MorrowGalPeRn.ca
Title
Paul Galpern at Work
Description
Purpose The primary purpose of this site is to share the curriculum materials I have developed. Some of these were designed for use at Michikan Lake School in Bearskin Lake, Ontario between 2001 and 2003. Click here to learn more about the First Nations community of Bearskin Lake. Others materials were developed for use at Pelican Falls First Nations High School between 2003 and 2005. Click here to learn more about Pelican Falls. I hope the curriculum materials on the site are of use to you. Please alter them in any way that you see fit. They are far from being perfect; rather, like all teaching materials, they are "works in progress" awaiting improvement at each use. I get asked every now and then about "copyright." Please don't put my name on the resources, even if you use them without alteration. They are in the public domain for all to use. However, if you would like to republish them in another forum, please request permission.
Site Notes (January, 2006) This website is nearly three years old, and it continues to recieve many visitors. In the last two years the site has seen hundreds of thousands of visitors. Certainly hundreds of these visitors have been teachers, judging by the several comment emails that show up in my inbox every day, and the several dozen zip archives that are downloaded each week. I am thrilled to be reaching an audience of teachers who use my work. It gives me great pleasure to know that my resources are serving not only my own students, but thousands of students in Ontario, elsewhere in Canada and the United States, and as far away as the U.K., India, Singapore, and the Carribbean. The feedback emails that continue to come (click here to contact me) reassure me that it is worthwhile to continue offering my materials on the web. If you take the time to contact me, I promise to take the time to reply. Just make sure that your email address is entered correctly! The Ontario Curriculum was renovated in 1999 by a provincial government intent on breaking things. The curriculum was one of many targets. They introduced an expectation-based curriculum with the purpose of making education more rigorous and uniform across the province. The result has been dramatic reductions in student high-school graduation rates, and losses in student literacy. The curriculum materials on this site were borne of this expectations-based regime, and should in no way serve to recommend it. In many cases my curriculum tools are guerrilla attempts to bridge the unreasonable curriculum expectations (and the rigid requirement of our independent-school inspector that every one be taught and assessed) and the realities of my students' lives. That said, I hope you will find a few of them to be pedagogically sound. Good luck in your teaching. And please try to make education an act of revolution! Site Notes (January, 2004) Since the site was first published in March of 2003, it has received over 50 000 visitors, 4 500 of those from Canadian (.ca) internet service providers. While the vast majority of those visitors have arrived at the site by accident and promptly leave, there are significant number of Canadian teachers (and Ontario curriculum teachers, the target audience) in that number. Indeed, several "ZIP" archives of curriculum resources are downloaded each day, a sure sign that a teacher is on the site, and interested in making use of the materials. I am greatly pleased that other teachers have been able to benefit from my labour, perhaps by photocopying my worksheets, altering them, or using them as springboard for their own ideas. I receive several feedback emails each week. I always reply. Don't hestitate to get in touch if you have any questions or comments, technical, curricular or otherwise. Click here to contact me. If you have made significant use of the site, I encourage you to get in
touch with me, and let me know how the materials work for you, and where improvements could be made. Indeed, this is the only way I can judge if the site is of genuine use to people, and worth maintaining. If you have curriculum materials to share of your own, please let me know. In the near future I hope to create a links page to other materials specifically designed for the Ontario secondary curriculum. Would an informal "clearinghouse database" containing subject specific resources for the Ontario curriculum interest you? If so, let me know, and let's work to build one.
