Grassroots Canadian

I have always been a Flaneur or shall I say Flaneuse? I just didn't know it then. Until I was given the elite title with the blessings of the Academy, I was just another grassroots observor.  I literally observed grassroots, collected rocks, feather and leaves. I still do.

From years of habit of being told "look here and see that, and what does that remind you of, that strange cloud over there", growing up far away from Mumbai, I developed what Gardner calls the Naturalist Intelligence.

Everywhere around me is data: EQAO, DRA, PM Benchmark. And with it the botanisation of people as 'below grade level, at-risk and level 2'. No one says underserved; I plan to say that at the next staff meeting whenever it happens.

My students walk with the Terry Fox Run flag, taking care to turn themselves so that people and cars on the road can see the writing and pay homage to the memory of a man they know only by name and in books. The kindergartens who think that we are all dressed in red and white as it is Canada Day are laughed about and once again I hear the words " these kids, they lack Canadian experience".

Critical theory guides my path and I am in elite company: Socrates, The Frankfurt School sociologists, and more recently Friere et al.

And as we walk back from the 5k, I see this beautiful little maple leaf, lying in the grass by the side of the road. I am steeped in metaphor, yet I don't write, until now, almost three months later.

Good writing is hard work says a certain thinking dog who sleeps atop his house.

Real writing is soul work, I know. It has to marinade in angst before it can be shared.

As I walk with myself, I ask: "Whose land am I on?" And I tell those stories as I go.

Haig-Brown, C. (2009). Decolonizing diaspora:whose traditional land are we on?. Cultural and pedagogical inquiry, 1(1), 4-21.