Time that, looking at my family update letter, I don't have much of!

Whew! What a year it has been!

As we sit here in the middle of the second wave of the COVID virus, and with a new, more contagious version making the rounds, I’m kind of blown away by how much we actually did this year, given that the world in general slowed WAY down after March.

Rhys has had a particularly busy year, and it is so easy to forget that he is essentially holding down two full time jobs, between school and the acting. Despite that, he has managed to get up to some fun with the Scouts as well. Earlier this year, he took scuba diving lessons with his scout patrol, as well as going out for a winter camp up by Whistler. I wasn’t called upon this time to drive out to collect stranded Scouts from the side of the highway due to vehicular altercations with fall rocks from the cliff-side, so I certainly called it a win.

He had his 13th birthday party in two parts, given that he is friends with a few kids that are... somewhat socially awkward... and Rhys is aware that mixing the social groups isn’t likely to be successful. As a result, he had one at an Escape Room that was a lot of fun and awfully creepy! One of the boys who came to the game was quite sheltered by his parents, and he was a little overwhelmed by the creep factor, but soldiered through okay! The actor who was our guide/contact was very good, and we managed to escape - just! The other birthday was a sleep over with the awkward group of kids... which was definitely interesting to listen in on sometimes!

Professionally, Rhys had some pretty big call backs, especially for a Ryan Reynolds movie that was going to be filmed in the Vancouver area. He didn’t get it, which was sad, but that’s the case for most auditions. He succeeds on far more of his auditions than he really should, if you go by industry numbers, and has a ridiculously high level of call-backs. His series, Upload, came out early in the year to very good reviews. People were unfailingly positive about his portrayal of the character. He also filmed an episode of The Haunting of Bly Manor, which he did with an English accent. Helps having it in his ears a fair amount, but he managed to hold it well on set. He also booked and filmed a movie in Montreal, which was initially delayed due to COVID. They were the first movie to be up and running again when the movie industry was allowed to resume; with growing animals as part of the film’s story, they were on a rather unforgiving timeline. Keep an eye out for Gilles de Maistre’s The Wolf and the Lion, which should be being released in April. Gilles is a French director, and the movie is slated for a European release... not sure what the North American distribution will be. When he got back from that, he had a little downtime before being back on set for the filming of the most recent instalment of Hallmark’s Godwinks Christmas series of movies. His was called Second Chance, First Love and was remarkable for his acting coach having also been cast in it! They never shared screen time, but it was still pretty awesome to have them cast in the same production.

It wasn’t the only thing Rhys has been cast in with his acting coach! While we can’t share the details until it is released, Rhys has been cast as a major recurring character in a fun kids series that will, I believe, be on the Netflix platform. (I’m losing track of where to find Rhys’s projects at this point!) His coach - Zahf Paroo - was cast as the school’s Principal in the series; given Zahf’s great sense of comedic timing, he’s going to do a wonderful job of it! Rhys is actually in the middle of filming the series... they’re on Winter Holidays Hiatus, where the film industry basically shuts down for 2 weeks... and he’s back on set with them again in mid January. The series is filming in Victoria, and he has been living in the Hotel Oswego there during filming. He is getting along well with the three girls cast as the series leads, who are 10, 11, and 12 to his 13.

Funnily enough, he was also cast for a major voice over part for another kids series by the same production company, and the voice over recording times overlapped with the on set filming times. Our talent agency was happy that we could just say to them “can you sort out availability internally before asking if Rhys can record on certain dates/times?” as it definitely cut down on the back and forth! This was all made more challenging by the fact that the series was shooting in Victoria, but the recording studio was in Vancouver. They tried to find studio space in Victoria to avoid having to have Rhys do a back-and-forth to the mainland to do the VO work, but were unable to make that happen. They are really thrilled with how fast Rhys is at VO work (he’s generally been done in about half the time they’ve budgeted) and how accommodating we’ve been with travel and scheduling.

Also of note professionally, Rhys is now officially an award winning actor. He was put forwards for an award on his work on Upload and won the Joey award for his age category (12-15 year olds). The Joeys are a Canadian industry award for child actors and he’s pretty stoked on his win.

That’s a lot of stuff for a kid to pack into a COVID year! This has been made possible by a rather large shift in our personal lives; last April, with a change in our financial circumstances, Frazer was able to quit his job at the Legal Services Society (with a not-so-quiet “good riddance” on the way out the door in the form of a thorough, detailed, no-holds-barred exit interview with HR) and is now officially a “set-dad”. His job is now stay-at-home dad and professional child-wrangler. It has been a huge boon on a number of levels; first of all, Frazer has been able to be the one travelling with Rhys for location shoots where he’s had to stay over night with no trouble at all. With filming in both Montreal and Victoria this year, that’s been extremely helpful. Secondly, it has helped his mental health amazingly. As his therapist said, he could help him find strategies to cope with the pain of metaphorically having his hand hit with a hammer, but if his job consists of having his hand repeatedly hit with a hammer, there was only so much that coping skills were going to do to help. We’ve still got a ways to go... it took 10 years for him to get to this stage, so the recovery will take a while... but a lack of hammer hitting helps.

Of course, it has also helped considerably that he still has friends who report back as to what is still going on at the ex-job. They didn’t post Frazer’s job for months, because they were re-working the job position write-up to indicate what Frazer was actually doing, rather than what the job was supposed to entail. Then they posted it... and it was up for 6 weeks without a single qualified applicant. The network administrator they had recently hired looked at it and told them they were searching for a unicorn. The very thing that had made Frazer question himself and stopped him from looking for positions outside of LSS (his being a jack of all trades and master of none - he can code, design graphics for web and print, develop user interfaces, and create and integrate databases, while mapping and maintaining a sprawling and heavily interconnected series of sites, but is not specialized into any one area - meant that he was under-qualified for most targeted positions he looked at) made him an incredibly valuable, but under-valued, resource at LSS.

They have now (finally!) posted his position in its original iteration and will be relying on a series of outside contractors and other agencies to try and maintain and support their site development. Frazer is feeling bad for his team (he liked the people he managed and supported a lot) but is feeling pretty vindicated, and a little vindictive, about the rest of it.

In other positive news for Frazer, we’ve been trying to find a solution to his worsening close-vision as it comes to one of his hobbies; painting miniatures. We’ve tried a magnifying glass on a stand, and careful lighting, and still, within minutes of starting to paint, he was dealing with double vision and eye strain. Getting him a pair of eye-glass magnifiers has made all the difference! He can take off his reading glasses and put those ones on, and clip in one of a number of different magnified lenses, and he is back to being able to paint for hours.

Along with the joy of aging eye sight, I also finally convinced Frazer to get his hearing checked. We had a lovely lady come and do a test with him at home (even with COVID! She often works with the elderly, so she came in in full PPE!) and while there is some very minor hearing loss in a few registers, it wasn’t enough to be a concern at this point. She said very positive things about him having been proactive about it, however, and will be back yearly to retest him, as most people wait too long. By the time you’re having serious trouble discerning sounds, your brain - not having used those neural pathways - prunes them, and you can no longer differentiate between the phonetics even if you receive a hearing aid... so you end up with some permanent sound discrimination loss, even though you regain the decibel ranges with a hearing aid. I found that fascinating, and feel like it needs to be made more common knowledge!

COVID also lead to an increase, rather than decrease, in work for me. My professional year started off with our contract negotiations continuing to drag on, and on, and on... with an NDP gov’t, we’d hoped for a little more flexibility given we were in a teacher shortage situation, but the team doing the negotiations were hold overs from the previous government and looked to be continuing by the BC Lib playbook. The NDP put money into education, yes... into playgrounds and seismic upgrades, and new schools... but kept the operational budgets (the stuff that actually affects the insides of the schools, and most directly impacts classrooms and kids and salaries) stationary. *sighs* After COVID hit, we were able to finally get a contract that provided a more than inflation increase, some important funding to support new teachers, and no concessions... though it felt like a bit of a pittance after 15 years of having to fight tooth and nail to hold ground at all against a very anti-union, anti-public-education gov’t.

I remain the President of myPITA. With COVID came the need to cancel our May Whistler conference, which was an unfortunate situation, and then the need to pivot our fall conference to being online. That was one heck of a learning curve for all the teachers and organizers involved! It was successfully done, however, and seemed to be well received. Our upcoming May conference will be online as well... and it has opened up a set of skills and abilities for myPITA.

Online pandemic teaching was very challenging; and I never want to go back to having to do both in person for some kids and online for everyone else like we did in June. The BCTF made it very clear to the school boards that that was unsustainable... not that the gov’t has been listening to classroom teachers much during this start up. I am on one of the BC Ministry of Education’s restart committees as a BCTF representative and as a voice for the province’s Intermediate teachers, and it really feels like screaming into the void sometimes. We’re politely listened to, and then that information is largely ignored or not given enough weight to influence the policy decisions being made.

Then they called a snap election, mid Pandemic, and everything ground to a halt during that interregnum period. Which, when so many of our members are worried about their health and safety, given that schools have a completely different set of health regulations that are lesser than those found everywhere else, was not something that made BC teachers happy.

In addition to all that, I am also on the BCTF Professional Issues Advisory Committee, which was pretty busy given the fall out for education for the pandemic and helped to organize and run a couple of sessions at the BCTF summer leadership conference - held online this year, sadly.

In domestic news, we started with a meal-prep delivery service for two meals a week, which had definitely jazzed up our evening meals and means a couple fewer decisions for me to make in a week. Thank gods. Only problem that I have with them is the amount of plastic waste they create, and the fact that I usually halve the oil in their sauces. I’m sure there are other things I could say, but I’m going to run out of space, so I will just hope that 2021 keeps you safe and healthy, and that - while I am horrific at initiating a phone call myself - I’m always willing to chat!

All our love!

We submitted Rhys' name for a Canadian Young Actor's Award called The Joey's (https://www.joeyawards.com/).

He won the category we submitted him to for his work on Upload.

My son is officially an award-winning actor...

https://www.instagram.com/p/CHUHppXhSQk/

I have considerable anxiety over the myPITA (Provincial Intermediate and Middle Years Teachers Association) email inbox. This might have something to do with the 500 actionable emails sitting in it... and the fact that that number isn't getting smaller, even as more emails keep coming in.

The biggest problem happens when I actually close the tab/window with the myPITA inbox in it... because then it is the fear of the unknown. How much worse has it gotten?

And I procrastinate opening it... which just makes that fear worse.

In the end, once I have gathered the intestinal fortitude to deal with it, (or even if I haven't), I go about getting back into it the following way:

1. Open the browser.
2. Type in the URL, hit enter, and then walk away from the computer and do something else.
3. Wander past the computer and glance at the screen to see how bad the email count it/how different from last time I was in there.
4. Sit down and switch to another browser and do something else for a few minutes, with the inbox open in the background and visible above/to the side of the browser I'm in
5. Make the email inbox my active window and actually deal with the most recent emails.

And then I roll my eyes at myself and my ridiculous reaction to a bunch of ones and zeros.

This has just been made worse by COVID brain, since my ability to string words together has been negatively affected by this, and my exhaustion levels are so much higher than they have ever been before. Hopefully I'll be able to start once again making a dent on the emails that are piling up.

Stupid emails.

If they were all just one-action emails, it wouldn't be that bad... but often they are "ask person B for more info and then reply to person A with answer" and they get lost, or I have to remember to follow up. Or it involves me writing out a thoughtful reply with a minimum of misunderstandings involved. Or I have to think about whether the request is even doable.

Anyways... stupid emails. Stupid anxiety over emails.

Do you ever wonder how we go to this point from a creature whose primary focus was in finding enough food to eat, bonding with pack mates, and avoiding predators?

Like...what the actual fuck, evolution...

My friend and coworker's mother passed away not last weekend but the weekend before, so she has been absent on bereavement leave. As a result, she hasn't been in my class to teach our ELL/SIOP lessons, so I have been working with a (perfectly lovely) teacher-on-call. I've been open with the class about why, and today we talked about how to talk about death and sympathy.

It is so rare that we openly talk about death nowadays... and I know that I was never specifically taught about what to say or do if someone is grieving. People feel awkward and unsure. So we had a discussion about it, talked about some of the words you can say, and also addressed how to make sure you aren't imposing your religion on someone else's grief (said co-worker is not Christian, and many of my students are from a strongly evangelical church in the vicinity.)

We talked about how religious sympathy cards should be given if you are sure the religious beliefs of the one receiving them matches your own, and that otherwise you should go for more generic words. That "I'm sure your mom is with God in heaven" doesn't make sense if that's not your religious outlook, but that "I'm sure your mom is at peace" works in its place. We talked about the various imagery used to portray sympathy and the translation of the soul from living to afterlife in European culture, and I asked them to share any that were from their home cultures (I should really have done some research on that beforehand, but I was too busy making an exemplar card.) We talked about sharing our own experiences of grief so that someone doesn't feel alone in their sadness, but that sadness when someone passing is natural, and wishing for them to "feel happier soon" is awkward to say and expect, because it takes time, and you can't rush it.

Then we wrote sympathy cards, and drew pictures for the front of the cards. Symbols they chose from were single lit candles, rainbows, butterflies (the change from one life to the next), calla lilies (which are super easy to draw) or flowers in general, celtic knots, and a couple of students chose to use the yin-yang symbol or a wheel as appropriate sympathy symbols from their cultures. One student suggested poppies (it being November and all), so we had a conversation about how that would definitely be appropriate if the person involved had been a soldier, or died in service, but that it probably wasn't the best sympathy symbol for this particular case.

One student was quite sad herself, having remembered how she felt when her Grandfather died and I shared with her the image I had run into on the internet of grief like a ball inside a box with a grief button, and how when you first lose someone, the ball is really big, so as it bounces around it keeps hitting the grief button and it hurts so much, so often, and that as time goes on, the ball shrinks in size, so it hits the button less... but that the ball never disappears completely, and sometimes it will unexpectedly hit that grief button and we have a moment or two of just as much pain as if it had just happened, but then it passes until the next time the button is hit. She really latched on to the idea, and ended up writing it all out to share with my co-worker in her sympathy card to her.

Overall, it was an intense but calm discussion and activity, and I feel like my kids got information from it that will serve them well in the future.

There was some silly survey thing where they were figuring out how masculine/feminine you are based on how you identify with various traits... so, despite how ridiculous the entire idea is, I was sort of poking along it, and when I came to the word "ambitious" I really started wondering how much of my view of myself is not supported by how others view me.

I don't consider myself ambitious. Yet... I'm president of a provincial PSA, involved in the Professional Issues Advisory Council, and on Ministerial committees.

I don't consider myself forceful. Yet... if I'm passionate about something, I know I sometimes bulldoze conversations.

I don't consider myself to have a strong personality (nor a mild one). Yet, I think others might disagree? I certainly have a strong sense of who I am, internal to myself, and don't care all that much about others' view of me. Does that indicate a strong personality?

I don't consider myself energetic. Yet... I have people comment on "how you find the energy to do all this?"

So... in short... I'm not sure I can do this "test", because I'm not sure that how I view me vs. how I present to others fit.

I just thought it was interesting.

Okay... so, that didn't work.

Bullet point update, because apparently life became awfully busy and journalling fell off the radar.

- Completed the 100-day challenge. By that point, my shoulder was very unhappy with me. I have since not done anything about maintenance of that at all. *sighs*

- Got my EA organized to do one-on-one work with my two students with IEPs... started out with me doing the hour daily with one of them, but when we had kids back in the classes, I couldn't do that anymore. Which was a pain, because dear lord, my EA was uncomfortable with the tech, and so could not support him with doing the work in the online environment. They had to print things out and have him hand write them, then show her through the camera on Zoom. And I needed to constantly do tech support even then. Maddening.

- Rhys' show Upload was released on May 1st. The show had really good reviews and has been renewed for a second season. No news yet over whether Rhys will be taken back on for a second season. Have received lots of nice comments about his performance in it, which is nice. A bit hard for me to have a reasonable vision of his work... I get thrown out of the immersive TV experience when it is suddenly him on screen.

- He had a call-back for a movie with Ryan Reynolds. Sadly, he didn't get it, but the casting company liked him... which is always a positive.

- He just had a call-back for a part he didn't actually audition for, which was super cool. He wasn't able to get the original audition done due to his schedule, so his agent just submitted his demo-reel. On the strength of that, they gave him a call-back. Which he filmed...

- In Quebec. Where he currently is filming a movie up near Lac Sacacomie. They've rented a little cottage for him and his father for a month while they do the filming.

- Before this point, the longest Frazer and I have been separated is 4 or 5 days. We're at 2 weeks at this point.. but I'll be honest and say it's actually been kinda nice, because I've been so fucking busy that not having to worry about anyone other than myself has been a relief.

- I made Rhys dissolve into tears when I was commenting on the fact that this has been a positive result of them being away, because he read that as me being GLAD they're gone, which isn't right at all. I miss them a lot... I'm just also kinda glad.

- I'm not likely to be less busy any time soon. I start teaching my class for Queens University on Monday. Full compliment of 15 teachers in my session. The set up has all been done, just waiting on students now.

- Also, despite this being my very first contract with them, and being the most junior of junior contractors, I may have sent emails questioning the course content back to them. They hadn't taken into account the different ways various districts have differing expectations. A few conversations I will be having with my candidates, as I am not allowed to change the content due to licensing and certification requirements, but the way they're having them learn to do IEP goals is not how a number of districts are doing it, so they may be required to continue to do SMART goals, and I feel like that needs to be made clear to them. Also... the methods espoused by Shelley Moore are a matter of debate in the Special Education field... there are some serious concerns regarding unintended consequences of her methods and expectations.

- I am also going part of the Ministry of Education's working group to get things put in place for school start up plans in the Fall.

- Also also, I am working to create and run two pro-d sessions for the BCTF summer leadership conference, one on envisioning public education post-COVID and another on supporting novice Pro-D chairs for the various districts.

- Also, also, also... I am reeling a little at how the hell I have ended up on/in these pretty serious leadership positions. Like... how am I this involved in governmental decision making? And this level of Union involvement? And teaching University Courses? I am dealing with a serious case of Imposter Syndrome right now.

Let the sour-dough rise overnight, and baked it this morning. I think I left it a little too long, as I don't think it had the energy to "spring" quite as much as it otherwise would have. It had some nice cell-structure, though, and while it was a dense, chewy loaf, it definitely had the sour-dough tang. Frazer was pleased with it, and encouraged me to continue with it. Will keep feeding the starter and see if I can figure it out. I cooked it inside my roaster pan, and that seemed to make a difference. I had it in a loaf pan, and poured a half-cup of water in the bottom of the pre-heated roaster before putting the pan in the roaster and putting the lid on.

Spent some time and started tidying the balcony today. The weather has been lovely, so I'm really looking forwards to being able to sit outside and read comfortably. Rhys actually came with me on my morning walk. He grabbed his scooter and it was actually quite pleasant. He only did it because he was bored (he's not allowed tech before 11am), but it was still nice. Now he's done it once, I hope he'll be up for doing it again.

We had Easter Dinner with my mum and sister and brother tonight. In this age of social distancing, that involved us with Frazer's laptop on the end of the table and a Zoom meeting going on. It was actually surprisingly effective. Due to a larger family, my sister actually had two devices going at once and they were almost-but-not-quite overlapping camera views. It was really trippy watching my nephew reach off the edge of one screen and into another, especially since the other one was at a slightly higher magnification. Rhys said it was like watching someone reach behind a glass of water. In the end, it was really nice... my brother was having dinner with his housemates, so he didn't eat with us. Instead, he hung out with us while he prepped and made dinner for his household. Flow of conversation was a little different than if we'd been in a room together. Much less talking over one another. :-)

I miss being able to hug my mum, though.

My Prime Minister stood up at a press conference just recently and... you know how you start a sentence and then aren't quite sure how to finish it? He had one of those moments... and it is currently making the most wonderful rounds on social media.

He was talking about how he understood Dr. Theresa Tam, our Federal Chief Public Health Officer, was saying that face-masks were a good idea, and that they don't necessarily help to protect you from getting sick, but that they help you avoid spreading illness around.

Well... that was what he was trying to say. What he actually said was...

PM Justin Trueau: "It protects others more than it protects you because it prevents you from breathing or speaking... uh ...moistly on them," he said. He then immediately winced and said,"what a terrible image," and then moved on.

I'm choosing to see that as another relic of his teaching days... when teaching teenagers, if you make a gaff like that, you acknowledge it and move on quickly, or you lose the class.

I giggled. :-)

Upped my sit ups to 75, in sets of 15. I'm feeling very proud of myself. Also very glad that the stabby pain in my lower abs went away with a few days of rest. Got out and walked for half an hour today as well, which was good as I have had a few days of not getting to my cardio.

Cooked a turkey on Saturday... they were on crazy-sale at the grocery store, probably because of previously placed orders coming in for Easter, but no-one actually doing big family celebrations. That's our protein needs met for the next week and a half. Discovered I need a bigger stock pot if I'm planning on making turkey soup... managed to get all the bones in eventually, but it did involve me shoving to crack the rib-cage. Simmered it for several hours, and it's nice and thick now. Just removed the bones. Going to enjoy making turkey soup later.

Had my first work day where my kids had "official" work to do. I sent out the letter with their weekly tasks in it last night... and with the work prefaced with the following:

Welcome… back?

Before we start, a quick reminder to parents. As I was saying last week, we are not home or online schooling. To do that properly takes far more preparation and a very different environment than the one we are in right now. Right now, we are sheltering at home as much as we can during a crisis and trying to learn/work.

We cannot learn or work effectively when we are stressed and worried. As a school, and as your children’s teacher, my number one priority for you all is your mental health and your happiness. I am providing you with opportunities for some structure and activities for your children and for your day. If these aren’t working for you, feel free to improvise, substitute, simplify, add to, or omit. You know best what your child and your family can handle at this time, and you know what supplies you have at home. Also, academic learning is only one kind of learning. You can support student learning of a lot of skills they need to know in the future. Things like learning to sort, do, and fold laundry, to cook a meal, to sew or knit, to learn songs, play an instrument, or tell traditional stories, and practicing speaking in your traditional or home language are all learning opportunities.

In order to help provide some structure, I’ve included a potential “daily schedule” to this email. Use it, adapt it, or ignore it as suits your family. :-)

If your family finds itself needing external supports and you are having trouble figuring out how to access them, please email me. The school is considered a Community Hub, so many provincial, municipal, and district programs use us as a means of finding and connecting to those who need supports. I also have an excellent website that has gathered a great deal of information together that may be a good starting point to questions you may have or supports you may want to access: WEBSITE LINK.

I actually posted those paragraphs on a BC teacher FB group with the comment that if people found any of it applying to their situation to feel free to borrow/adapt and am feeling very validated right now, since it got almost 100 likes and dozens of comments thanking me. I know that I have some talent in clear communication, but it is nice to have other professional communicators telling you you did a great job and going on to use your work.

Day 11 of 100-a-day challenge:

100 push ups
100 crunches (my lower abs are still bad-spiky-painful feelings)
125 squats

Trying to figure out if the sore throat and post-nasal drip feelings are allergies or a cold. Joint pain through my back is just my a-little-worse-than-usual standard... and is feeling considerably better since I got Frazer to squish my back and things went significantly snap-crackle-pop. No fever... though I'm tired. I had a crappy sleep last night, though, so that's not surprising.

I really need to sew and stuff a neck-pillow. My neck is very upset with me, and I'd like to be not in as much pain for a while.

Second day of school. At the end of the day today I emailed my Principal... I was supposed to hand in my report cards this week, and it's a little hard to do so. I'll have to try and put it up in a folder online and then share it with him? We'll see how that goes. I'll try and get it done tomorrow. As he said... it isn't really top priority right now.