PROBUS Club of Ajax

July Speaker - Victoria Plaskett

 

Dr. Victoria Plaskett, OCT is an English teacher (retired) with 35 years of experience in Ontario classrooms, part-time professor of special education at University of Toronto, a volunteer for 15 summers with teachers in Jiangsu Province, China, a year teaching high school in Nanjing, China, followed by a year as literacy instructor at a high school in Arviat, Nunavut. Dr. Plaskett completed undergraduate studies at Western University and earned a doctorate at University of Toronto (2000) in Human Development and Applied Psychology with her thesis on resilience. Her teaching-travel focuses on the importance of cultural exchange and living in community. Her book, "Sewing Lessons: My Year in Arviat, Nunavut" will be completed in summer 2021.

Brief Description of Presentation

Dr. Plaskett's talk, "Sewing Lessons: My Year in Arviat, Nunavut" focuses on the vital importance of cultural exchange and living in community. She will share experiences of her amazing arrival in the treeless, snow covered tundra, the symbolism of the ulu and joining a women's sewing group to make seal fur mittens with Susan, teaching in the north to the third generation after residential schools, being "on the land" with blizzards, igloos, northern lights, polar bears and caribou, and the hot tea and warm bannock, love and belly laughs of life in a northern community