INTRODUCTION

When she worked in a restaurant next door to a home of mentally challenged people, she charged $2,00 (taxes included) for every item in the menu for anyone from the home. It made possible to them to come alone and order anything with no need of a companion to do the Math; they were given the choice to become regular customers, a pleasure that they enjoyed a lot. Accommodating their special needs was extra job for all the workers in that restaurant: being alert to change established routines, writing details on the order, taking care to do smaller portion as well special container. She told us the earning was low and the work was hard but the routine was good and the feeling of belonging paid off the extra efforts.

The stories in this website are like this one, people creating solutions to match a life situation. In this fast paced world of standard solutions, caring teachers will be happy to see their efforts acknowledged and reminded about their own brave stories when they slowed down and took their time to innovate when there was a need. Here we offer stories with no moral, no right or wrong but always with a lot of warmth and humanity. Usually these stories don’t bring a method to be repeated but they enrich one’s sense of understanding and empower one’s intuition and imagination, serving to liberate one’s mind to appreciate diversity, care and innovation.

So if your business is helping people succeed, like a parent, educator, planner or counselor, or if you are researching education, facing culture shock, welcome, this blog is for you!

Our stories are rarely found in official documents; our stories are happening outside the mainstream system's expectations: nobody expects chinese and aboriginal cultures to have the same saying; nobody expects dependability to be seen as a weakness in the text book; nobody expects excluding strategies to be taught in the text book; nobody expects a divorce to be a learning barrier; nobody expects a student who gives up the chance to learn because of one bad event with the teacher; nobody expects abuse at home; nobody expects the poor public transportation system; nobody expects the beauty queen hides a scar under her hair, nobody expects plagiarism to become excuse for student's non-participation; nobody expects to be graded on teamwork in a class that has no group work. These stories are happening to us and as one classmate said: "It will affect us all, whether you know it or not".

Measures, rules, plans, careers, and benchmarking are important to give an overview; these concepts belong to the science-industrialization paradigm. Learning and teaching techniques have been created. What now? Now is the time for understanding, time to connect, so teachers need to feel empowered to go beyond these concepts, spending more time with heart and soul issues. Our stories show our standpoint; our conversations revealed life, school and classroom as three interconnected themes and suggested attention to fairness, innovation and caring to complement the worries about excellence, morality, and safety in classroom.

For a synopsis of the 3 Investigation Themes (Life, School and Classroom), please click here

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Main Page(Introduction)
Dialogues&Stories (Life, School, Classroom)