12/07/2009

Freedom

The December issue of Chatelaine Magazine has published some essays written by a variety of women from Frontier College. An editor at Chatelaine had this interesting idea to pair an author with a novice writing student to coach them through the writing of an essay. Such an innovative idea.

I was lucky enough to be paired with a lovely woman named Julia from Russia who trained as a doctor before moving to Vancouver to become a nanny. She has been working to improve her English and is now applying to various med schools in Canada.

I was so impressed how quickly she learned and improved her writing over the course of just a few emails and phone conversations. Her essay, Pineapple Dreams dwells on the meaning of freedom, and opportunity and celebration. Its been fun to feel the pride of Julia's success. And it gives me a renewed excitement for my class in January.

My last post seems to have gotten a lot of people thinking, talking, assessing, observing, aware. Its been an interesting dialogue, one that gets swept under the carpet much too often.