Category: Journey

My school was in a small town in Saskatchewan, everyone knew everyone in my school, and my school was one where there was a lot of privilege. In my school we often never saw the really horrible things that can happen in the world, it has shown me in the last couple of years since I have mature a little more how naive my way of seeing the world was and sometimes still is. My school gave me an overly positive world view, I never saw the bad, and was taught to ignore. As a student in these classes, I also developed a basis against students who did not understand or pick things up quickly, I think I learned this from the way my teachers acted towards them and they were also treated so differently. As I chose to become a teacher to help get rid of the biases and to help students at all levels of learning, people should not be judged solely on how they understand things in a classroom. In my school, there were lots of single stories, and in my school the “good students” truth always mattered more than over students.

After reading the article written by Ben Levin, I have realized how many people play into the creating of a curriculum document, there where so many different organizations that played different roles and had different influences. Curriculum and Treaty Education are both closely related to Saskatchewan, and they have a powerful influence in our province. It is the responsiblity of teachers so properly teach treaty ed and it is the curriculum job to give structure and give a place for teachers to teach this content to students. It is also important that we must not teach culture and for us as future teachers are also teach in a respectable way for all students. It is also very important for us to know the students we are teaching to and there culture background and what is important to them, there history.

“White” is a word that makes people uncomfortable, mostly white people, as a white person I can understand that word making people uncomfortable, and in the past year it no longer makes me uncomfortable. The quote itself portraits the idea that if you are “white” you are a racist, which is not fair to people, I am kind person and I try not to harm someone or make them feel bad, but maybe I am not a racist but I am part of a system that was built on racism. I believe and the idea of “white” needs to be separated from racism.

Out of habit most white people feel the need to defend their whiteness, it is nothing that we did it is what our ancestors did and we can’t change it and we shouldn’t justify their horrible actions, white is a colour but it leaves so many people ahead. When we first started discussing white privilege in class I honestly was made me feel uncomfortable to think that maybe I got something in my live because of my colour not because I earned, I felt the need to defend, and I assume other have the same urge. Disrupting this white privilege is a need of our newly developing society, we are in a time of change but everyone has to be open to it and welcome it, and this privilege will be hard for white people to ever let go.

This article helped me understand white fragility, and it does exist in everyday life, I seem to even have these feelings, but it is important for me and others to be able to move past it. The quote is that white fragility is “the inability to cope with conversations about race that don’t protect individual white people’s sense of innocence.” I feel that race makes white people feel guilty when conversations happen and nobody wants to feel guilty, and we try to protect are innocents by neglecting the issues of race. The word white brings up those feeling of guilt and that is why people shy away from the word itself one quote from the article that seems to be the most important is, “The solution to white fragility, she says, is to build up stamina; just as with exercise, that involves doing the painful task over and over again until you get better.”

Sorry in advance I have an edusites blog so your comments might not show up right away, Audrey knows about the issue, sorry for the inconvenience.

Grad day, we look forward to it all year everyone dresses up and goes on stage, it is suppose to be about looking back on all the memories we made but it turns into a who looks best. All the girls are excepted to go out months in advance and buy fancy dresses, some girls send hundreds of dollars on these dress. Personally I am not a dress person, I only wear them about three times a year. It is what is expected of girls, and boys have to dress up in suits but they are not excepted to send money like girls are. There were lots of girls who send loads of money on a dress to wear it for a couple of hours to walk in a circle around a gym. It is supposed to be a beautiful.

As we where all arriving about an hour before the ceremony started so we could hang out on this important. I realized that one girl wasn’t in a dress, she was wearing a suit, everyone else looked like a princess, and she decided to be herself. In that moment I looked back and realized I had never seen her in a dress since she moved here in grade ten. I always new she was more of a tomboy but it surprised me because she not wearing a dress on grad day, the one day that a it is truly excepted of a girl to wear a dress. It made me feel happy for her, to be comfortable in her own skin, and proud of who she is, and the regular steorotypes of a girl didn’t apply to her, but that didnt make her any less of a women.

She dressed like a man according to some people that day, but why do we have put gender to it, why can’t she just dress like herself. She thought it was more important for her to be comfortable that day than it was to look like what was expected of her. She will forever be one of the bravest women I know.

It was the summer time about two years ago, I was in Toronto with my family, we where staying in downtown for a couple days. It was our second day and I had been to Toronto many times before to visit. I had visited most of the attractions in the in the city, and it is one of my favourite places to visit. We where staying in this really fancy hotel, and it made my feel out of place it was too fancy for me, I was not in a high enough class to be there.

It was such a beautiful and instead of driving through the city we decided to walk the couple of blocks to the restaurant we where going to eat at and the harbour front market. Our walk took about 15 minutes, along the way we had to cross under a bridge, and under there where loads of homeless people living with nothing. This was the first time a had really seen a homeless person and were they stayed. I had only really seen hitchhikers in my small town, I had been to many big cities before but I had never seen them like this, we normally stay in the tourist parts of the city. It opened my eyes to how bad things really can for some people and the thing they go through.

In that moment walking under the bridge I realize how lucky I truly am for what I have I was on a vacation and this people had nothing. I had never had to go to bed hungry or missed on things on basic things becasue my family had no money. My heart broke for this people who had nothing in their life.

This city made me realize how different and far apart the classes really are, I saw the high class and the very low class, and I realized I am somewhere in the middle, and very lucky to be where I am.

It was Christmas Eve and we were at my grandparents cabin, were we where every year, I loved that place more than anything in the world, it was my second home. My favourite part wasn’t the meal or the presents it was the time we spent together on the hill with your toboggans, speeding down the hill, trying to find a way to go faster. It was alway the ten of us out there my aunt and uncle and their 3 children, my parents and my two siblings, and we always made the most amazing memories. We always got new tobogans and were adding to the collection, we had so many we had to chose which one we walked over to the big hill.

It was always just us on the hill, no one was ever around on Christmas Eve, it always felt like we where in the middle of no where and it felt nice to be isolated. Grandma and Grandpa would only come out for a little, it was always cold and to long for them outside.  Aunt Claudia would never come out, she would always say that “it was to cold out for her warm Mexican blood,” she could never be outside for long then 15 minutes, which still makes me laugh. Her kids never stayed out that long either they would barely make the hour out outside and once they went in so did their dad, so there was only the ten of us left out there.

We would always go out around 7:00 pm, because it had to be completely dark, then we dress in many layers because being cold was always not an option,  we would never want to go inside. We would spend hours on the hill, walking up and sliding down more times then I can count, we would go down in pairs, or we would race, or see who could the farthest at the bottom. Sometimes we would take a break and just play in the snow, having snowball fights, and it was always kids versus parents, we would hid on the other side of the hill/road in the bushes. Then we would go back to sliding because we where starting to get cold and the long walk up the hill would let you warm up. These moments made me feel truly Canadian, being on that hill in the cold making memories that would last a lifetime, and it is a Canadian way to spend time with your family.

After hours on the hill we would all be tried enough that it was time to go in for the night this would be around 11 that night, and grandma would have the hot chocolate made and in the snowman jug that sat on the counter keep it warm, we always added marshmallows, it may have been more marshmallow than hot chocolate. We would all sit around the table drink hot chocolate with anticipation for tomorrow, for Christmas until it was time to head home for the night and go to bed. We would pack things up the gifts and the leftovers to go home we where all tried t that time and dad would drive us home and by the time we made the drive home we would all be sleeping, and dad would carrying in my little brother. Those memories on that hill with my family we always be held dearly in my heart, they are a piece of me and the will forever be important to me. In these moments and memories I feel truly Canadian spending time like that on a hill in the middle of nowhere, it may be stereotypical, but it truly makes me feel like a Canadian.

 

I feel as if my field blog posts showed a lot of growth for me and my learning so here is the example of my first blog post and my last.

First:

• First thing in the morning the kids worked on grammar exercises by answering some questions, and fulling responding in full sentences. These  personal questions and helping them with their answers allowed my to get to know the children more, and there likes and dislikes. After they finish we corrected them, and the students shared their answers with the class, and they marked their own work. Then it was time for the students to work on their biography project, which they had been working on for a couple of weeks, and they were typing their essays out. I got to help them edit and properly format their essays, they wrote about their heros which also helped me to get the know them more. After recess it was math class and the class was starting a new unit of percents, decimals, and fractions. I observed Mr. Schlenker teach his math lesson and then we helped students with their assignment for the day. Some students struggled more than others to connect the percents, decimals, and fractions together, and it was interesting to see how different some students thought process is than others.

• The learners in my placement are a 7/8 split classroom at Glen Elm School, and it is a community school. These students are very unique bunch of kids, and they are all at varying levels of education and learning abilities. The learning environment is a classroom, and the students are set up in in pods in desks. The walls are decorated with students past projects from this years students and students from years before. This classroom is very different from the from the ones in my school, we had no split classrooms, and our desks were always put in rows. This feels like a very safe space for kids and they all seem to enjoy school, and they all seem comfortable in the classroom.

• I really enjoyed my fieldwork this week it was nice to get to know the kids, it was fun to be in the school and to be working with the kids. It was nice to be able to help them understand and learn, and it made me excited for the rest of my time at the school. It did make me nervous learning about some of the students and their pasts because I have never helped a student with violence issues before, like some of the students in my class. I feel like I am off to a pretty good start, all of them seem to like me, and they are pretty fun to be around.

 

Last:

• Wednesday was different than most days because we didn’t have the classes as we normally do, which I enjoyed because I had only ever seen Mr. Schlenker teach ELA and Math, but today I also got to see him teach health. We started with ELA but we only did it for about 45 minutes, and the children worked on their last grammar lesson, and then on a project they had been working on. Then both 7/8 classes spilt and all the boys went to Mr. Scklenkler’s room and all the girls went to the other teachers room. They where working on s drugs unit, and it was different to see how the children really see drugs, some saw them as a problem and some do not. Other thought it was “okay” to drive high which it is not. After that it was an indoor recess do to all of the ice, so the children were in and out of the classroom, and then we moved on to Math. In math they had just moved on to a new unit, and the children were really understanding, which was nice because the last unit none of them really understood it. I helped three of the student who where really still struggling with the assignment, and for the fist time all of the student finished their assignments in the class, which was really nice to see on my last day.
• I really enjoyed my times at Glen Elm it is a really great school, and everyone was really nice. I feel as if I learned a lot about different styles of teaching because it change from lesson to lesson with his teaching styles. Overall it was really good to get the experience of teaching, and being in that classroom environment, even though sometimes I dreaded going I always had usually I good expense once I got there. When I look at the big picture I think I was very lucky with the school I got they where all nice and it felt like a very safe environment.
• I really enjoyed my last day and I was sad to know that I don’t get the chance to back again. The kids had extra energy today and I think it was because of the indoor recess, because it was so very icy outside, when I arrived there where kids sliding around outside trying to get to a door, and one of the buses was very late. I loved that I got to see health class on my last day because I had never seen that before and it was nice to see where the kids where at, when it came to drugs. Overall, it was a really great experience and I truly enjoyed the experience at sometimes it did make me question whether I really wanted to be a teacher, but in the end I just realized that I really do want to be a teacher.

These posts show how I grew and changed as I got to know the students and became more comfortable around them and they became more comfortable around me.