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This week I was given the amazing opportunity to participate in a Professional Development Day with C2C (Classroom 2 Community) alongside educators and other teacher candidates from around the province.  For the day we were encouraged to engage with about 3 different sessions so I signed up for:

• Empowering Students to Meet Today’s Eco-Social Issues through Authentic Learning with Maureen Jack-LaCroix
• A Path for the Future to Reduce Fossil Fuel Emissions with Brian Pataky
• Acknowledging and Repairing Relations with our Wild, Native, and Medicinal Plants with Lori Snyder

In addition to these sessions I also attended the morning BCTF meeting where Terri Mooring discussed her meeting with Dr. Bonnie Henry regarding how COVID is impacting classrooms around the province. I thoroughly enjoyed the morning BCTF meeting because it gave me insight as to what is going on with the education system in BC this very week; I was impressed to know that the concerns of teachers, students, and parents are all being addressed quickly and directly with Dr. Bonnie Henry herself and it made me confident in my future professions’ ability to handle a crisis. A lot of my own concerns regarding COVID-19 and public schools were validated and addressed in the meeting and it certainly had a positive impact on the feeling of community amongst teachers.

I found each part of my day inspiring and informative, all in different ways which I believe can influence me in the future as an elementary school teacher. The first session I attended with Maureen Jack-LaCroix provided me with a  lot of immensely helpful resources that her organization (Be The Change) offers to educators. The intention of Be The Change is to get students involved with environmental issues within their communities and to encourage them to enact change themselves. I found that these resources were mainly focused for older students, likely in secondary school, but I do believe that with a few tweaks they could be used as a group in an elementary setting as well. The session and resources are set out to get students and teachers talking within their community about local and global issues and provides step by step activities that will walk them through the process of becoming more environmentally aware within their own communities and their own social circles. I would like to use these resources in my future classroom as a group; I think it would be very interesting to use these resources as a class with younger students so that they can begin to develop a sense of environmental issues at a young age and within their own homes with the support of their classroom to back them up. This way they can grow up with a realistic sense of problems within their communities and if they were to develop  a desire to enact change they would already have the tools and potentially even connections to do so.

The second session with Brian Pataky was one that I signed up for for 2 reasons:

1. I am all for reducing fossil fuel emissions and would definitely like to have the tools to encourage my students to be kind to the environment in the future.
2. Brian Pataky was my Biology 11 teacher in high school and I was interested to see how my experience learning from him would be different now versus when I was a teenager.

This presentation was certainly interesting, he covered global events that were being caused by global climate change and briefly went over the science behind why it was happening. He also briefly covered ways in which we (as adults) can aim to reduce our own fossil fuel emissions (hybrid or electric vehicles, solar power energy,  battery operated outdoor appliances, etc.), however I found that the presentation was lacking information regarding what I can do as a teacher to help with his passion for a greener future. He failed to mention how he can inspire students to work towards a future with fewer fossil fuel emissions, so I posed the question in the chat function on Zoom. By the end of the session he had not yet answered my question so I left the session slightly frustrated because ultimately I found the information that he shared to be very inspiring to be kinder to our world, yet I was not given the tools to teach future generations to do the same. By providing me the information and context for the global climate issues that are happening around the world, however, he has inadvertently inspired me to think about ways that I could inspire my own students; he lit the fire that is required for change without demanding it, which was certainly different than how the other sessions went.

The third session which I attended with Lori Snyder was by far the most influential one, and after a long day of Zoom sessions already I found that hers was the best way to end my day. She encouraged us all to develop a symbiotic and respectful relationship with nature and to acknowledge the importance of elements around us that we may often take for granted or have negative feelings towards such as snow in the wintertime or dandelions in our front yards. She went into depth regarding how we can benefit the earth as well as how the earth can benefit us from not only an Indigenous perspective but also from the perspective as a living thing, equating us (the two-leggeds, as she would refer to humans) with the nature outside our doors. She emphasized that we are no more important than the nature around us and therefore need to respect what it can do for us. One interesting piece of knowledge that she used to emphasize her point had to do with the Cottonwood tree. She explained that Cottonwood trees often grow around rivers, so when people build or purchase homes close to a river they will often cut the Cottonwood trees down so that they can have a nice view of the water near their home. However, without the shade that the Cottonwoods provide the water temperature in the river will rise and will therefore prevent the salmon from wanting to swim in it, ultimately disrupting the entire ecosystem. This example really struck home for me and has entirely encouraged me to teach my own students that same respect for nature so that future generations do not continue to alter the balance between human and nature.

 

 

What a wild ride we have been on over this past month, my friends! From adapting to online school due to COVID-19, to developing a community within our cohorts without ever having met, all the way to our first Observational Practicum fresh with rules and regulations surrounding hygiene. Every day so far this block has brought me a new perspective and has broadened my mind. Every day I have something new to consider and I have found that it has altered my regular thinking; I now often find myself reflecting on how I learn best, how I could teach best. I am always looking for opportunities to teach anybody anything just so that I can use my new knowledge and put it to practice. I have also found that when I am given the opportunity to educate somebody, I am so incredibly proud of myself after the fact for teaching successfully.

My biggest learning so far about teaching and learning? That is a tough one. I feel like my brain has been so inundated with information over this past month that it is hard to differentiate the elements of my learning. If I had to pick, I would probably say that my biggest lesson so far about teaching and learning is that education is truly a holistic experience, and that if a learning experience is static then something vital is missing. Holistic learning means that it engages the mind, body, and spirit with a variety of elements in order to fully activate a student’s ability to relate the curriculum material to themselves as well as every day life and society around them. This conceptual method has then further encouraged me to understand my learning in the program from a holistic point of view. I now find myself constantly trying to relate material to my own life, I am almost always talking to my loved ones about what I have been learning in school, and I take breaks to develop my own physical literacy skills with a sort of makeshift walking curriculum of my own so that my mind and body are working together to digest the knowledge that I have been learning.

This holistic approach to learning and teaching has really opened me up to self-reflection and regulation. I find myself constantly reflecting on who I will be as an educator and what I need to do to get there; the main thing that I have learned about  myself so far throughout this program however, is that I know that I am meant to be an educator. I can feel it in every bone in my body. When I tell you that I am fully invested and loving every piece of knowledge that is thrown my way I am not exaggerating.. I find myself searching for podcasts and articles outside of assigned work that I think will benefit the development of my own pedagogical philosophy. I can finally feel myself growing into a profession that I was meant for, something I had unsuccessfully tried to force in the past with a previous job. But this time, it is coming naturally.

What I expected to learn in this program versus what I have actually learned are vastly different, let me tell you. Going into the program my main expectation was that my learning was going to start off a lot more foundational; I expected that we would start from the ground up, learning the history of education and why it applies to today, and then going from there eventually leading to Block 5 where we would actually be learning how to teach. However, what I have learned is that this program cannot teach any of us to teach today’s curriculum because of the fact that it is so much more holistic than it was when we were in public school. So, because our content and methods will be so much different as teachers than what we experienced as children and adolescents, our program is more so about the re-shaping of our minds and imaginations.  It is offering these methodologies and pedagogies that our own teachers in the past weren’t even aware of and therefore could not pass on to us. We are the new wave of educators.

On September 25th, 2020 I virtually attended a Professional Day webinar for B.C Independent Schools lead by the Professional Outreach Program for the Early Years (POPEY). The session provided me with plenty of amazing resources that I look forward to using in my own future classrooms and with my future students to help them develop their reading and writing skills; what stood out most to me about these resources is that they are so incredibly different than when I was in that age group developing my own literacy skills. Teaching children to understand what they are reading today is less “read this short story and tell me what happens” and more giving the children the tools necessary to grow the building blocks to allow them to get to a point of understanding on their own.

I learned a lot about the different ways that students can learn, and that all students will learn best in one form over another. I came to the realization that as an educator it will be very important for me to manipulate my lesson plans so that they can serve all of my students and cater to the different ways of learning. The POPEY website offers a good deal of resources that can help me out with that. Every so often during the webinar we were split up into breakout rooms so that we could discuss these topics with smaller groups of educators and compare notes. As a student myself with limited experience in schools I was really excited for the opportunity to pick the minds of people who have been in the profession for years already and to ask them what works best for their classrooms. I received a lot of mixed information (as all teachers organize their lessons differently) but what I took most from the experience is that regardless of the students’ learning style or preference, what will help them learn the most is by actually practicing the lesson at hand, no matter what that practice looks like. We cannot expect our students to watch a video and know how to do something, they need hands on experience to become familiar.

The information that I learned at this session is important to me because my main insecurity about becoming a teacher is that I won’t be able to get some of my lessons entirely through to a student, that no matter how or what I teach them it just might not work. POPEY taught me that there are limitless methods and resources that a teacher can use to work with their students while also ensuring that their learning can be fun, creative and impactful. I was assured by this Professional Day that the network and community of educators available to me as resources themselves can offer me a world of support if or when I may need it in my first few years of teaching.

There was one resource in particular that stood out to me that I plan on using in my own future classroom, The Hand of Knowledge. This is an activity that I can see myself using on the first day of class that can serve as an ice-breaker, it will also allow me to begin to understand my students’ learning methods as well as get them to reflect on themselves and their own goals or desires. The Hand of Knowledge activity would begin with students either getting a print out of the outline of a hand or tracing their own hand on a piece of paper (I would prefer the latter). Then, in each finger they would write the following:

Do they have any worries about school? Or anything else?

How do they like to learn best?

What is something interesting that they learned not at school?

What is something they are really good at?

What do they do for fun in their free time?

And in the palm of their hand they would write the answer to:

What is their dream? Or, what are their hopes for the future?

This activity stands out so much to me because I feel that children are not often given the opportunity to express themselves. With The Hand of Knowledge there are no right or wrong answers, there are no expectations or guidelines. I want my students to all know that they are individuals and that they are all unique. I need them to know that there is no wrong way of learning, growing, or creating.

“Digital literacy is part of media literacy. They’re both included in the idea of ‘information literacy,’ which is the ability to effectively find, identify, evaluate, and use information.” (CommonSenseMedia.org).  When thinking of literacy, most people from Generation X or the Baby Boomer generation would immediately think of reading and writing on paper, however as technology advances and swiftly takes over the younger generations lives, it is important to remember that digital literacy is prominent, and it is a train that nobody is going to want to miss.

For children to be taught the ability to navigate the digital seas effectively and safely is imperative to their future lives in our ever-growing technological world. In today’s society it goes without saying that the number of children in North America who have never have the chance to handle an iPhone or laptop is minimal, however as a future educator it is important for me to remember that not all children come from the same social or financial standing in their homes and therefore will not have access to the same amount of technology. Henceforth the importance of teaching digital literacy in the classroom is high; if we chose to not encourage or enable children to expand their digital literacy skills in the classroom, then the knowledge gap between the students who have access to technology at home versus those who do not would grow exponentially, thus leaving them at a severe disadvantage as adults. This could interfere with their ability to communicate, succeed in Post-Secondary education, or even progress in a job. The consequences could be similar to that of an individual today who suffers from our current definition of illiterate, to be unable to read or write.

The idea of incorporating digital literacy skill development into my future classroom is actually an exciting one because when used safely and responsibly the internet can be a wealth of learning and fun for students (sometimes even at the same time). Future generations, when given the right tools, will be able to broaden their minds as far as they wish while gracefully navigating the rocky seas of the online world. I would like to incorporate online ‘games’, as I will later mention in Bri Stauffer’s article, while taking class time to expand on the topics at hand to ensure that all of my students are fully understanding the concepts at a more academic and/or personal level. I would also like to incorporate elements of research into my teaching, even to students at a young age so that they can grow with healthy research habits which will allow them to differentiate between a good resource and a not-so-good one.

The dangers of not encouraging students to grow their digital literacy skills does not just stop with an inability to advance at the same rate as the majority of society around them. The internet carries threats of child endangerment through many channels, all of which are necessary to make children aware of at a young age so that they will be able to recognize the dangers themselves into their adolescence. When a child or adolescent is given internet access they are susceptible to dangers such as cyber-bullying, sexual exploitation or copyright infringements. Bri Stauffer explains in her article How to Teach Digital Literacy Skills that by teaching children about internet safety and responsibility as their digital literacy inevitably grows, their ability to stay out of many areas of internet danger will also build. Her article also provides several amazing resources that I explored that teachers can use with their students to help them identify possible web-based issues that they may encounter.

My favourite one listed in Stauffer’s article is an interface called Interland, developed by Google. I myself got quite caught up playing around with it and learned quite a lot! It would be a great game to play together as a class, or to even have students try out independently if they are a bit older (I would guess grades 7-10).

You can find the link to Interland here: https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/en_us/interland

The internet is huge, and it can be messy, but never-the-less it is here to stay.

 

 

References:

Lynch, M. (2017, May 6). What is Digital Literacy? https://www.thetechedvocate.org/what-is-digital-literacy/.

Stauffer, B. (2020, April 16). How to Teach Digital Literacy Skills. https://www.aeseducation.com/blog/teach-digital-literacy-skills.

What is Digital Literacy? https://www.commonsensemedia.org/news-and-media-literacy/what-is-digital-literacy.

 

The memories that I have of my kindergarten teacher all bring about a similar emotion in me. Awe. I remember being so young, 5 or 6 at the time, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of her while she read us a story.

Her hand maneuvering the book in a way that it had done a thousand times before. Her pinky and thumb holding the pages open so that it faced us, with just enough of an angle that she could read the words as well.

 

The entire moment captured me.

The story.

How she held herself.

Her accent.

The story again. But this time because I wanted to pay attention so I could impress her.

 

It was less about the things she did as my teacher and more so about how she made me feel. 

She made me feel special like I was the only student in her classroom while encouraging us all to make friends. She made learning feel like playing. To this day I still enjoy the act of learning, regardless of how frustrating or difficult it may be there is always a part in me that relishes in the challenge. I owe my thirst for knowledge to her.

She not only made me love learning, but she also ignited the passion in me at a young age to want to become a teacher as well as an adult. This was done in two ways:

1.  She made the classroom environment imaginative, magical and fun.
2. She has always remembered me. And no, I do not mean that she recognized me until the 4th grade when my family moved and I had to go to a different school. I mean now, as a woman in my twenty’s, I can run into her anywhere and she will hug me and say “Oh Samantha, I am so happy to see you.”.

I imagine that the first day I am a teacher with my own students, my own classroom, I will look at the bright minds before me as I would look at a blank notebook. I will know the beginning, middle and end of the story which will lie inside, but it is my job to guide the pages between in filling themselves. It will be my job to help them write their story.