The year Lori Friesen (‘12 PhD) began teaching, she adopted a puppy: a Maltese-poodle named Tango. It was the first dog she’d had since the passing of her beloved childhood dog, and she was thrilled. So were her Grade 1 students, who begged to meet the puppy. Seeing the learning opportunities for students, Friesen agreed to bring the dog to class.

Once Tango had been introduced to the children, pairs of students were allowed 10 minutes with the dog in the reading corner. That’s when the canine magic began. “They started bringing books to read to her,” recalls Friesen.

Stories have been part of human culture since humans were, well, human. It goes back as far as cave people scratching images of their lives onto stone, probably further. With storytelling, we recall the past and anticipate the future by weaving events into juicy narratives.

Traditionally, storytelling was a spoken-word or written affair. But with access to computers new ways of sharing stories have emerged — from podcasts and online learning to digital storytelling.

In this age of e-books, Kindles and iPads, the idea of reading a book to then discuss it with other readers face to face can seem like an anachronism.

But in-person book clubs are alive and well in 2016—a quick look at the Edmonton Public Library’s website reveals an impressive list of book club meetings scheduled at branches across the city in the next two months alone.

Trudy Cardinal, assistant professor of Elementary Education, has always loved books. As a young girl, she says she was the “quintessential bookworm.” As an academic today, her research interests include narrative inquiry, teacher education and the identity negotiations of Aboriginal children, youth and families in and out of schools.

With Fall Reading Week and Fall Convocation happening this month and the holidays just around the corner, it is a perfect time to pause and reflect on the significant events and accomplishments of the past few months.

This issue of illuminate is devoted to the theme of literacy—after celebrating READ IN Week with partners across the city in early October, we wanted to keep the conversation going and ask our faculty members, instructors and illustrious alumni to reflect on the role literacy plays in their teaching, their research and their everyday lives.

For some students, school can feel like the furthest thing from a “safe space.” As anyone who has gone through the K-12 system can attest, school is sometimes a site of persistent anxiety and antagonistic social interactions that can follow students from the classroom to the home—especially in the age of social media.

Our Faculty has long known that our graduates excel in diverse and exciting careers locally, nationally and internationally. You are teachers, psychologists, librarians, policy-makers, counsellors, consultants, professors, research directors, and the list goes on. You hold leadership positions in many areas of education, public and governmental institutions, NGOs, and corporate sectors.

When local Cree and Métis artist Aaron Paquette was a young, rebellious teenager in Edmonton, he learned the impact words can have on someone.

“Your words create worlds,” said Paquette, 42, as he recounted how he started to believe a then-abusive family member when they would tell a teenaged Aaron, “You’ll never be anything”. Later in life, Paquette learned that this family member was so horrifically abused as a child that they had never learned to read.

Once thought of as a niche medium appreciated mostly by stereotypical middle-aged comic book collectors like Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons, the graphic novel has been steadily moving from the fringes to the mainstream since the late 1980s.