My name is Dana Connors. I am a kindergarten/Grade ⅔ Science, Writing and Art/Grade ½ Art and Religion teacher in Ottawa. My role has evolved over this past year, and so has my bag. In my past teaching assignments I have self declared myself as the ‘bag lady’; often carrying several bags in and out of the school. However, as I am in several classes on any given day, a more streamlined and more organized system was crucial as the misplacement of my bags and the items within became a common occurrence. Therefore, I switched from several bags to one backpack. I picked this bag to share, as this is the bag that I use (almost) daily.
The bag carries my teaching necessities: printables for kindergarten, post its, my school laptop and charger, my printed kindergarten schedule, wallet, a copy of the kindergarten curriculum, stickers (what kindergarten teacher does not have stickers somewhere?), a copy of Nature Ideas (a text about kinder learning outside), RX bars (on the days I am extra hungry), fun size chocolate bars (on the days I forget to bring a snack for preschool pick up for my daughter), water bottle, advil, and (as it’s report card season for us) a copy of the kindergarten 4 frameworks.
The Daily
My daily need for these items is to easily access them in order to teach, create, deliver lessons or communicate with colleagues and parents.
“Texts”
There are several obvious “texts”; the curriculum documents, the Kindergarten 4 frameworks, my copy of Nature ideas. What you don’t see is the plethora of documents on my google drive for grades ⅔ and ½. Kindergarten is a newer assignment for me, and as I look at the contents of my bag, I find it funny that I am carrying hard copies of kindergarten documents with me, while all others are digital. Seemingly the few documents that I require a quick access to I am relying on a more traditional hard copy rather than digital. However, all the items in my bag are small and easily transported, supporting the nature of my job assignment of teaching throuhout the school.
“Text Technologies”
The laptop is the most important feature in my bag. The laptop is key in communicating lessons and classroom expectations to my students. My lessons are shared with colleagues via google docs and I communicate my lessons to my students via google slides. Upon reflection, without my laptop, I could present my lessons to my students, however, it would require much more work, more materials to transport and it would be more challenging to share with my very busy colleagues. Technology allows for my lessons to be more visually stimulating for my students, this is important when teaching a second language (French), especially to kindergarten. It is also important as I teach many students with a variety of learning difficulties and a more visually appealing lesson attracts their attention for longer. In my lessons I include videos, music, and pictures. Technology allows for me to more easily organize and access my texts. I imagine that without my laptop, my bag would be overflowing with documents, and I would again be known as the “bag lady”.
Additionally, all other paper documents were produced digitally. In fact, there are no traces of traditional writing on paper, other than the post-its and highlighters. Even the sticker book I carry with me is produced digitally. While the cards within my wallet (unseen) were also produced digitally and require a digital banking, payment system and various digital identification systems.
The abundance of “text technologies” suggests a reliance on technology. I am unsure if this is a positive or negative yet. Recently our school has encouraged our teachers to rely less on paper activities for our students and move more of our learning via tech. Is there still a place for more traditional methods of writing?
The Teacher Bag in an Archeological Dig
I have been teaching for almost 15 years, my bag looked a lot different then. Firstly, teachers did not have their own laptop at that time. My reliance on hard copies of documents and teaching materials was high. Therefore, my bag, again, resembled that of a “bag lady”. It also included more traditional paper and pen notes as I did not have Google docs to store or share my teaching notes. However, many of the reproduced materials I would carry were produced digitally, such as student worksheets etc. Prior to 15 years ago, I imagine many teacher bags would look similar to this as it has been only the last 10+ years where technology has been more portable, accepted and accessible for many schools.
In my current bag, an archaeologist might view the contents as a time in which people, especially within education, were highly reliant on technology. Everything is created using some form of technology, from the printed package of my granola and candy bars, to the production of my water bottle.