupidity

Clip and save this handy guide to weekend fun!

1) Play a game of capture the flag with a bunch of speedy little 7-10-year-olds on a slippery field covered in snow and mud.

2) Ignore the subsequent pain in your knee.

3) Go out dancing that evening.

4) Wake up in the morning unable to bend your knee.

5) Spend the day at the local hospital's emergency room.

What do school busses and hockey games have in common?

Apparently, if you're a kid, and you get beaten up on a school bus, the people responsible for your safety don't think it's assault.

From CBC Nova Scotia:

The RCMP are investigating an allegation of an attack against a 14-year-old boy on a school bus near Bridgewater earlier this week.

The parents of the boy say he was badly bruised during the incident Monday afternoon, and that no one did anything to intervene during the assault by another student.

RCMP in Lunenburg County confirm they are investigating an assault complaint.

The South Shore Regional School Board is not calling what happened Monday afternoon an assault.

Supt. Nancy Pynch-Worthylake told the Halifax Chronicle Herald the principal of Hebbville Academy is doing his own investigation and will decide whether discipline is warranted.