Hello Friends!

Welcome to my blog where I hope to share my journey as a science teacher candidate in the PDPP program at the University of Victoria. How this blog will look exactly, will likely evolve as I move through this fall and but there are a few things you can be sure to hear from me here! First off, my reflections and experiences as a I move through my course work and field experience and secondly an inquiry project I will be exploring this fall semester. Full disclosure this is my first blog and my first blogpost so hopefully both you and I will see an evolution in my blog as I explore and learn further through the process of blogging!

A bit about me! 

I am a Westcoast girl at heart and a lover of this beautiful coast that I am so fortunate to reside on! On that note, I would like to acknowledge with respect that I will be blogging and experiencing my education at UVIC from the traditional territories of the Lkwungen, Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ people whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.

I grew up on the Westcoast of Canada where to this day I play in the mountains and along our coastline. As the daughter of two fisheries biologists who prioritized family camping trips over other vacations, I had the opportunity to have many meaningful moments along salmon spawning streams, collecting kelp along the beach, exploring tide pools and hiking among alpine meadow flowers. Outside the gratitude for rubber boots and rain gear, as these were rain or shine adventures, I developed a deep gratitude for our natural world, the ecosystem we inhabit and an appreciation for science based explanations to my many questions and observations. As I moved into my undergrad in biology and earth and ocean sciences I fell in love with my ecology and oceanography classes and those classes that applied science into topics such as conservation biology, resource management and climate science. In a day where information behind issues like Climate Change are cloudier then they should be for many individuals in society I feel fortunate to have received the access to an education that allowed me to comprehend the severity and need for action on such an issue. And yet, it is also frustrating that not everyone had this opportunity to learn science in a way that allowed them to apply it to real world issues. I hope that as I enter the teaching profession as a science teacher I can inspire and empower students to ask tough questions, think critically about what they are hearing and to use their science education confidently in both it’s purest forms and applied manners as they move through their daily life. Not every student wants to grow up and be a scientist, that is okay, but I hope that every student will be able to take the most valuable lessons of a science education and apply it  into whatever they do next!

Week 1 Reflection

As I sit and write this, I have just finished my first week as a teacher candidate! Hard to believe it has only been a week as I reflect over the volume of new material, new ways of learning, new people, new resources and more that were packed into my last seven days! As I sit here after my first field experience day and now having had each of my 6 classes, I am feel excited, grateful and a whole lot less anxious than I was a week ago! I have thought about education in ways I have never thought of before and I have been pushed outside my comfort zone on numerous occasions whether that is navigating this new virtual classroom we are existing in due to Covid-19 or the many new technology hubs I have added to my repertoire. It has been a week, a good one even if at times overwhelming but I am sure of a few things. Firstly, this program is for me, I am in the right place and doing what feels right for me. Secondly, I am going to learn and grow in so many diverse ways! And last but not least,  connection with peers, teachers and professors will be essential to making this journey the most engaging and fulfilling. This community I am starting to build will be something special!

An Inquiry project?

For my tech education course, I have a term inquiry project on which I can do pretty much anything I would like to do! This is both a blessing and a curse as I have the tendency to be overwhelmed by the dilemma of just too many options and also feeling as though I have none at the same time! That being said, I have one area of inquisition that I am leaning towards. It involves me, my danish heritage and the danish language which I have longed to speak for a long time. In many ways, my mother raised me and my siblings aligned with the danish ways in which she was raised. For example, we ate a lot of danish food, I was the owner of many danish wooden clogs, we celebrated Christmas the danish way and she peppered our lives with the ‘hygge’ principals and many danish sayings. As the eldest sibling, she spoke almost all danish to me from a young age unless my dad was present, who like me speaks but a touch of danish. This lasted, until one day when I was 4 years old and looked up to her and asked her to “please be quiet”!  To this day I would like to tell 4 year old me that I should be the one to “listen and please be quiet!” Alas, it was an uphill battle for my poor mother to teach me and the rest of my family danish! I tell you this story because my mom is a big reason behind my motivation to embark on this specific topic. Although my mom is beyond competent speaking english there is something that lights up in her when she speaks danish! I saw this same spark inside her as I travelled to Denmark with her for the first time a couple of years ago. It would make me so proud and happy to be able to converse with her and share more of Denmark with her!

How this looks in the form of my inquiry project specifically I am still trying to figure out! Without a doubt I will not be able to master the danish language in the next four months, but I would love to make progress on that front and develop a learning practice that I can carry forward beyond my ed-tech class. Alongside, learning the language I think it will be important to explore and learn more about danish culture, society and values. This may involve cooking some of my favourite danish meals that my mom makes, exploring and implicating some danish lifestyle philosophies and who knows what else! I will certainly be giving this some more thought as I embark on this inquiry! First step is probably to redownload my duolingo app! Wish me luck!

 

Until next time!

-E