Endorsement for Tammy Maloney for Alberta Party Leader

I am writing this letter in endorsement of Tammy Maloney. I first met Tammy in the same way many of us in the Alberta Party first meet: over twitter. However, it was not through the Alberta Party that our relationship begun, but instead through her work with SEAChange Ltd, a Calgary based organization that Tammy founded that uses an innovative business model to transform youth experiencing homelessness into Social Entrepreneurs. This was immediately appealing to me because of the clever and innovative way that Tammy was approaching an important issue that the city currently faces.

I first met Tammy in person at ‘An Evening with Dave Hancock,’ hosted by Calgary based organization Save Our Fine Arts. We quickly got chatting and agreed to meet for coffee, and a week later Tammy and I met for what was an inspiring, dynamic conversation that immediately engaged me in both the Alberta Party and Tammy’s vision for Alberta. What I loved most about our conversation was that, despite being 17, Tammy took every word I said as an important opinion that mattered. As a youth, it is easy to feel like my opinion is not listened too, and this is not okay. The decisions made today will determine the Alberta that I will live and work in, and they will determine the Alberta that my kids will be born into. It is obvious that Tammy is fully aware of this, and furthermore respects it. For Tammy, no opinion is worth any more or any less than the next person. This valuable quality that Tammy possesses will without a doubt make her an outstanding leader for the Alberta Party, as she naturally lives up to the values of the Alberta Party.

What separates Tammy for me from the other candidates is her obvious passion for everything she does. Tammy thinks acts and leads with her heart, a quality that is invaluable. I recently had the great opportunity to attend the finalist interviews for a Canada wide undergraduate scholarship called the Loran Award. The Loran award is one of the most prestigious scholarships in Canada, valued at $75 000. Whilst at the interviews, it was clear that all 75 finalists had one very important trait in common that made them stand out as leaders above thousands of other students across the country. This trait was that everything they did; all the extra-curricular activities they participated in, the organizations they volunteered with, the businesses and foundations they started - they did with enthusiasm, passion and a love for their work. One must only meet with Tammy for a short amount of time before it becomes evident that she is running for Leader of the Alberta Party with an infinite passion and a love for what she does. This gives me great faith that Tammy will lead the Alberta Party with a passion that will both engage and inspire.

What gives me the most confidence in Tammy’s ability to lead the Alberta Party is her drive to take the passion that motivates her and to use it to inspire Albertans to aim higher than a ‘better Alberta.’ In reference to Tammy’s own vision for Alberta, our province has vast amounts of untapped energy that needs to be found and used. The word Energy does not refer to the kind of Energy that we are used to though. It instead refers to the Energy stored in every one of us; the artistic, creative energy that drives and motivates us. If this energy was to be tapped into for every single Albertan, we would live in a society where every individual is driven by their passion for their work. The benefits of this for our province would be massive, and it is a change that needs to happen for Alberta to become the best place in the world to live. I believe that Tammy’s exemplary leadership and passion for her work will make her successful in inspiring this change, and consequently transforming our province.

Tammy’s vision for the province of Alberta is ambitious, and will be challenging. However, Tammy is not just a leader with vision. Tammy has shown numerous examples of taking her passion and vision and turning it into actions. The first example of this is her leadership role she took on in the 2008 IESE Doing Good and Doing Well Conference; the Largest European Student-Run Conference on Responsible Business. The second example is her dedicated work with the William J. Clinton Foundation, where she worked in Nigeria and accomplished many impressive things including spearheading the development of a strategy to address malnutrition nationwide and foster alliances between various stakeholders including the Federal Ministry of Health and UNICEF.

It is through examples such as these that solidify for me Tammy’s ability to lead the Alberta Party with not only passion and drive, but with the experience of turning that motivation into actions that have time after time proved to be successful. Tammy is a dynamic, passionate, innovative young woman with a wealth of both global and community experience in addressing and implementing successful solutions to many problems. With this in mind, it gives me great confidence in declaring my full support for Tammy Maloney as leader of the Alberta Party!

The threat to Fine Arts Education in Alberta

It has become apparent to me during the last few weeks that, when discussing the future of fine arts Education in Alberta, very few people actually realize that the potential to loose the excellence that exists in fine arts education is in fact there. As a member of Alberta's Save Our Fine Arts (www.saveourfinearts.ca) I am a strong supporter of the preservation and expansion of fine arts education, and wish to see education take the best possible path during the rolling out of Inspiring Education.

There are many exciting ideas emerging with Inspiring education, (Education Minister Dave Hancock's plan to essentially remodel the way we look at and carry out education), but with those ideas also come a number of concerns, especially for a fine arts supporter. The first of these is that the Inspiring education document talks of creativity integrated over all aspects of learning. Whilst I am not against this idea, I feel that it does give the potential for a focus on disciplined fine arts education to be lost. There are many papers and studies that support that the arts are an essential part to an education, ultimately leading to more creatively thinking citizens. However, making a high school student color maps in social, or attempting to teach chemistry through dance is not a way to make more engaged, critically thinking citizens. In fact, I would argue that too much arts integration into core classes would increase the number of students who see school as a joke, leading to an increase of students not attending class, or even dropping out of school. This would lead to an increase in the number of students not graduating high school, lower diploma scores, and Alberta students failing to compete for University placements.

It is instead the established fine arts programs that we currently have, the programs that are disciplined and focused that produce the students that many Education systems aim for. The fine arts teach students many skills that other classes simply do not. Walk into any arts class, be it music, drama, dance or art, and you will see time after time again examples of students building confidence, learning how to express themselves, learning the skills needed to think creatively and quickly, often improvising on the spot. Drama, dance and music teach students the importance of working together, collectively working hard towards one goal. The arts build character. They build personality. Furthermore, no other class gives students the same reward that many students get after putting on their top performance, or finishing the piece of art work they have been working on for months. The arts create emotions and feelings that no other class does.

Alberta Education has a number of words that they see their model students becoming. We all know them. The studies show that the arts create students that match these words, and in an idealistic world, all students can become said words if they are exposed to the arts. But the truth of the matter is that it is the discipline and integrity in our fine arts programs that create these citizens, and it is not as simple as learning math through acting.

It is not that I disagree with Minister Hancock's vision for education; I strongly believe he is heading in the right direction. But it is important to make sure that Alberta Education realizes the differences between what looks good on paper, and what the reality of the classroom is. That is why I am involved with Save Our Fine Arts, and as a supporter of the arts, of education, or of tomorrows citizens, I would hope you too see the importance of becoming involved.

A Place for Pondering and Rambling

For a while now I have been wanting to start a blog.
Throughout the day, my mind wonders off down randoms paths of imagination and ideas, many of which at the time i create and develop in my mind until all seems perfect. And then, by fault of human nature, by the time i try to regurgitate these thoughts from the depths of my brain, hours or days after, the idea is simply gone.
And so starts a place for me to express my thoughts, ideas and rants!! I place where during school, or into the wee hours of the morning, I can express my thoughts and ideas!

Hope you enjoy.