Thousands of Transitions

Dear Caroline,

Happy Thanksgiving dear :)

I think it's finally hitting me that I am a teacher candidate.

This past Thursday was my second day at my practicum school.

My practicum school is divided into four houses - like Hogwarts.

There are four houses: raven, orca, wolf, and bear. Each house gets points which they add up at the end of the year to see who got the first place and celebrate. Pretty amazing, eh?

I am in Team Bear.

There are the crests of the four houses in Hogwarts. Imagine them as bear, raven, orca and wolf.

Anyways, this past Thursday, the teachers in the bear house was in charge of making staff breakfast in the morning. I was told the day before that I was expected to be at school at 8am to help out with preparing waffles and set-up the staff room. But when I got there, I was pleasantly greeted by my School Associate (SA) who already made all the waffles, syrup, fruit preserves and what not.

Staff Breakfast <3

This reminds me of the readings for this week: Building an Inclusive Culture in an Intermediate Classroom. Yes, this staff breakfast did not involve students, but I believe that the inclusiveness and the community found within staff gets trickled down to students. I would like to summarize the chapter in this sentence: it is crucial to promote safe and welcoming environment where each individuals feels belonging and value - that they are a gift to those around and that their growth and contribution is crucial in the community. To honestly admit, I do not feel that I fitted this statement entirely at the staff breakfast. Part of it, certainly, but not all entirely. At the same time, I do want to recognize that it definitely was a step in process to make me feel valued and belong in the community of staffs.

The rest of the day began when the bell rang. Both staff and students

While I had forgotten some of the student's name initially, I quickly recalled them when I saw them. It was a pure treat, I must say, to see each student nod with a smile when I guessed their names correctly.

My SA also so kindly printed off my "Getting-To-Know-You" sheets to distribute them to students. Throughout the day, I handed these sheets out for each student to fill out. It has the following questions:

• If you can have any super power, what would it be? Why?

• What do you do outside of school? What are your hobbies?

• What motivates you to learn?

• What do you look for in a teacher?

• Is there anything else I should know?

I think this is just a fun way to get to know my students on a individual level. I also will be using the information I get from the sheets to help me write an individual postcard to each student.

Here is the copy of getting-to-know-you sheet, and postcards I will using

Here are some of the word cloud graphics I generated using the sheets. The bigger the word appears on the word cloud, the more frequent the word was used in the answers on the sheet. Surprisingly, these graphics can tell us a lot about the students on both class and individual level.

What do you do outside of school? What are your hobbies?

On the first glance, I can tell that my class is... ACTIVE!

It seems that there is a significant number of students who are involved in sports in my class. This tells me a couple of things:

• I should not assign too much assignment to bring home because the students are already busy with extra-curricular activities and are going to feel overwhelmed with school work.

• If I were to assign homework, it should be quick, simple and fun. By the time the students are finished with their extra-curricular and sit down to do homework, they are probably too tired to concentrate too long, too fatigue to think critically, and want to do something relaxing or fun.

• I am also taking away that my kids are active bunch. I should incorporate movement in my teaching and classroom so that the students have a means to channel their energy.

• I am also seeing that many of my students love music and art (drawing). This gives me an idea that I should integrate music into classroom (maybe background music while studying or allow earphones), or have artistic component to assignments and projects.

What do you do look for in a teacher?

I am simply loving this word cloud. The biggest words I can see in this word cloud are: Nice, Kind and... STRICT. Quiet Contrary to my idea of what makes a desirable teacher, I guess students have another image of wanted teacher. I would have thought they would say: fun, helpful and interesting. This gives me a sense of relief because I am not exactly the funniest and most interesting unique teacher. But I am confident that I can be a fair, nice and kind teacher. Let's see how well I can be strict buahahah.

At the same time, these top three words gets me to ask more questions. I wonder what they mean by kind, nice and strict. For now, I think I am going to abide by these qualities by the following ways (my family and friends helped me to define these concepts):

• KIND & NICE // willing to go out of the way to help students in their needs; non-judgmental in the way the teacher responds to the student contribution; every student is a teacher's favourite and they feel equally appreciated and valued; students are respected as human beings not as kids or objects; always goes the extra step to understand the students and their stories - to figure out what is wrong and what is going on; lots of cookies and nap time.

• STRICT // everyone is equally treated according to rules and consistent consequences

Kevin tells me that all these three words go hand in hand, that they must work together in good balance. For example, being a strict teacher all the time would become plainly a mean teacher. Therefore, being a strict teacher means that they also must be a kind and nice teacher in order to have a good balance in teaching.

What motivates you to learn?

When I was going through these answers, I must be honest with you. I giggled at one point.

It was because there was some common trend of answer and then, one blunt answers popped out. Most of the time, students answered that they learned because of the "sense of reward of simply learning new things", because they want to "become a better person", because of parents, because of good grades... and then, I came across this answer:

"I want to get a good job".

Don't you think my students are so honest? Oh, how I love them in a professional way.

Anywho, I am glad to know that my students in general, like to learn for the sake of learning.

This tells me that I would need to focus in making the content interesting because it is for the sake of knowledge that they come to class, ready to learn.

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Reflection

This past Friday was also my last day in my visiting classroom.

I must say, that it really was that evening when I came home and was taking it in all in that I realized that I was in thousands of transitions.

I was already leaving my first classroom,

I was making myself comfortable in my new classroom,

I was being emerged into this new professional field,

I have been a teacher candidate, a professional colleague for a month and a half now.

The teacher in me was being awakened by each face of transition.

I want to share with you some of the reflections I wrote that day.

time to soak it in :)

What am I learning about myself as a developing teacher?

• That I need to rehearse my lesson plan prior to teaching it

• I am confident and comfortable in presenting

• I easily engage with student

What am I learning about myself as a collaborator? As a team member? How did I support my colleague? How will I continue to do so?

• I become quiet in group collaboration because I want to gather ideas and thoughts on the topic.

• I am not afraid to speak up if I see there is a gap or aspects that can be improved.

• I am available and ready to help.

• I am socially aware of the people around me. I regularly check in with them if they need any help, or how they are feeling at the moment.

What was my best moment today and how can I have more moments like it? What was my most challenging moment and why? How might I respond next time?

• My favourite moment was when I was going through debrief with Jenn, receiving constructive feedback from her. I loved this time because I was being critiqued on how I can improve as an educator in a positive manner. I think I can continue this by incorporating feedback time for the SA and even my students.

• the most challenging time was when I did not know how to interpret some of my student responses. For example, they were being very quiet so I did not know if it was because they were super engaged, or because they were confused, or because they were checked out. Their faces were expressionless so I was not sure if they were simple wearing their normal expression or if something was up. Next time, I can probably ask my teacher what they thought about it and see how that can be better dealt with.

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Over the thanksgiving dinner, I was sharing some of my reflections with family members. The reflections circled around these two questions:

• Who do I want to be as a teacher?

• What do I want to take with me in my teaching practice?

There are so many teachers we encounter throughout our lives, so many figures that come into my mind when I think of "who do I want to be like?"

• There is someone like Mrs. Tyrrell who I want to be like, who so masterfully encouraged me to believe in myself and that anything I dreamed of was going to be possible.

• Then there is someone like Mr. Palmarin, who was incomparably captured the hearts and trust of his students.

• Someone like Dr. Waddington, who pulls his students into a world of limitless imagination and gives us freedom to explore our wonders.

• Dr. Kal Heer, who provokes thoughts in his students' mind with mind-boggling topics to a point we leave the classroom either angry or fascinated.

• And there is Dr. Miriam Miller, who is so sweet and happy. Her energy is contagious and I feel safe to be in her classroom.

And the list can continue on with a countless number of other professors and teachers that come into my mind.

However, I have come to realize internally that I am my own.

I certainly want to embody the qualities of these teachers, but I have come to realize that I must create my own channel in which these skills can be passed onto my students.

Valuing and being prepared to teach each adolescents

I imagine myself to be sweet and kind teacher. I am the teacher who smiles when students walk into my classroom and is greeted with the same question "Good morning (name), how are you today?". I am the one who carries tea sachets for those who are getting sick, the one who asks her students if they need a body break. I am the one to ask how their weekend was, to incorporate their hobbies and interests into my teaching.

Learning and teaching in multiple ways // Advancing learning through ongoing and varied assessment

I am a teacher who is organized and adjustable. I am the one who uses technology to post all unit plan online along with class activity, assignments and resources for students to access. Lesson plans are ready to go, and students have the voice to choose what they want to learn first. They can choose the activity they want to do with each lesson, in whichever manner they would like express their learning. Each unit then is followed up with self assessment and teacher assessment. There will be opportunities for students to assess the teacher, and there will be opportunities to review the unit as a class.

Challenging, exploratory, integrative, and relevant curriculum.

I am a teacher who is both a guide and a student. I guide my students into discovering new topics with enough details to foster genuine curiosity and questions. I am also a student who learn alongside my students who asks questions beyond my knowledge and together come up with strategies to answer their wonderings.

Developing Identity

I am also a teacher who is forever developing. I know that what I want to be now will be different from the the teacher I want to be in couple months. I hope to have more concrete examples, I hope to discover the teacher I am rocking to be.

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• Butler, D. L., Schnellert, L., & Perry, N. E. (2016). Developing Self-Regulating Learners. Don Mills, ON: Pearson. [Chapter 5]

• Brownlie, F., & King, J. (2011). Learning in safe schools: Creating classrooms where all students belong. Markham, Ontario: Pembroke. [Chapter 7]