42-kilometre education

Breathing steadily, wearing moisture-wicking socks and old running shoes, Albert Ngai and his running group begin to climb a 600-metre hill at Poplar Plains Road in Toronto. Ngai, who teaches a marathon clinic from the Running Room in downtown Toronto, uses this hill to push all his runners as they train for their upcoming marathon.

“Hill training? It’s not particularly pleasant, but it’s a necessary evil to build the endurance for a marathon,” Ngai said.

Learning to run a marathon involves a complete lifestyle change. Training for the 42-kilometre event requires a mindset focused on diet and a change in attitude to bring runners closer to their goal. This mindset of accomplishing the goal offers runners the ability to learn something beyond putting one foot in front of the other.

“The benefit of going through the rigours of marathon training is that you feel like you could do anything,” Ngai said.

Teaching Babies Sign Language

More and more parents are teaching their babies sign language to better understand their child’s needs in the baby’s early development stage. Some parents are saying that they are teaching their children sign language to encourage communication and understanding between parent and child.

Simple words such as ‘milk’ and ‘more’ give a child a voice as early as seven months old.

Teaching babies sign language simply as an early communication tool has become more common over the years.

But does this hold back a child’s ability to actually learn to talk? Will this early learning tool make the baby smarter?

Climbing up the walls

A great deal of what I see as important in blogging – as part of this project – is to reveal a little bit of the process that goes into the project. It’s a learning experience first and foremost and I know many of the people involved have struggled to some extent during the this process. As have I. Truthfully, I feel at times that it’s a struggle I’m not capable of overcoming.

I entered into this magazine project with an idealist mind, which is a good thing for sure, but I worry along the way the stress of it has eaten away too much of me. Producing these stories along with writing for both print and online papers as well as producing television material is just too much, especially for someone who also needs to work at least a couple days a week in order to make rent. My concern is that because of this stress I’ve lost focus and haven’t been performing to the extent I would like to be. I feel my work has suffered and that upsets me. I’m doing this to improve, I’m doing this so I can put something into my portfolio I can be proud of and when I pass that portfolio along to people their jaw drops because it’s so damn good. So if I’m not improving and I’m not proud then why am I doing it?

Building smarter schools

Grey skies and cool wet weather can’t wash away Ruth Jory’s smile.

The matriarch of Thomas Wells Public School in Scarborough has entertained many visitors. As the principal of Canada’s First LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified school – the benchmark for eco-friendly building design – Jory has toured a lot of reporters, educators and students through her facility.