As a young person, I was able to travel more than most youth do, and therefore gained a lot of cultural experiences. I also have worked with children from as soon as I was old enough to work! Here as some of the experiances that have made an impact on my future as an educator!
Costa Rica Volunteer Trip:
In my grade 12 year, my Me To We group was lucky enough to have the opportunity to travel to Costa Rica with another Me To We group from a nearby community. In Costa Rica we volunteered in all sorts of different ways, saw the cultural diversity and got to explore! I found the trip extremely humbling. We worked with a school to create a mural for their cratering school. Seeing the joy that the artwork brought to the students and the happiness they had, even though they were attending school in a building with two rooms that was falling to crumbles, was so inspiring. Although most of the children couldn’t speak english, the language of love was so obvious. These children loved school and they loved being amongst one another and learning. It was such a great motivation for myself as a future teacher, and a reminder of how wonderful learning can be.
Teach On Call:
I am so fortunate to have been able to spend over 100 hours substitute teaching in my hometown. This was the closest experience I have had to teaching. I learned so much about how to run a classroom and classroom management. I was expected to teach all ages of elementary students of all different compositions. I had students in my classroom with behavioural issues, learning disabilities, mental illness, hearing impairment and other physical and mental problems. I learned a lot about how to help all students, not just the average student but the gifted child or the child that struggles with academics and everything in between. I am so grateful I had the hands on experience in the classroom that I did before getting into the Bachelors of Elementary Education program. Most teachers get to experience being a TOC after they graduate the program, but I feel a step ahead.
Dance Teacher:
Throughout high-school I taught dance to children ages 3-13. My hometown did not have a dance studio, so I taught these classes on my own. I had to create lesson plans, budgets, find music, pay rent on a building and teach around 50 children dance all by myself. I learned so much about planning and implementing plans with students. I quickly realized that lesson plans may not always work as planned, had to be flexible, understood that each child learned differently and developed management skills. I was responsible for all these students well being, and responsible for teaching them something. I took pride in my learning as the program developed stronger and stronger each year. A lot of this will be heavily transferable to the classroom. I have been able to see my plans in physical action and have had nobody else to call on when I failed. This is the same with being a teacher, it is first and foremost a learning experience. I am never going to be perfect, I will fail, but I will learn from those experiences.