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Dialogue - for the Canadian Education Community

THE EDUCATED IMAGINATION: HOW ONE TEACHER ENCOURAGES CREATIVITY THROUGH MINDFUL QUESTIONING.

The Dragon Academy's Principal, Dr. Meg Fox, has a feature article in the fifth annual edition of Dialogue, available this March. Her article, "The Educated Imagination: How One Teacher Encourages Creativity through Mindful Questioning" explores the issues of teaching to promote creativity and freedom of expression.

Dialogue is a specialized magazine for the Canadian education and teacher community. This issue explores the ins and outs of Creativity and Imagination. Articles by top educators, professionals and experts examine the scope and far-reaching impact, and importance, of creativity and imagination in today's independent schools.

Also included in this issue, a comprehensive report on last November's CESI Panel Discussion about "Meeting the Needs of Students: How far should schools go."

To order your copy of Dialogue, visit www.dialogueonline.ca or contact Anne Marie at (905) 272-1843 ext.25. While online, visit the Educator's Source Directory for links to great products, services and programs that will help your organization thrive.

XEXE Gallery is pleased to present Halo, a whimsical series of oil paintings by Toronto artist Kirsten Johnson.

Halo is a series of figurative paintings on blue-stained wood where 21st century cell phone users are turned into saints - painted with gold halos and overwrought poses. Words that the artist has collected from overheard cell phone conversations are typed onto copper foil that glows behind each figure.

Halo explores the space between private and public, the banal and the profound. Our fear of being alone and the subsequent mania for constant communication. Halo paints a world where cell-phone use is imagined as a modern-day substitution for religious supplication.

Kirsten Johnson, " It's like you're standing still", oil, mixed media, wood, 32” L x 60” W in., 2007

For those of you who need to be reminded of the plot of Shakespeare's The Tempest, which we are doing for our year end production, you can read a lovely version of it retold by Charles and Mary Lamb in their Tales from Shakespeare. It's on the web at www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/cml/tfs.html

January is the month when many families are choosing a middle school or high school for next September. Dr. Fox and the staff work hard talking to prospective parents and students all year, but we would like to help them with an extra effort this month.

Please take a moment to think about how you heard about the school. Was it from a teacher? An educational consultant? A neighbour or colleague? If you could talk to one or two people like that in the next week, to tell them about the Dragon, or simply to remind them about it, and tell them how well it is working for your son or daughter, that would give our word-of-mouth campaign a tremendous boost.

The new Promotional Pamphlet is available in PDF and Word Format. The file needs to be printed double sided and folded in three. There are also hard copies available at the reception desk at school.

We are proud to launch Ariadne, the journal of the Dragon community of learners. Ariadne will provide a forum for the voices of our students, alumni, and friends, to explore the social, political, literary and artistic realms. We hope to publish our first issue on March 21st, and are looking for submissions by the beginning of February, under the unifying theme of Image and Spectacle. Details will be posted on the Forum. To get involved, contact Robin Baker-Gibbs, student eminence grise, or me.

We are thrilled to announce that on January 5, 2008, at 6:25 p.m. Miss Cleo California Geraci landed in our midst. Her proud parents are our own Joseph Geraci, math genius, and his brilliant wife, Summer Nudel.

We would like to suggest to our students to bring their own mug to school to keep in their locker so they can use it for water. In the same vein, for any students that enjoy take-out coffee throughout the day, we would suggest that they bring a reusable vessel. There is an incredible amount of waste that occurs at the Dragon and we should all do our part to be ecologically conscious and responsible.

In order to keep our floors from becoming a grubby, wet mess during the winter, we are asking our students to please bring indoor shoes on days that the weather is bad. Thank you for your cooperation on this matter.

This year, the Ontario Government has introduced a new statutory holiday on the third Monday of February. This year it will fall on February 18th. School will be closed for this holiday. For ideas of what to do with your family on this holiday, you can visit this website.

This term there has been some timetable changes. These new timetables are now uploaded to the timetable link above and below in update #4.

The Forums are up and running. Fiddles and tweaks are forthcoming, but the boards are functional and awaiting users. You can access them using the above link ("Message Boards"). Register to set up your account. Accounts will be verified and confirmed by us, so start now to minimize the turnaround time on the activation of your account. Please use your full given name and surname for your account -- accounts that do not conform to this naming convention will not be activated. Also, please include your most reliable e-mail for confirmation. Please note that the forums are private and accounts are only available to faculty, students and parents. Teacher accounts should be up and finished by Monday and homework and assignments should be filling the boards this week.

Our timetables have been shuffled around. The current timetables are avalible in PDF format by clicking on the corresponding form below update #4.

The School Calendar for 07/08 is now available for download in PDF format. Click here.

Civics and Careers: Please note this is a special class for some students in Form 3 and 4

The Course Calendar for 07/08 is now available for download in PDF format. Click here.

A new school year is almost upon us. Please check this space frequently over the next couple of weeks, as we will be posting syllabi, schedules and time-tables. As always, specific questions may be addressed to the ever-competent Ms. Beatty.