Liz Kingstone

You have shared a lot, Liz, and I can see the thread running through it: your urgent work with Grade 1 students, your past experience in land-based learning, and your hope to explore what could better support younger students’ well-being and self-regulation. Here’s your material organized into a blog scaffold.

From Urgent Work to a Land-Based Learning Vision

Opening: What the matrix helped you notice

Introduce your role and the contrast between the work that needs your attention now and the work you hope to contribute to over time.

“In my Grade 1 homeroom at Montcrest, the urgent work includes teaching literacy and numeracy foundations and responding to families in a timely way.”

Then add: What did the matrix help you notice about where your time goes and what you’d like to make space for?

Middle: How your experience informs your idea

Describe your previous role as a land-based learning specialist, including the rotary schedule and divisional trips to places of local significance. Then introduce your idea of a similar student-facing opportunity at Montcrest for JK–Grade 2.

You could describe the rotary schedule as a possibility you want to explore—not a decision already made. You might also share your perspective as a veteran teacher: you have questions about how some specialty-period content fits younger children, and you’ve noticed behavior difficulties during those periods.

Sentence starter: “My experience as a land-based learning specialist has me wondering what a similar opportunity for younger students at Montcrest might look like.”

Middle: What you hope students might gain

Describe your hopes for students to develop respect and awareness of the land as a relation, as a gesture of reconciliation, and to learn to assess risk while recognizing that risk can vary between students.

“I want wellbeing to be part of the CITY FARM FOREST connection because it is essential for student success.”

You could connect this hope to your own words: “the best humans they can be” and learning to self-regulate. Keep these as the outcomes you hope to explore, rather than guaranteed effects of a program.

Closing: Your next step

Name your next step: researching the benefits of outdoor time for students and meeting with the staff member developing the CITY FARM FOREST curriculum.

Sentence starter: “My next step is to learn more by…”
Then close with what you hope to discover about what might be possible for students.

Image ideas

1. A spark igniting at intersecting lines
2. A compass on a blank map
3. A lit match among unlit ones

You can turn this outline into rough sentences, and I can help revise them while keeping the post in your voice.