The Centre for Teacher Education & Development

“Professor Mary Beattie has achieved a rare feat for an academic author. She has written a book that is both enormously instructive and elegantly composed. While her erudition, her devotion to the arts, imagination and creativity, her phenomenological/ existential outlook, her graceful style of writing, may be reminiscent of the great Maxine Greene, Beattie has crafted a text that is unique. Her ownership of the work is apparent as she moves through and out of her own life story into an articulation of a form of pedagogy that is suffused with meaning. But early on the reader understands that the book is in fact a gift that he or she now owns, one that may inspire toward a heightened form of teaching through and with the arts and narrative. It is a gift to be both used and savoured”  (Tom Barone, Professor of Education, Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education Arizona State University reflects on Dr. Beattie’s newest book The Quest for Meaning: Narratives for Teaching, Learning, and the Arts).
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"The mysteries of teaching demand attention to the intangibles as well, and such intangibles are morally and ethically infused; they may be perceived in the tone of voice a teacher uses to speak to a child, in the way a teacher justly adjudicates among competing needs and interests in the classroom, in the way a teacher selects resources with care, evaluates student work with honesty and respect, and conducts his or her daily practice with honour, diligence, fairness, and compassion. Taken together, then, ethics and teaching seem inherently compatible and unavoidably intertwined. . . . Yet, the moral dimensions of teaching and the ethical nature of the teacher's professional responsibilities often seem to be taken for granted in both the academy and the practitioner communities . . . Over the past 15 to 20 years, however, there have been changes in the field, and increasingly educational philosophers and researchers . . . have focused attention on the moral essence of teaching and ethical professionalism. For those of us who engage in the empirical investigation and theoretical inquiry into the moral and ethical world of classrooms and schools, this trend is timely and compelling. At its core is a humbling appreciation of the moral complexities of teachers' work, a fascination with both the good and bad experiences and actions of teachers, and for many a commitment to the concept of teacher professionalism as defined by both a collective and individual sense of ethical responsibility" (Taken from: Campbell, E. (2008). The Ethics of Teaching as a Moral Profession. Curriculum Inquiry, 38(4): 357-385). 
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Vision for a School adopted by The Whole Child School in Toronto--"At this school we care about kids. We care about their academic work and we want them to see the unity of knowledge. In other words, we want to let students see how subjects relate to one another and to the students themselves. In relating subjects we find that the arts, or more generally the artistic sense, can facilitate these connections.  We care about how kids think and, in particular, we try to encourage creative thinking. We want the students to be able to solve problems and use both analytical and intuitive thinking in the process.
We care about the physical development of the student and we devote part of the curriculum to activities that foster healthy bodies and positive self-image.  We hope to connect the students body and mind so that they feel "at home" with themselves.We care about how students relate to others and to the community at large.  We focus on communication skills and as the students develop we encourage them to use these skills in a variety of community settings.  At the same time we encourage the community to come into the school, particularly artists who can inspire the students' aesthetic sense.  Most of all, we care about the students' being. We realize that the final contribution that they make to this planet will be from the deepest part of their being and not just from the skills we teach them. We can try to foster the spiritual growth of the student by working on ourselves as teachers to become more conscious and caring. By working on ourselves, we hope to foster in our students a deep sense of connectedness within themselves and to other beings on this planet" (Taken from: The Holistic Curriculum).
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