Hello #clmooc! I’m so pleased to see you back this summer. I’ve participated (to varying degrees) in this mooc since its first year. This is a wonderful online community, and it warms my heart to see familiar names and faces from year to year – Sheri, Kevin, Terry & Karen – (others too!) your work and your regard for the work of others really helps to keep it all real. Thank you.

For my intro, I’ve posted a collaborative painting completed by my students this past school year. It is a painting of the floor of the Great Bear Sea, off the British Columbia northern coast. This image is representative of my view of life and teaching in a variety of ways.

• It’s collaborative. Painted by 25 kids.
• It’s surprising. Each student was given a square of a photograph to replicate with paint in a much larger format. We did not know what the results would look like until the squares were completed and assembled.
• It’s diverse. Each square has its own character, yet combine to create something wonderfully new and pleasantly wonky.
• It describes something dear to my heart — BC’s lush temperate rainforest and coast. The original photo I used came from Pacific Wild, a wonderful organization that both records and protects the diverse life forms of the Great Bear rainforest. Their photos & video are stunning! It looks like the proposed oil pipeline which would have dissected it has been fended off for now!

So again, hello #clmooc! I look forward to participating as far as my access to spotty data, an iPhone, & occasional forays to the library will allow (summer situation only).