First off, I’ll start by sharing that I am not a coffee drinker. Some of you might wonder how I can get through the day! My love for tea is the trick. Each morning I start the day with a double spice chai and make sure to have back up and a friendly flavor such as mojito mint for a warm drink later afternoon. Next living in Squamish, you need to be prepared for rain or shine so sunglasses are always a must, along with my reading glasses for long computer days and night time driving. It is also very rare in the winter months for me not to have a scarf, I’d say my simple black one gets the most use. The staples such as a pen, sticky notes, these days -a mask, mints, journal, wallet, and a book for professional development, currently -The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. I also carry an epi-pen for wasps -not needed so much right now but if I don’t keep it in my day bag, I would never remember. Of course my phone (the one in the picture is an old phone as I took my picture with my actual phone -wow they were so small before 😉 and my much used laptop. Lastly, there will always be some sort of talking piece, currently my painted rock so I am ready for any meetings, gatherings workshops that I lead (of course this is mostly on hold right now but we will get there again).

Connecting to text & literacies -a little word on my sticky notes. I don’t think I could survive my job without them! They may not be the most efficient way to organize things but there is something so satisfying about crumpling them up once all the listed tasks are complete. When I review the contents of my bag I really notice how much they are connected to texts from my journal, book, pen, etc. I say this is very much connected to the reflective practices I try to embrace and connect my colleagues and staff in.

Connecting to text technologies -I am not really sure what we did before without our cell phones in our jobs. Maybe some good and bad about this but we are connected as fast as we want to be to information and others. My laptop is getting more use than I thought possible these days with the abundance of Zoom & Google Meets we use to relay information and meet during this pandemic.

Connecting private contents to outward projection of myself -I would say it doesn’t actually feel so private, these are my staples and almost every one of these items comes out of my bag at some point to share with the world (well if they are looking). I think in that sense, I am a pretty open book!

Connecting to 25 years a go -what a neat thing to think about! Well I definitely didn’t have a cell phone! My bag would be filled with binders, textbooks, maybe even some old lunch, because the cafeteria had way better food! I wasn’t much for journaling, rather my contents would be all the things I needed to get done and probably not much extra. I would not have had a talking piece as this is part of my truth and reconciliation now and not something that was considered or understood when I was in high school. I didn’t know then that I would end up allergic to wasps and I’d say that there would be more make up in my bag for the washroom parties at break time (well and sometimes when we should have been in class).

Connecting to an archeologist’s view in the future – to start it would be an interesting reflection back in time on living in a pandemic. I think it would create a lot of conversation around the mask alone. Maybe they would be curious about how much ‘paper/pen’ technologies my bag included still (pen, sticky notes, journal, book) and there would probably by a laugh at my phone image. I wonder if they would conclude that this was an educators bag?