Ensouling Our Schools

In an educational milieu in which standards and accountability hold sway, schools can become places of stress, marginalization, and isolation instead of learning communities that nurture a sense of meaning and purpose. In Ensouling Our Schools, author Jennifer Katz weaves together methods of creating schools that engender mental, spiritual, and emotional health while developing intellectual thought and critical analysis. Kevin Lamoureux contributes his expertise regarding Indigenous approaches to mental and spiritual health that benefit all students and address the TRC Calls to Action.

In an educational milieu in which standards and accountability hold sway, schools can become places of stress, marginalization, and isolation instead of learning communities that nurture a sense of meaning and purpose. In Ensouling Our Schools, author Jennifer Katz weaves together methods of creating schools that engender mental, spiritual, and emotional health while developing intellectual thought and critical analysis. Kevin Lamoureux contributes his expertise regarding Indigenous approaches to mental and spiritual health that benefit all students and address the TRC Calls to Action.

Teachers' and students' mental health takes priority in this classroom guide.

In Teaching to Diversity, Dr. Jennifer Katz synthesizes the research, and 16 years experience of teaching in inclusive classrooms and schools, to provide answers to several questions: How do I make inclusion work for ALL students? What are the foundational best practices of a truly inclusive learning community? How does one create such a community? The author pulls together, in an organized way, a three-block model of universal design for learning (UDL) and suggests a step-by-step approach for implementing it. This framework includes: Block One, Social and Emotional Learning details ways to build compassionate learning communities (K-12) in which all students feel safe and valued, and develop a positive self-concept, sense of belonging, and respect for diverse others. Block Two, Inclusive Instructional Practice includes a framework for planning units from K-12, and explains instructional and management practices for teaching, assessing, grading, and reporting in UDL Classrooms. Block Three, Systems and Structures suggests strategies for creating inclusive learning communities, and explores ways in which resource teachers, student services personnel, and school administrators can support and create socially and academically inclusive schools and classrooms. The three-block model of UDL can empower educators with the knowledge, skills, and confidence required to teach diverse learners in the same classroom--including those who have previously been excluded. Ultimately, it is about creating classrooms and schools that heal by teaching to the heart, mind, and spirit of every student.

In the Resource Teacher, Dr. Jennifer Katz describes the fundamental shift in the role of the resource teacher in the inclusive classroom (outlined in her previous book, Teaching to Diversity). Dr. Katz discusses practical and innovative ways to partner with classroom teachers to create inclusive learning communities – by co-planning, co-teaching, and co-assessing instruction – with less emphasis on traditional practices of pull-out remediation, IEPs, and modified programming.

A Model Unit for Grade 1: Who Am I? is one book in the series Tools for Instruction and Reading Assessment. The series consists of twenty-four companion documents to Teaching to Diversity: The Three Block Model of Universal Design for Learning by Jennifer Katz. The model unit integrates major themes from Manitoba's curricula for the first term of the grade 1 school year. The topics are "I Belong" from the social studies curriculum with "The Senses" and "Characteristics of Objects and Materials" from the science curriculum. These are brought into other disciplines: mathematics, physical education and health, language arts, and fine arts — particularly through the lens of the multiple intelligences (MI). Differentiated activities based on MI approaches inspire diverse students and accommodate their individual learning styles. MI activity cards are included, as well as planners that outline the essential understandings, essential questions, and final inquiry projects for the unit. Rubrics, based on Bloom’s taxonomy, show a progression of conceptual thinking from rote, basic understanding to synthesized, higher-order analysis.Teachers can use this model unit as a template for planning subsequent thematic units for the rest of the school year.

In this book, author Pamela Rose Toulouse provides current information, personal insights, authentic resources, interactive strategies and lesson plans that support Indigenous and non-Indigenous learners in the classroom. This book is for all teachers that are looking for ways to respectfully infuse residential school history, treaty education, Indigenous contributions, First Nation/Métis/Inuit perspectives and sacred circle teachings into their subjects and courses. The author presents a culturally relevant and holistic approach that facilitates relationship building and promotes ways to engage in reconciliation activities.

‘The study of music is the study of the human being. The two are inseparable, and eurythmy is the art which brings this most clearly to expression. In these lectures, Rudolf Steiner guides us along a path toward an understanding of the human form as music comes to rest – the movements of eurythmy bringing this music back to life.’ – Dorothea Mier ‘Fundamentally speaking, music is the human being, and indeed it is from music that we rightly learn how to free ourselves from matter.’ – Rudolf Steiner The focus of these eight lectures is the source of movement and gesture in the human being. The movement in musical experience is thus traced back to its origin in the human instrument itself. Like the degrees of the musical scale, Rudolf Steiner leads his select audience of young artists through eight stages, focusing on the living principles of discovery and renewal. Eurythmy was born in the turbulent decades of the early twentieth century. From an individual question as to whether it was possible to create an art based on meaningful movement, Rudolf Steiner responded with fresh creative possibilities for a renewal of the arts in their totality. The new art of eurythmy was an unexpected gift. Today, music eurythmy, along with its counterpart based on speech, is practiced as an art, taught as a subject in schools, enjoyed as a social activity and applied as a therapy. This definitive translation of Steiner’s original lecture course on eurythmy includes a facsimile, transcription and translation of the lecturer’s notes, together with an introduction and index. The volume is supplemented with an extensive ‘companion’, featuring full commentary and notes compiled by Alan Stott, as well as a translation of Josef Matthias Hauer’s Interpreting Melos.