Dispatches From North Of The Border

One of my colleagues sent me a spam email. It came as one of those Internet spamming items, you know, the kind of email that promises that if you follow the directions and resend the email to 10 people in the next sixty seconds you will receive "good luck" or "riches" or something bad will happen to you if you break the chain. The typical spam email reads, something, like this … ‘This item has been sent around the globe 22x and no one has broken the magic yet ’.

I usually just preview these with a quick glance without opening any attachment or the email and then push delete. This spam message struck my fancy because it contained many of those rational and logical things we all know we should do but so often find ourselves too busy to do or we are too caught up in our own world. We often forget the simplicity and the joy of just being a good person. Do I believe in the absolute application of all of these ... NO of course not. The bottom line for all to remember is ...

"Be Nice > > > It Costs Nothing To Be Nice"

THINGS ONE SHOULD DO and CAN DO

ONE Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

TWO Remember the three R's: Respect for self; Respect for others; and Responsibility for all your actions

THREE Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.

FOUR When you say, "I love you," mean it.

FIVE When you say, "I'm sorry," look the person in the eye.

SIX Be engaged at least six months before you get married.

SEVEN Believe in love at first sight.

EIGHT Never laugh at anyone's dream. People who don't have dreams don't have much.

NINE Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.

TEN In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.

ELEVEN Don't judge people by their relatives.

TWELVE Talk slowly but think quickly.

THIRTEEN When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, "Why do you want to know?"

FOURTEEN Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.

FIFTEEN Say "bless you" when you hear someone sneeze.

SIXTEEN When you lose, don't lose the lesson

SEVENTEEN Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

EIGHTEEN Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

NINETEEN When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

TWENTY Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice.

TWENTY-ONE Spend some time alone.

The attribution for these thoughtful words of common sense were supposedly from the Anthony Robbins organization. The source for these may not be easily found however this doesn't change the goodness of these items because the bottom line in life is still:

"Be Nice > > > It Costs Nothing To Be Nice"

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Today, the Town of Oakville has 41% of its households with incomes greater than $100,000 per year and nearly two-thirds of all Oakville households have incomes greater than $70,000 per year in 2001 dollars. Only 11% of the households have incomes of less than $20,000 (Oakville Economic Development Association).

This extremely large household income level places Oakville as the most affluent city or town in Canada. Oakville will periodically rank a close second to places like Markham, ON, Vancouver, BC or Victoria, BC (where new money wealth is growing rapidly). Almost every year during the last 30 years, Oakville has been the leading household income community in Canada.

To better illustrate, this prosperity oxymoron of my current home town, the average selling price of homes in Oakville in 2005 according to the Oakville, Milton and District Real Estate Board (OMDREB) was $520,000. The average Ontario home sold for only $205,000 during this same time period. This provincial average is less than one half the value of an average Oakville home.

Less than one kilometer down the street from me is Canada’s most expensive single family home. It took over two years to build, is a massive 32,000 square feet and when completed the Edgemere Estate was listed for sale at $45,000,000 Canadian. (This dollar amount is equal to the TOTAL building cost of the last two secondary schools built in the Region of Halton in 2002 and 2003.) This is affluence run amok! Couldn't the guy who built it as a family home live in it or was it too small?

As you well may have guessed, Oakville is THE executive bedroom home to many of Canada’s large corporate CEO’s and senior executives. It also attracts the homes of many professional sport team athletes, as well as many of the partners in Canada’s largest legal firms and senior executives of Canada’s banks. The owners and senior executives of Canada’s publishing and financial communities reside here (newspapers, banks, investment banks, investment markets and insurance) as well as key partners aqnd principals in such areas such as consulting and accounting firms can be found here. Many senior executives make Oakville their domestic bedroom community. Oakville is the suburban home to much of Canada’s old money.

Get on the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW), drive east for 20 minutes and you will arrive at the Central Business District (CBD) of Toronto. As for commuting to Toronto daily, I did the one hour plus commute into the city for too many years and do not miss the stop and go traffic grind one must tolerate each way.

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Photo from Patrick's Photoblog

Oakville, Ontario is celebrating its official 150th anniversary as a town/village in 2007. It is a unique suburban environment which I both live and teach in. A city with a small town flavour and small town promotion but one of the most affluent cities in Canada and in North America. As an educator living and working in Oakville, this affords me the opportunity to see what North America views as economic success and to also experience first hand the huge differences still found in one of Canada's wealthiest cities. Poverty and an underclass still exist here however the community has avoided or purposefully marginalized them from the eyes of these citizen elite who believe their community is immune from social stratification.

Since the early settlement days of the 18th century, Modern day Oakville was first located and known by being establishing at the mouth of Sixteen Mile Creek. This would have been a sixteen mile traverse by land along the lakeshore from the "Toronto Carrying Place". at the mouth of the Humber River. The "Town of Oakville", which is still its official name designation, has an estimated population of 174,000 persons in 2007.

GPS Locator:

43°26'44.74"N 79°40'05.36"W

Oakville, overall, has a gratuitous annual income per household. In 2006, this household income was just over $90,000 per year per household income compared to the provincial average of about $62,000. This extremely large household income level places Oakville as the most affluent city or town in Canada. It will periodically place a close second to other locations where new money wealth is growing. Oakville and in particular many of the people living in south Oakville (you can most certainly leave me out of this group) are barometers of the thriving essence and decadence of old and new money in Upper Canada!

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Illustration by Doug Potter from the Austin Chronicle

In trying to better understand my 2007 desire to blog (somewhat inefficiently at the moment), you might care to know that I am secondary school faculty member living and working here in Oakville, Ontario. Working as a full time special education resource teacher, one of my daily needs is to understand and use the ever evolving technology associated with the computer and the Internet more effectively. To become more effective in the use of IT, I believe that my teaching/learning processes will become an even greater resource and learning support for my students. To more fully empower my students who use software and hardware technology everyday in their learning journey is something I most certainly aspire to everyday.

One of my personal learning goals, for my students, is to make their learning positive and cutting edge. As a special education teacher, my students despite their learning exceptionalities, know more about computer technology than many who are business leaders or teachers. They are very likely far more advanced than their parents because they use the resource everyday in school and at home for communication and social networking. This hands on computer knowledge is often misunderstood by the business community, employers and society. I learn from them everyday. Thanks gang for “teaching” me!

Why did I start this blogging adventure?It truly was a discovery of new learning. A very interesting gentleman, on a one year exchange to our school (from Sydney, Australia ~ "OZ") got me started, when I began to read his exchange journey blogging and the many connections between his teaching and his family’s exchange adventure.

This technology learning journey is also part of my own professional development plan. Blogging will allow me to write my thoughts and ideas and actually share them potentially with the world. (Who knows if anyone else will read them? If there is an opportunity for an exchange of thoughts and ideas then I will gain much more as an educator and as a blogger. Perhaps indirectly all of this will improve my communication and writing skills! Whether anyone else reads these blogs will tell with time however it would be nice to have others critique my thinking. I can imagine connecting with others from just down the street or on the other side of the planet.

The ultimate goal is to be able to use these skills and newly learned computer programming language tools efficiently in my blogging and especially in my teaching and in the education environment. As a teacher continuely developing, improving and learning new appraoches for my teaching will ultimately allow me to share these skills with my students everyday.

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