Entrance Slip: Inquiry Topic

 Topic: Establishing Boundaries for Sustainable Teaching Practice

Concept A	Concept B	Concept C
Boundary setting	Sustainable work habits	Self-compassion and acceptance

I’ve always been the type of person to throw myself completely into new endeavours, often giving my full energy and attention to doing things well. While this has helped me grow quickly in many areas, it has also led to a recurring pattern of burnout,  typically within a year of starting something new. As I enter the teaching profession, I’m becoming aware that this same tendency could make it difficult to maintain a healthy balance between my personal life and professional responsibilities. Teaching, by nature, demands deep emotional and intellectual investment, but I want to learn how to sustain that investment over time. This is why I’m drawn to exploring how early-career teachers can set boundaries and develop sustainable routines that allow them to “turn off” work at the end of the day while still feeling effective and fulfilled in the classroom. 

Entrance Slip: What's the point of grades?

From my “student bird” perspective, I actually liked percentage grades. I appreciated the precision, it felt objective and measurable. But looking back, I can see how meaningless that precision really was. The difference between a 90 and a 92 doesn’t reflect a meaningful difference in understanding, yet it can cause a lot of stress for students chasing university cutoffs. One of my professors once said that the difference of a few percentage points often just comes down to opinion, and that really stuck with me.

From my “teacher bird” perspective, I find myself agreeing with Sarte and Hughes’ point that grades often serve the system more than the student. In their article, they draw on Ryan and Deci’s idea that grades act as extrinsic motivators, which can actually take away from a student’s intrinsic motivation to learn. I’ve seen how easily students start focusing on “how many marks is this worth?” instead of what they’re actually learning.

That’s why I like BC’s new proficiency scale, Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Extending. It gives students a clearer picture of where they are in their learning journey without reducing everything to a number. It’s hard to attach a precise percentage to understanding. A 75% sounds fine on paper, but it doesn’t tell a student what to work on or how to grow.

Grades can give structure and accountability, but they can also create pressure and competition. The challenge, as Sarte and Hughes suggest, is to shift our focus from grading to learning, to use feedback as a tool for growth rather than a judgment of worth.

Entrance Slip: Scientific Language in the Classroom

Reading Kimmerer’s reflection on the “grammar of animacy” made me think deeply about the role of scientific and mathematical language in the classroom. On one hand, I value the precision that terminology brings. Terms like isosceles triangle or photosynthesis allow us to communicate clearly and unambiguously. But as Kimmerer points out, this precision often comes at the cost of distance, the living world simply becomes objects and processes to be studied, rather than relatives to be in relationship with. In math, for example, it can sometimes feel like students are being taught a sterile set of terms and formulas, instead of being invited to see the beauty, creativity, and interconnectedness behind the language.

What struck me most in Kimmerer’s writing was her description of Potawatomi verbs that express aliveness, like wiikwegamaa, which means “to be a bay.” In English, we reduce the bay to a noun, a thing, something static and objectified. But in Potawatomi, the bay is understood as a living process, always moving, always in relationship with its surroundings. This perspective made me reflect on my own teaching: how often do I present math as a fixed set of definitions and objects, instead of as patterns and relationships that are active, dynamic, and continually unfolding?

In thinking about Indigenizing my classroom, Kimmerer’s work challenges me to reconsider the language I use and the ways I frame learning. I want to bring in more opportunities for students to engage with mathematics and science as processes of connection, through story, metaphor, and relational contexts, rather than only through technical terminology. For example, when teaching geometry, I could invite students to see shapes as “figures”, relationships between points, lines, and spaces.

Kimmerer reminds us that language shapes how we see the world, and therefore how we treat it. If my classroom can hold space for both the clarity of scientific/mathematical terminology and the respect inherent in the grammar of animacy, perhaps students will come away knowing the terms and also carrying a deeper sense of responsibility toward the world those terms describe.