Not only had I cut through the beautiful art work on the front of the T-shirt, I had cut through the back as well. I was furious with myself.

As I continued to berate myself over my carelessness and had arrived at the sad truth that this was going to make a beautiful orange rag, my 26-year old son said, "If anyone can fix it, you can".

With those seven words, Mitch changed everything. He believed I could fix it. Maybe I could fix it. I started thinking about how I could fix it. I decided I would try to fix it.

I went to bed that night feeling so profoundly grateful for those seven words. It made me think of how fortunate I am to be surrounded by people who believe in me.

My parents, neither of whom went to university, believed in me enough to support me through two post-secondary degrees.

My brother Mark, who sent this text when I started school: "We love you and believe in you, so go for what you know to be right and proper and let the chips fall where they may"

My sister Hilary, who endures more "school" stories than anyone should ever have to, and has picked me up countless times over my life, given me a kick in the behind and traveled miles to be with me to support me.

Administrators like Andrea, Tom, Norrine and Kelly who believed in me enough to listen and let me try new things.

Friends and colleagues who make me feel like I can do anything. Cathy, Tracey, Sarah, Sarah, Carmela, Casey, Ian, Scott, Isaac, Lisa, Paulette, Robin and Karen (who believed enough in me to ask me to make her wedding dress).

The DSBN Academy class of 2017, who sent me texts to remind me that they believed in me when I was considering a career change. (They also not-so-subtly reminded me what I'd preached to them when they were questioning taking risks). And former students who emailed over the summer to hold me accountable for my promise to create this website.

For 23 years, my wonderful husband Morgan told me how much he believed in me. His legacy is our son telling me "If anyone can fix it, you can".

There is power in knowing someone believes in us. Taking time to tell people in our lives that we believe in them can change everything.

Now I have to go and figure out a way to fix that orange shirt.

Math Test - Patterning and Percent

Today we wrote a math test and started discussing solutions. We discussed "feedback vs marks" and the importance of correcting our mistakes and reflecting on other solutions (click here for the full article explaining the reasoning for this). On Monday, we will finish discussing solutions and we'll take pictures of our tests to upload in our Google drive.

Cross Country

Today, was Cross Country! We went to Memorial park to do the race. I was racing with 2 of my friends and 30 other people in my age group. We started at the starting line so nervous but ready to race. The man said go and we started to run 2 laps around the whole park. I was very confident and ready to do the second lap. But my legs started to shake! I had to persevere through it and passed a lot of people. I saw the finish ahead of me and started to run as fast as I could. I came out to be 15 out of about 30!

So I think I did pretty good. Keep persevering.

Business Venture Update

We are developing partnerships with Brock University, the business leadership class at EL Crossley, and with mentors from the iHub (Educational Research and Innovation Hub that partners with DSBN). Over the next few weeks, we will be having guests visit to help us with the first steps of developing our business ideas.