I love to craft! There's just something about the spirit of the holidays where a homemade card can liven up anyone's mood. As cliché as it sounds, the best gifts come from the heart and I'm a firm believer that if you put your heart and soul into a project, regardless of the outcome, you yourself, and others will be satisfied with it. The world is my oyster when it comes to crafting as colours that don't make sense together can go together and Iron Man and Cinderella can exist on the same page. Crafting taught me how to be creative; that 1+ 1 may not always = 2. Although math is one of my teachables, I do welcome my students to challenge me on anything, even a subject that is supposedly black and white.
This is my view on education. The concept of normality is tossed out the window as I love teaching in a unique way. I also enjoy word play; I urge myself to come up with a creative title for each lesson I teach using some form of word play to attract attention and hopefully raise a smile out of my students. After all, the title page is the first thing that students see and first impressions can make a lasting impression. It can make or break a student's experience with a particular unit because of a preconceived bias formed about the topic just from the title slide. For all these reasons, for the first lesson (introduction to SCH3U chemical reactions), I designed a title page personifying different elements of the periodic table to symbolize chemicals displaying emotions (reactions). I see the world in harmony and everything is related in some way or another. Thus, finding the most obscure connections between different concepts are not so difficult for me as I always try to think outside the box, either in the classroom or out. To me, I don't want to be ordinary, to be normal, and to "fit in." Growing up, I was always the odd one out, from my hobbies, to my actions, to my preferences and demeanor. Instead, I've always treated it as a compliment whenever someone refers to me as an "alien" or just "weird." Everyone is unique, some more than others, but I truly believe calling someone normal can do just as much harm as good. I hope I can inspire my students to live out their own individual passions regardless if anyone else approves. Perhaps they can inspire a new trend or perhaps they can create one themselves. Regardless the outcome, if you don't love yourself, how can you expect others to love you back for who you truly are?
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Whereas before COVID-19 hit, I used to indulge on the gastronomy of food creations all over the world, staying at home has honed in on my creative abilities even more. As much as good food is judged based on taste, it is also judged based on appearance, odour, and texture. The last factor I learned was a huge factor when my partner, the very picky Justin (whom you see in all the pictures) can complain about the "odd" texture when everything else can be perfectly fine.
As a vegan for 6 years, when I began eating out more frequently, I found it was quite difficult to maintain my diet because of the restricted choices on the menu, Many times, options were only limited to French fries, or garden salads. I became vegan in first year of undergraduate when I took up dragon boating. I found I could keep up with my team better if I ate a plant-based diet and thus maintained this diet ever since. I never enjoyed cheese as a child and meats don't really appeal to me as much as seafood did. Thus, because of limited restaurant options, I started introducing seafood, and eggs back into my meals. At first, I would get a huge stomach ache from eating animal products because my body was not used to these foreign foods. However, I adjusted gradually as I began to allow these foods back into my diet. I think rather than going on a diet, a preferred description I like to use is balanced meals pertaining to my needs. This is like my stance with education. Society places a label on things that do not follow the traditional "normal" way of doing. Once someone is labelled with a tag, that stigma follows that person throughout their education career and it is very difficult to part with that label. The concept of normality taught to us in CAD is a very crucial one for that matter because the education system praises those who stand out academically and punish those who fall behind. A parallel can be drawn to cooking; if it looks like a burger, tastes like a burger, smells and feels like one, does that make it burger? Like wise, if it looks like a burger, but doesn't taste like one, does that make it not a burger? What if the patty was made from pea protein and the cheese from nut milks? What if a student appeared gifted in math, but falls behind in English? This student might have a difficult time living up to expectations because others would expect excellency from this student in all subject areas. What if a black student shows up to class looking ragged and haven't showered for a couple of days? Would others automatically attribute that student as unintelligent and lazy? Often times we may fall prey to assumptions based on dispositional factors because it is the easiest processing path in our brains (fundamental attribution error). It takes deliberate action and thought processes to combat these thoughts, and to help out those who are misunderstood. This is the effort we must put in, and the difficult questions we must ask ourselves in order to challenge ourselves as educators who are propelling the future of the next generation. I must admit that as a huge outdoorsy person and exercise/gym fanatic, I found myself quite enjoying my new normal that entails exercising whenever I can, and even being able to finish one minute before I start class. Whereas before I thought I was a huge extrovert who loved attending festivals, hanging out with friends, and moving about, I quite enjoy the time to myself and dictating my own schedule. Having held 4 part time jobs all at once while commuting to school (3 hour commute each day!), I never realized how much time I had in a day if I saved on the commute. I can switch brains instantly from student mode, to teacher mode, to business owner mode, to athlete all in the span of seconds. So I guess the silver lining behind all this is that I found my inner Zen. Though my life is still crazy bustling about and trying to fit in 25 hours of work in a day, I could really get use to this work- from-home kind of new normal.
In a classroom, what does this say about me? Perhaps I can learn a bit about myself each and every day. When before I thought I was a specific someone with specific preferences of teaching, how will I know if I always do that one thing? Trial and error and taking huge leaps of experimentation are bound to pay off in the future as an educator...right? Even by the time I'm 65 and grey, I'll still have loads of energy to teach kids and take in constructive criticism. This is what I set out to do in my first practicum. Ahhh yes, 2020 marks the scariest year on record for my 24 years of living, but staying optimistic is the correct way to go about this. My Halloween was canceled, a year where this holiday finally landed on a Saturday and right before Daylight Savings time, meaning I could have gotten an extra hour to enjoy the spooktacular festivities the night before. Nope, instead, I painted a giant scary bee with chutes for its legs in order to try giving candy at a socially safe distance. What I learned that night was something that would change my mentality forever. First, that I'm still young at heart and love enjoying the festivities of Halloween. Second, that some children, despite all the government's warnings and parental precautions, still went trick-or-treating as they need some semblance of normality in their lives that COVID took away from them. Regardless if they ate the candy or not they got from trick-or-treating, the act of going door to door was something unique this time of year. Children get to dress up and act cute/spooky to grown ups who reward them with candy. This type of system is similar to what schools do by setting students up for "success" and rewarding them with a grade. It doesn't matter what the students do with the grades afterwards, just that act of getting a grade for something you did is a sense of normality. It would be difficult to shift the mindset away from the high value that grades have, but I guess it takes COVID to stir up our sense of normalness and having everyone slowly adjust to our new normal. As a new educator, I must keep the essence of routine in mind. At OISE, we are taught to teach through DI, UDL, inquiry-based problem solving, and many other unique methods of instruction that are different than what our students were used to before. Thus, although the methods seem practical in theory, they may be received in a negative manner in the classroom. Thus, it is important to slowly introduce these new methods of teaching while respecting other teachers' teaching methods and keeping in mind education's ultimate purpose; to preserve societal norms and beliefs, to perpetuate these customs, and to provide change for the future. |
AuthorHi! Thanks for taking the time to read about my journey. I hope you can take something from my experiences and share yours in return. Don't be shy! ArchivesPanamanian AdventuresKenyan AdventuresAdventures
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