Feeding the Right Wolf

Ann Pelo and Margie Carter include a section written by Karyn Callaghan in their popular best-seller, From Teaching to Thinking. Callaghan writes:

“Faith Hale, a cherished colleague and Indigenous educator, shared with me a traditional teaching about the two wolves inside us; one is our negativity, our cynicism, our anger and disappointment, and the other is our optimism, our hope, our determination. The question is: one wolf must die, and one wolf must live, which one wins? The answer is: the wolf we feed. The one that we seem to be feeding in our current context has grown to demand the bulk of our attention, time, and energy. It is the one that views children as needing to be managed, fixed, readied….I have seen the light go out in educators’ eyes under the burden of enforced compliance with teacher-proof standardized curriculum, state-mandated learning outcomes, ‘quality’ checklists…

There is a place for standardization when such issues as health and safety procedures are involved…However, if we are talking about education, we can push back against the current context by feeding the wolf of positivity….we can choose to hold a view of children, educators and families as capable of complex, creative thinking.”

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