Today was our first day back at school full-time for teachers! Although students don’t officially start until Thursday, teachers are back attending meetings for today and tomorrow. Today all of the teachers and support staff in “T-Division” had the opportunity to attend an PD session with Barbara Coloroso, an educator, mother, and author. To be honest, I was a little apprehensive about this session going into it because I couldn’t find a very strong online presence for Barbara and I wasn’t exactly sure what specific topics our session was going to address. I must admit, however, that I was pleasantly… Read More
Professional Growth Plan
During our New Teacher Orientation we were asked to start thinking about our Professional Growth Plans as we will be meeting with our individual principal’s this week. As part of this, we were provided with forms to help us guide our goals (both personal and divisional). As a new teacher, most of the times when I think of the school year my hopes are to simply survive through it! Student teaching is just a taste of what full-time teaching is like and I hope to just make it through the year while trying to balance lessons, differentiating instruction,… Read More
New Teacher Orientation
Yesterday was New Teacher Orientation in “T-Division”! My husband, myself, and four other new teachers met at our Division Office to get prepared for the new year and learn the ropes of the division. As you can probably tell from the fact that there are only 6 new employees, our division is quite small and our orientation was very laid back and welcoming. In general, the information was a little bland but necessary. We discussed:– Our provincial union, Manitoba Teachers’ Society (MTS)– Salaries– Life Insurance– Health Insurance– Divisional Calendar– Divisional Policies– Professional Development & Growth, etc A… Read More
Roller Coaster Week Update
At the start of the month I posted about what a crazy week I was having due to coming down with a major stomach bug, going through my first teaching interview, crashing my car during a May snowstorm, and being offered my first teaching position! If you missed the craziness, you can see my post here. Well what seems like an incredibly short amount of time later, I am happy to announce that the excitement is still running high! This weekend my fiance and I purchased our first vehicle together, a 2004 Buick Rendezvous! Since my accident we… Read More
Roller Coaster Week
Trying my best to look like I’m NOT sick! It may only be Wednesday but this week has been a crazy roller coaster for me so far. On Monday I was set to interview at “S-School” and, of course, I woke up with a fever of 101 and sick to my stomach! Even though I wasn’t feeling good there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity so I went into school and interviewed. I was very happy to be interviewing right at “S-School” which made me feel more comfortable since I’ve been student teaching at the school… Read More
The Dust Bowl… by Wikipedia
This week my Grade 11/12 Agriculture class has been putting the finishing touches on their Dust Bowl “mini-museum displays”. My students were responsible for finding some type of media (photo or video), creating some type of artifact and completing a written report. Here is how their project was set up. The Greatest Dust Bowl Photograph Witnessing the Dust Bowl Dust-Phenomena P.S.A Dust Bowl Citizen Trading Card From the Dust Bowl, With Love Agricultural Causes & Effects of the Dust Bowl Row 1 = media Row 2 = artifacts Row 3 = written report Students had their choice of… Read More
The Job Hunt is On!
Last week I was approached by the principal at “S-School” who let me know that two jobs were being posted in the school! I was so excited when I went into the staff room and saw these hanging on the bulletin board. Here is what the two jobs are posted as: – Grade 7-10 Science and Social Studies Teacher, Full Time Permanent – Family Studies and Resource Teacher, Full Time Permanent After spending both my third and fourth student teaching placements at “S-School” I’ve grown to love the students, staff, and learning environment that is present. I am so excited that there… Read More
2 Stars & A Wish: Finishing on Time
My fifth week of student teaching is all finished up which means that I officially have two weeks left to wrap up my units and complete final assessments with my students! A reoccurring theme during this placement has definitely been a lack of time and this week was no exception. This week we only had a four-day week because of a division-wide PD day on Friday and on Thursday our high school students were away at a local career fair. Unfortunately, this meant that I really only had three teaching days instead of the five that I would… Read More
Dr. Kathie Nunley Part 2: Layered Curriculum
*The following is Part 2 of a two-part reflection on a PD session I attended by Dr. Kathie Nunley. Part 1 of this reflection on, A Student’s Brain, can be found by following the highlighted link. Layered Curriculum, developed by Dr. Kathie Nunley, is an instructional method based specifically on her work with neuroscience and how the adolescent brain functions. It is developed as a means to effectively meet the needs of the adolescent learner by taking into account how the brain processes information and reacts to various stimuli. One very important factor in this method… Read More
Dr. Kathie Nunley Part 1: A Student's Brain
Today all the teachers and support staff in “T-Division” had the opportunity to attend a PD session with Dr. Kathie Nunley, an educator and brain-image researcher from the eastern US. I was immediately excited because I have always been really interested in how to engage different parts of our student’s brains and differentiate instruction to best meet their individual learning styles/needs. I can definitely say that I was not disappointed by this PD session! Dr. Nunley is not only just extremely knowledgeable about her subject area but is also a very humorous and engaging speaker (I spent a great deal of the… Read More