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Jennifer Chan

Jenn and I met in the most conventional-nonconventional way. We met at the Centre for Social Innovation, a co-working space that prides itself on collisions among people and their ideas. I don't remember the exact collision but it was in the kitchen, probably during their "salad club", which I typically avoided because the conversations always felt so fabricated for me. Jenn -- I'm sure -- caught my attention because she's anything but formal, hierarchical, or fabricated. She probably said something like "so you think you're smart because you have a PhD?". ;) Actually, she would not have been that bold. But however it was, we ended up meeting up for coffee and chatting about who knows what. She ended up taking my Life Coaching course, which was the first courses offered in Toronto. We also had an early collaboration on a workshop entitled "Design Thinking My Brain". It was then that I remembered how challenging it is to communicate with people in different industries. (Her background was architecture and design). We eventually started working on various projects including our biggest and most ambitious endeavour: UExperience. Then in 2015 we were pregnant together and eventually had babies 2 months apart. 

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Alternative (Elementary) Schools & Learning Styles with Jenn

A few days before this conversation Jenn and I (along with our partners and kids and friends) attended an open house for an alternative school in our neighbourhood that we both want our kids to get into. The conversation natural meanders through a variety of topics including school ratings, learning styles, starting a new school, starting a summer school, tracking how kids learn, neuropsychoidiology, strength-based approach to learning... 

Process Learning (take 1?) with Jenn

Jenn and I were meeting for a brainstorming session over “report cards” for home learning. We both highly value the importance of process a long with the outcome or the product. We decided to start discussing a tool to help parents (including ourselves) document the process of learning in their children, with a focus on learning that’s done at home. We don’t cover the nitty gritty of what we come up with — we’ll save that for later — but we discuss the value of process, other ways people/disciplines document learning, how to reward process, 

Talking about work with Jenn

Jenn rants about her job for the first 13 minutes. So skip ahead if you don’t want to hear that. We eventually cover topics such as leadership, managing others, reference letters, challenges of being a working mom, brining your whole self to work, working/busy too much, life in balance, being addicted to work. 

Thinking about new models of child education with Jenn

This is an older recording from when our babes were under a year old and you can hear them in the background. What feels like a long time ago, Jenn and I were very active in alternative education systems, but at the time it was focussed on Post-Secondary Education. In this conversation, we talk about early childhood education. We play around with some ideas for how can we create a new education system distinct from the public school system and distinct from the homeschool system. We also just hash out education in general, as we typically do. 

Privilege with Jenn

The conversation starts off with a reaction that Jenn had to a facilitator that I brought in for a retreat day for the staff of my company, the Centre for Applied Neuroscience. It sparked a whole conversation on privilege, which I admit was tough for me to have. I personally feel like it’s hard to talk about this, especially publicly, because out of fear that we might say the wrong thing. So I venture into this conversation feeling vulnerable. I think we dive into a few good points about it and I also feel more comfortable talking about it with Jenn, who I am very open with and who is a women of color (Chinese). So it was a great conversation to have!