I met someone yesterday and spoke to him like a normal person. His name is Steven and it happened while getting a tea at Timothy's coffee shop around lunch time. He was sitting in one of the couched areas reading a paper when I asked if i could sit in the seat dagonal him. He agreed and wondered aloud at the book I had just put on the table between us, which is about globalization. I turns out that he had been a teacher for 20 years until he left the profession in 2001, possibly because of the inherent problems with institutionalized learning institutions such as daycare, elementary and high schools in which attendance is considered legally mandatory. He started telling me about how large corperations like the WHO and the US government turn out research related to what they are selling and try to pass those studies off as unbiased. This kind of thing is not a surprise to me as I've studied vaccines and how they relate to my family. So I had a conversation about something with someone who agrees with me! This is not a normal occurance and it felt pretty good. We also spoke about the future of the global workforce and how it is becoming less and less employment oriented and more about finding what you do well and simply presenting that to a market that wants to buy into it. We exchanged numbers when we stood up to leave and he told me he would give me a call on the weekend. I'm glad to have met him, he's full of a sort of sly wit that I never pick up on straight away but appreciate later. He called my plan for starting up a home daycare a charity! Probably out of what he percieved to be noble intention on my part, nobility my ass.

Something else we spoke about and that I read about yesterday was the plan to make downtown Toronto a huge WiFi howspot. Interesting concept, certainly, but there are concerns over the safety of having electromagnetic radiation blasting out bodies with disruptive noise. The companies involved are, of course, touting that the WiFi signals are just as safe as TV and radio waves, which is true though I suspect the WiFi field will be a lot stronger than those on which TV and radio signals travel on. Health issues aside, I think a large network like the one proposed could potentially be a good thing. This is a technology that will allow for more free flow of information for those willing to embrace it. I wonder just how secure the network will eventually be...

Canada's immigration laws incorperate a "points" system that seems to make it harder for foriegn religious workers, such as middle eastern and Indian clergy, to stay in the country even if they've been here for 6 or 7 years and have established themselves as pillars of their local communities. To me it sounds like a policy that feeds into our xenophobic culture (in Glorious, Socialist Canada? No way!)

I worked the Eaton Center site in the kindergarten for the first time today. They serve their kids snack and lunch there as opposed to having the children serve themselves and I had forgotten to ask why. Having the children (especially kindergartners) serve themselves at food times is empowering and teaches about the correlation between the gluttony/restraint dynamic and the waste produced at the end of the meal (the kids can scrape their own plates into a communal organics bucket to emphasize this) and I don't understand why someone would knowingly take that away from the children other than, "oh, it's easier." Sigh. One of the teachers there actually taught one of my classes at Mothercraft. I also worked an afternoon shift at Hester How. One girl was playing in the reading section (doing what, I don't know; happily or not, i don't know) when her grandma showed up to take her "for a little while." I was incredulous and was vindicated when Dawn began crying hysterically about losing "her spot" (all areas are limited in number of children who are allowed to play in them.) It seems to me that if someone is picking up a child from daycare, the idea that they might come back is one that can create problems. "Spots" are viciously guarded things, mainly because they are lost so easily. The girl must have thought that, since even standing up can give an ambitious child the opportunity to slide in and claim it for their own, this temporary absence from the classroom would spell doom for her spot. I saw the most beautiful dolls today. Two Eurasian toddlers who were about twenty five years old and were made in Toronto. They had wonderful, black, curly human hair and well made traditional chinese dresses... And they were selling at $1250.00 each! I was telling the shop owner how nice his store was and especially those dolls when he asked me, "are you coming back for them?" I nearly laughed in his face. Me, with my torn shoes and uncut hair, "coming back" for twenty five hundred dollars worth of doll! I demurely declined.

esterday was the first time I felt completely comfortable in the infant room. It happened when I was reading the group a few stories towareds the end of the day. One of the stories was a book about how animals move their body parts and so the head touching, arms waving, hips wiggling game began. It occurred to me at that point that, while oral comminication is important for infants' speech development, they get so much more out of kinesthetic comminication. In other words, play is a better medium for speaking to infants than speech is! This is something I couldn't grasp in my kindergarten classes and frankly ignored in the toddler rooms I've been in. I can see now that this kind of play based communication can certainly be applied to anyone with less language skills or people who are less willing to use language.

Lunch shifts at the (three story) coop are crazy. I'm basically responsible for getting the food up to the classes (from the basement!) and spending some time in the "big kid's" room (kindergarten) serving and sitting with one of the groups. Then I have to clean up the trays and bowls and things, take it down to the chef and clean up the "mid kid's" room (which is always a disaster after lunch.) The shift is only an hour and a half long but is so busy that I usually do more on that shift than I do during the rest of my day.

I also have my interview with the man with autism today. His name is Matt and I know next to nothing about him or autism. Wish me luck!

I've given my valedictorian's speech. To my surprise it went over really well. People were interrupting me to clap and I had to yell over them what i was saying. I will link a video my wife made once I have it on my PC. Also here is a transcript of it.

I'm working now, doing supply for a few places, two of the unionized under CUPE (which has recently had a controversial backing out of an illegal strike over pension plans) and one of them under the Mothercraft umbrella, who I schooled with. I am working most of my shifts at a place called Hester How which is a workplace childcare center inside Toronto's New City Hall. I would certainly like to work there as full time staff as the people are great, the directors are slow-speaking and thoughtful (like me.. and unlike most childcare workers,) and the children are among the brightest and most interesting I have ever met. Oh, and there are no male full-timers on the payroll. The other CUPE site is simply called University of Toronto Campus Coop and is run by a woman who used to work at the Margaret Fletcher Childcare Center which was born of protesting the lack of childcare for women UofT workers. It also has about four other men working there which is almost unheard of. The other site, Robertson House, is a Mothercraft childcare center which means they adhere to the policies I was taught in school, which are actually pretty congruent with my own policies of childcare. The center itself, as the name implies, is a big house which was built from day one to be a childcare center and so has all of the appropriate accommodations and built in furniture associated with children and their specific needs. There is also an Ontario Early Years Center in the front half of the house which is basically a drop-in, meeting place and resource center for parents. I am interested in doing wome work with the OEYC program but as of now I haven't persued anything to that end.

I've been offered a job working with a 29 year old autistic man and I am going to call about that today. I met the contact, Linda, at an autism workshop I attended on Tuesday. She was sitting beside me and struck up a conversation, steeled by an earlier encounter when we were both asking the instructor questions about her lessons. We were talking about chelation, about the root of the word and how the medical chelation process takes place when she mentioned to me that she had performed a chelation process on a client of hers. I asked her what she did and she told me about her energy healing. I then told her about how I had some experience in energy manipulation in my past studies and experience. She told me she liked the term "energy manipulation" and then offered me a regular, part-time support work job which I said I would think about and get back to her.

I have begun guidance counseling as a client and have been sick for about three weeks. That reminds me, I still haven't done my Guidance homework yet.

When I was asked to be valedictorian of my class I had to ask, "What's that?"

Now I have to write a speech... Christ.

"One day, some years ago, some friends said, 'Ever seen any silicate putty?' I said I had never even heard of it. They gave me a lump. I kneaded it, flattened it, stretched it into a long thin piece, tore it into smaller pieces. Then they said, 'Roll it into a ball and throw it on the floor.' I did so. My eye, and my brain, and my very bones knew what would happen-the putty would splat on the floor and stick. I threw it, and while my eye stayed stuck to the floor the putty bounced up as high as my head. For an awful split second, the universe rocked around me. I was on the brink of terror. Then, in the same instant, something wrenched in my mind, something said, 'Okay, so it bounces, very funny, what will they think of next?' and i was back in the world of order and reason."

John Holt
How Children Fail, 1958

That circle was terrible. I wasn't prepared.. was interrupted.. shared circle lead role with a regular teacher there.. and eventually lost control of the whole thing entirely.

Am I in the right field?