American Sign Language
I took six courses of American Sign Language (ASL) over three years during my first degree at the University of Victoria, and have developed a conversational fluency in the language. These courses were taught by a Deaf professor, so from the second day of the first level, it was a full immersion language learning experience (we had an interpreter for the first day of the first course, but that was it). This is a competency that could be valuable in the classroom, as not only does it give me experience in ways that work and don’t work in a language learning setting, but it also gives me an insight should I have any Deaf or hard of hearing students in my class. While I am not fluent, I believe that having a teacher who can carry on a conversation in ASL would go miles in helping a Deaf or hard of hearing student feel safe and welcome in my classroom.
Critical Thinking
When doing my first degree at UVic, I volunteered with a program called Vikes Nation that ran student engagement events, both as singular events on their own and as additions to sporting events. I held a higher level position in this group, and was involved in the planning aspects of these events, and in the running and organization of them on the day of. As numerous things could go wrong or need to be changed at the last minute – a volunteer calling out sick, missing or broken equipment, less or more participants than anticipated, to name a few situations – I was given ample opportunities to develop and hone my critical thinking skills. Through this, I learned that I have a level head during minor crises, and am able to come up with potential solutions, make divisive decisions on which solutions might actually work, and figure out how to solve problems that arise.
Collaboration & Teamwork
My EDUC 391 practicum as a whole helped develop my collaboration and teamwork skills. Deciding what I was going to teach and designing my lessons was very much a collaborative effort between myself and my CT. While she gave me a lot of freedom in what and how I wanted to teach, I initiated a lot of collaboration over what my lesson plans looked like, especially towards the beginning of my practicum. As I was new to creating lesson plans and designing lessons, I definitely utilized all the help she was willing to give on what would work with the students and what I should tweak or change, and whether my lessons would actually work at all. I also used and developed these skills in working with the other teachers at the school in general, particularly the other class in my cohort. I did a few STEM challenges that were joint lessons between my practicum class and the other class in their cohort, and these lessons wouldn’t have been the successes that they were without the collaborative efforts of my CT and the other cohort teacher, both in supervisory aspects and in aiding in classroom management and with questions from students.
Communication
Working at summer camps led to a lot of opportunities to develop and utilize my communication skills. I had to be in constant communication with my fellow leaders – including both my partner in running the group I was working with, as well as those leading other groups – my supervisors, the kids in my group, and the parents of those kids. One specific example was when a kid decided that the solution to not getting his way would be to run into traffic and refuse to leave the street. My partner and I had to communicate on the fly that, first of all, this boy was running in traffic, and then which of us was going to try to stop the traffic and urge the kid back off the street while the other kept the rest of our kids under control and called our supervisors for back up. After this event, there was a lot of communication and write ups between my partner and myself and our supervisors, as well as meetings with a supervisor, this kid’s parents, and the kid himself on what needed to be done if the boy wanted to return to the camp at any other point in the summer. I had him in one of my groups again at a later point in the summer, and spent a lot of time communicating at drop-off and pick up with his parents and with my supervisor and the kid during the day to ensure that the kid was getting what he needed to out of our camps, and that no one was being put in danger by his actions.
Creativity/Innovation
During my EDUC 391 practicum, I tried to make my lessons coordinate ADST as much as possible, no matter the subject area. This took creativity and innovation to figure out how I could make a specific lesson less traditional and more hands on for my students. I tried to encourage movement, teamwork, and making with my lessons. This included creating STEM challenges that had students utilize and develop these skills, as well as working my other lessons around them. For example, I started the water cycle unit with a hands-on lesson in which I showed a video that discussed the aspects of the water cycle in song (my class was very interested in music, and had the song memorized by the end of the first week, and had thereby also memorized the stages of the water cycle and what happened during each stage), and then my students were tasked with building a hanging diagram of the water cycle out of construction paper. Through this one lesson, the majority of my students were well on their way to mastering the water cycle, much more than I predict they would have been had we done a more traditional worksheet based introductory lesson.
Inclusion
I spent a few summers working at a summer camp, during which I spent one summer as an Inclusion Worker, which was the camp’s version of an EA. Each week, I was paired one on one with a student who needed the camp activities adapted to their needs. Most of the children I was paired with were autistic, and the adaptions I usually had to make were sensory – bringing an extra towel for one kid to sit on because they didn’t like the feel of grass, learning when another kid was nearing their limit on noise or light or social stimulation and taking them off for a walk or to a quiet room for a bit of a break, or figuring out which parts of the activities another kid would be comfortable doing and finding something else to do when the activity was something they couldn’t do. I believe that this experience will be beyond helpful in my classroom when working with students with diverse needs and adapting my lessons to fit those needs.
Numeric & Scientific Literacy
I developed my numeric and scientific literacy skills a lot in Bonnie’s EDUC 398 class. Each week, we ran through multiple, varied math and science experiments and lessons, increasing my awareness of different things I could do with my class, as well as my portfolio of potential activities I could teach. This class also involved a high level of ADST integration within the lessons we participated in and taught, which will be an asset in the classroom. This class reinvigorated my love for math and science, and made me excited to replicate some of what we did in my practicum, as well as to invent and design my own lessons.
