HAVING FUN!

Hello classmates:

My last week at Bristol is approaching and I am not looking forward to next Friday when I get to say GOODBYE to my Bristolians. I strongly believe that Teacher’s College should be a yearlong practicum with only few days per week at the University. Sorry dear Professors, I still like you and I still like the world of ACADEMIA, but…..

It’s Sunday evening and I figured as I am chatting with my roommate that I could multi task and share my experiences at Bristol with you. Wow, what an amazing three weeks of my life. I wish I could stay at Bristol for a bit longer. Something happened last week and I do not know exactly what. It’s just that I felt that kids were really starting to trust me and come to me with their Miss K, Miss K, Miss K and never ending Miss K. Although in grade eight, they are SO curious about learning about me, what I like and what I don’t like, and they even got me to go tobogganing with them the first day it snowed. I know, I know, I could be possibly jeopardizing my career if I am looking through the legal lens – but the kids had so much fun, we had a talk about safety and before I knew it I was going down the hill. It was cool for Ss to see that Ms K is not all about math and science and that she loves being outside, too. Only week before I was out playing basketball with the girls and they loved it that much that they kept on asking me to go out and play some more with them. Unfortunately, sometimes I had to turn them down just to have my DAY BOOK up to date.

Ugghhh, the DAY BOOK I would use my laptop for keeping a DAY BOOK anyways as I carry it with me all the time. With no offense, when I look at my DAY BOOK I cannot but think of all the wasted paper that is in there….So yes, I am pro-technology and I do NOT like carrying that heavy monster around. Sometimes, going in and out of school I feel like a need a camel to help me on my daily journeys.

Thank you Camille for some useful tips on how to reduce the weight. It amazing how one get the tips that one would never think of their own.

Well, that is from Ana for today. I hope you are all doing well and it’s time for me to go and chill out some more before I get back to school tomorrow.

Love,

Ana K.

SOMETIMES TO LEARN MEANS TO UNLEARN

HA! What a statement. But I think it is true, as we all carry some untruths with ourselves.
To get rid of them means to unlearn, which is much harder then just learning new stuff. How do we do it? Turn our brains upside down and try to empty them? I don't know, but I do know that the first step is to become aware of your untruths. Sometimes even that is quite a leap.
Any thoughts?

Ana K.
(aka MayaTheBee)

SOCIAL ISSUES DAY

I am really grateful for the opportunity to attend the Social Issues Day Workshop at Brock on Wednesday. These workshops are great for raising awareness; they make you think and re-examine your set of values and beliefs; they make you question the speaker’s statements and overall effectiveness of workshops. I attended workshops on poverty, grieving children and global education.

The first speaker Kalpana Makan talked about poverty. She was a powerful speaker who successfully integrated her experiences into her words. She is a well traveled Canadian/South African woman, whose personal history was tied to poverty. The lesson learned: Never make assumptions about your students. If a student is habitually late for example, simply ask the student what is going on. Sometimes students might live in poverty, single parent homes and their responsibilities might include caring for other siblings. When it comes to parents who live in poverty, do not assume they do not care about their children. Every parent cares about their child. As a teacher, it is our duty to observe our students, learn more about them and try to help them learn. The sad reality is that one is six children in Canada live in poverty which affects many aspects of their lives. One of them is their academic performance. As educators we need to provide these students with care and encouragement to succeed in school as their other financially better off peers.

The second workshop was about grieving and grieving children. To be effective when helping grieving students, first we need to come to terms with our own grief. That means some work on our part. We need to be aware of issues that surround death and our own discomfort as well. We can show care and understanding to students who are grieving without giving advice and compulsively trying to make things better. We can show our understanding by simply listening and being with students. If we are unable to help them, we could possibly refer them to someone who can. Another interesting thing I learned is that grieving doesn’t have to be a linear process. We can grieve at different stages of our lives in different ways. Therefore, the child could grieve over losing their mother when they are 10, 14, 17, as their understanding of the world changes. This workshop helped me better understand my own grief. I think I learned about some valuable tips when it comes to dealing with grief. However, I must admit that when I left the workshop, I could feel many knots throughout my body. The speaker would most likely comment that those are residues of my “un-tackled” emotions which require work.

If we are to follow the natural progression or digression of things, from excellent, to good, to poor, then I would have to say that I was rather disappointed with the last workshop on global education. I might have expected fireworks here, but what I ended up listening to was not about constructive “how” to better the global community, but to an academic deconstruction of the term “helping”. I might be too critical, but that workshop seemed to be an intellectual arena of young minds hungry for shredding everything to pieces. I tend to stay away from that kind of “activism”. Thank you, but no thank you! What I learned from this one: You have to live your words if you want to make them powerful! Otherwise, they are nothing more than voiced textbook, indoctrinated, empty words.

Overall note: I really enjoyed listening to Kalpana. Oh yes, think twice before wearing names brands to school. Think of the message you are sending to your students.

Cheers!

Groups Work Thoughts

What are your thoughts on group work? What are we being marked on when we are submitting a group project? Are all voices represented in that group project? When working in groups, are we learning skills that we are not being evaluated on? Why are we being marked as a group? I welcome all your answers as I am curious to find out about what you have to say.
Thank you!

Let's Share Our Knowledge

I would like to share what took place last Wednesday at Bristol. The day was going as usual. The two students who were going to run for school presidents were in my associate teacher's class. They had their speeches written and after talking we decided to practice them together. I was going to listen to them and give them constructive tips. It went well and they told me that some of my suggestions were a bit corny. I forgot how important it is to sound cool at this age. After wrapping up, I pulled out my music notes to review as my test was coming up the next day (it was during the break time). They were quite curious and I ended up sharing with them how music is not my strength and that I am nervous about upcoming test. The boy offered to help me. And voila, it happened. An exchange of knowledge, or if you want scaffolding took place. Right there and then! Not in an usual T->S kind of way, but the other way around. To make that happen, ego has to go down and what comes before the ego is LOVE of LEARNING. The entire experience felt great and it was the highlight of my day. THANK YOU N&W!

Ana's Mo-Dialogue

I have been thinking, THINKING, and thinking about my last post for some time now. I tried my best to get rid of it, but to no avail it keeps on coming back. That tells me something, and I do not know what exactly. As a matter of fact I know I am learning a lot at Brock and even if I do not have time to make ALL connections now they will come in due time. Rome was not built in one day and patience is a virtue. Brock is providing me with solid foundations for my Rome. Lesson: Keep on building Rome day by day, take as much as you can, digest as much as you can and do it patiently. Everything else will fall into place. In due time.

BloGGiNg AwAY!

This is a third time in two weeks that I sit down at my computer and try to blog for Group G. To my surprise nothing comes up. My well is all dried up. The school is going well, the teaching at the school even better, four of my students that I tutor are excelling. One would think that those three experiences alone would be sufficient material for this blog. But No:) NADA!
Oh, that is not true. I have already taught full 12 lessons at Bristol and what a great feeling! Those experiences really remind me why I am at Brock. I got to share my technology site with my students and some of them tell me that they use it after school and that they enjoy it. That is what matters at the end! - I keep on saying to myself over and over again. Especially in the past little while because I feel like I am put on a really fast paced revolving belt at Brock. Often I feel rushed to go through activities (most classes), I feel like it is more about VOLUME and ability to handle stress rather than taking time to really get into it, digest new knowledge with pleasure and extend it to a higher level of understanding.

Sometimes I feel that this program deserves not one but TWO years of study. That is why lately I have been thinking about getting my Master's degree. I LOVE learning and I guess that is where TC will be taking me next besides teaching.

Ana K.

MaYa WiLL HaVe To DoREMe..!!!

I have a question:

Do you think that J/I teacher should teach all subjects or only those they have studied at university or those they feel comfortable with? Do you think that the comfort level and knowledge of a teacher in a subject area they are teaching affects students' overall performance?
For example, I think that as much as I try, I will never be able to teach music as that is not my strength at ALL! How are students supposed to learn from me? Don't get me wrong, I love music and I couldn't live without it, but my loving it and being competent to teach the same are two COMPLETELY different things. Please help me, console me and more importantly, TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK!

THANK YOU!

Ana K.
(aka MayaTheBee)

What Do You Think?

"Schools, more than any other institution in our society, assimilate persons from different ethnic, racial, religious, and cultural backgrounds and pass on the values and customs of the majority.(Parkay et al., 1996, p.109)" quote comes from Chapter 1, pg.22 of our Foundational Methods textbook along with two interesting questions:

1. Should majority values and customs be honoured in schools?
2. Should each student be expected to assimilate the values customs of majority?

I am really interested to hear your opinions as my stance on this issue might be tainted. Just a mention of the word assimilation stirs up something in me. I must admit that in my case, the word has a rather negative connotation. To rephrase it I am quite allergic to it and sometimes, I wish it didn't exist in our vocabulary:) However, I recognize its positive side and how the process of assimilation could be beneficial to an individual in learning new ways of being and coexisting with others in a new country.

When I hear the word assimilation, the past becomes alive and I can't help but to see the following:

I've just come to Canada. Everything was new -a new city, new people, a new language...and a completely new educational system. I decided to take Canadian history as one of my subject and my first test was coming up. Mr.G preferred lecturing, while we students were expected to take notes. At the beginning of the year we were given a textbook, however Mr.G never made any reference to it. The test was coming up, and I wanted to prepare myself really well, especially because this was my very first test to be written in English. In my previous educational system, students were expected to study both from the text & notes. I went to Mr.G and I wanted to know if I needed to study from the text since he never made any mention of it. If memory serves me well this is how our dialogue went on:

"Mr. G do I need to study from the text as well or just from your notes?"
"Ana this is not Yugoslavia , here you don't need to memorize everything word by word."
"O.K. Mr.G" - I left the classroom with feelings of shame, hurt and disappointment....(I was always proud of my education prior to coming to Canada). However, I quickly learned that and not only from that experience alone, I will need to "assimilate" as quickly as possible. Did I have to compromise on my existing identity? Did I have to change my ways of being to fit the majority? Did I have to assimilate? The answers are most likely YES, as a kid I did not want to experience any further marginalization due to my "differences".

Now, I realize that I cannot change the past, but as a teacher I really need to look at these issues closely, as I would want my students to be proud of who they are and from where they come from.

I am looking forward to hearing your opinions. Thanks!

Ana K.
(aka MayaTheBee)

One Week Later

Dear friends:

It's been exactly a week since we started Teacher's College and yes, I survived it. Needless to say, I am still trying to organize my time even with waking up at 5:00 a.m. If only I could squeeze another 4 hrs. into my day, I would not have to work on my time management skills. No wonder I didn't fall under a GOLD colour of the personality test we did in our Health and Physical Education class. No stress though-I say to myself- I have a lifetime to work on these "underdeveloped" skills.

O.k., this GOLD colour deficiency is only a "minor" detail compared to my GREEN and ORANGE colours, which in two words describe my relationship to learning and teaching - CURIOSITY and ADVENTURE. Let me tell you, the first mentioned noun is always thirsty and the other one is always restless. Where will they take me? Where will Brock take me? I wish my binoculars could see that far.....well, imagination works too.

Btw, as days are passing by and assignments are generously piling up and my memory card belongs to 386 PC version (plus my family photo calendar is too tacky to be seen by public), I finally gave in and bought an agenda. How does one make agendas look motivating? If you have any tips, please DO share. We will get to know each other a bit better, joke and scaffold. You know, you throw an info/tip, I throw another, we barter in hope to bridge the gap and get really equipped to be thrown into the "real" world.

Ok, here goes one:

A friend of a friend is my friend.
A friend of an enemy is my enemy.
An enemy of my enemy is my friend.
An enemy of my friend is my enemy.

(not necessarily true, but it might help in teaching math)...If you would like to know more about it, just shoot.

The one below is a quote picked by a gifted student I work with:

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

Plato

Ok, G (globe)-trotters, until next class. Looking forward to seeing you all!

Ciao,

Maya The Bee (a.k.a Ana K.)

p.s.

Sorry for abbreviations, simply no time!