ELA Today

The author, Abigail Anderson, had a career in education that spanned thirty-six years, from the classroom to the Quebec Ministry of Education and McGill University. She remains a passionate reader and proponent of teachers, ELA, and public education. As a literate person, she was unexpectedly confronted with reading a novel that challenged her repertoire, her knowledge and expectations of craft and genre, as well as her understanding of herself as a reader. After a lifetime of thinking, writing and teaching about reading, imagine what a gift it is for a reading experience to so surprise a reader — and for that same reader to allow themselves to be surprised. Follow Abigail’s reading adventure HERE.

Alternative United is an organization based out of the EMSB’s Outreach high school system. In 2013, four teachers—John Devlin, John Commins, Paul Berry and I—approached the GMAA about bringing the outreach schools together to form a basketball team. The proposal was accepted and Alternative United was born.
The team drew players from five different schools that year and before long this talented group of athletes made a name for themselves as a passionate, scrappy squad that never quits. I wrote an article in the Gazette about how the team’s success on the court extended to the classroom. That summer, Gatorade discovered the story and approached us about making a short film about the team as part of their “Win From Within” series. It was an instant success, getting over a million views, and just like that Alternative United was receiving international attention.