Welcome back to Canada

Well, I’m back in Canada after a wonderful time in Ecuador. It was such a great experience, and I made friends that I will never forget. I’m already planning a trip back in the future (hopefully with my sister this time.) The end of the trip wrapped up nicely, although I did get pretty ill for a few days which prevented some of the travelling I had planned. But in the end it was ok, because I got to spend more time at the organization, which they had asked me to do anyways when they found out I wasn’t headed back to Canada until the 8^th. One of the friends I made there even offered to escort me all the way to the airport, which I didn’t realize how much I appreciated until after the fact. (We had to take several different buses, and a taxi, and I would likely have gotten quite lost.)

Hearing the news yesterday about the tragic Earthquake in Ecuador really pulled on my heart strings. Not many people in the town that I was in have internet (we were one of the only houses), so it was hard to get in contact with people and make sure they were all okay! However, I’ve got confirmation that everyone in Cosanga is alright. The photos they keep sending me are so sad, but at least they are okay! It’s great that they keep in contact with me. A few of them asked if they could have my e-mail before I left so they could keep in touch. I agreed of course, but told them they would have to write to me in English sometimes and not just Spanish! I’ve gotten a variety of e-mails from the youths, that are always a pleasure to read. Some of them really try to write in English, which is great. One of the Ecuadorians, Pedro, who spoke the least English of all of them, and never attended the English courses at the organization has been keeping in contact (mainly in Spanish, but there is an odd English phrase or two in there as well.) I got an e-mail from one of the other volunteers recently that said Pedro has started carrying around a notebook and writing down English phrases in it. They’ve said they think that I’ve inspired him to learn English, and that he’s trying to learn so that he can e-mail me in English. It’s so nice to hear that being there had some sort of positive impact on at least one person.

I was the only volunteer there at the time with any teaching experience, and they want me to learn some Spanish and come back again. (I learned a surprising amount while I was there, and continue to learn in my attempts to reply to the e-mails from the Ecuadorians.) I’m definitely considering it, depending where life takes me in the future! 

It’s been a week of being back at Queens, and I’ll be honest, the beautiful weather and the fact that there are only 2 weeks until I’m done have left me struggling to find my motivation to finish all the assignments I have. It’s been nice to see everyone, and hear about their practicum experiences (especially the alt pracs!) I can’t believe how close we are to the end. This week has been a lot of reflecting on our placements, and sharing stories from our alt prac. It’s going to be sad to not see all the great people I’ve met here in class anymore (especially our lovely little physics community.)  While I’ll be sad to see everyone all the time, I’m excited to be done and to start the next chapter of my life. Of course the pressure is on (especially from my parents) to find a full-time teaching job immediately. They don’t quite understand how the system works despite my efforts to explain to them that a full-time teaching job is a ways in the future for me. So now it’s time to find some sort of work for the summer that will hopefully add to my resume as I look for a teaching job. Cheers to new experiences. 

"She's pretty, she doesn't need to go to school."

I've been doing a lot more work on the environmental side of things with this organization lately. This involves doing a reforestation/ research project. We have 3 hectares of pasture to reforest. Unfortunately it's an hour hike up a muddy mountain (and it's not an easy one), so I spend about 2 hours a day just hiking. There are just 2 volunteers who are in charge of the environmental stuff, but we've recruited some of the older students to help us so I still get an opportunity to work on my Spanish and hang out with the locals. Sometimes bringing them along definitely slows productivity however, as they usually don't want to do any work by the time we get to the top.

Since it rains so much here, we're planting some of the trees just in the ground, and making mounds to plant the rest in to see which ones have a better survival rate. I'm pretty confident the mounds will, but I guess someone thinks it's worth studying.

It's unfortunate that it's so rainy, because doing laundry involves washing clothes by hand and hanging them to dry. But of course nothing ever dries since it rains every day. Haha.
I still get to see some classes as we have one at the volunteer house at 6:00 every night which I'm usually around for. Less students seem to be showing up for it however, which is unfortunate. The volunteers are frustrated for it, but they seem to be out of ideas on how to improve attendance. Maybe the students aren't engaged? I think a lot of it has to to with parents though.
We asked one of the locals why she doesn't send her daughter to school. Her response was "she's pretty, doesn't need to go to school," which just broke my heart. But also holds some truth to it for this town. That's pretty much the general consensus here. But what kind of message is that sending these women?

The education system is lacking in many ways, and a lot of these kids are just going to take over their family's dairy farm, so don't see the point of an education. Many of them don't finish high school. Of the friends I've made here, the ones that are going to post-secondary education are going for one sort of tourism-based schooling. I spend a lot of my time hanging  out with people who don't speak any English, so I usually tell them to come to our free English class so they can talk to me with less charades. It's been surprisingly successful, and one of them told me "I have three weeks to learn English before you leave." They're such nice people. I really love the small-town feel here.

Since it's Easter weekend, there are no classes (and haven't been since Tuesday.) I've used the time off to travel a little. I went  to Tena, which has much more tropical weather than Cosanga, and spent the day on the beach, and then watching the Ecuador vs. Paraguay soccer game. They were all so excited about it, and it was such a close game ! Definitely a great day. One of the locals invited me to Easter dinner at their family's house yesterday. It was some soup full of grains (which apparently they make once a year on Easter), and some fried tilapia and potatoes and rice. It was delicious, and so nice of them to include me. 

I've learned a few things about the busses here. 

1) There are busses that travel almost everywhere in the country!

2) It's inexpensive to take a bus (a 2 hour ride to Tena costs $3) 

3) If you're a gringo, they will try to overcharge you for the bus. Every time.
4) There isn't really a bus schedule, so sometimes you end up waiting at s bus station for over an hour. However this seems to work for ecuadorians because nobody is ever in a rush it seems.
5) Because there is no schedule, sometimes 2 busses end up coming at the same time. These busses are owned by the driver. They don't make money if they are the second bus though (since the first bus gets all the people), so they end up racing down these windy roads to try and be first. It's terrifying.
6) To get off, you just walk to the front and yell gracias. It'll stop anywhere.

Classroom management 101

Ecuador continues to be a learning experience for me. Today I went to the 5/6/7 grade English class. First of all, the class had a very interesting setup. There were 3 different chalkboards, with some desks facing each one. I asked about this, and was told it was for the different grades. The 5th graders all face one chalkboard, the 6th graders face another, and the 7th graders face the third. And there's only one teacher! I'm amazed at how he teaches like this, and essentially has 3 different lessons going on at the same time. The other volunteers rave about him as a teacher and say he has excellent classroom management skills. His students are he most well-behaved out of all the classes. I wish I spoke Spanish so I could talk to him about his teaching style, but I don't and he doesn't know any English either, so our communication consists mainly of smiles and hellos.

It's raining here again today (as it has been since I got here), but the roof of the schoolhouse is made of tin, so I found it very difficult to hear what was going on. When it really pours, the teachers have to yell in order for the students to hear them! Then the students start yelling, and it can get pretty hectic
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The other volunteers wanted  to make a matching game for the students to practice their vocabulary, with pictures and the English word, but the Internet was down and the power was out so we ended up just writing them all out by hand. The kids seemed to really enjoy it though ! ( and I've picked up enough basic Spanish words that I could actually help them with this one.)
I went to the class of younger students afterwards. They typically sing songs in English, and learn s new animal everyday that they then spend 20 minutes colouring. Trying to get them not to hoard all the crayons seems to be s battle. Sharing is caring. Today they learned the word armadillo. I'll be honest I don't think any of them could actually say it, but they enjoyed the colouring. And then played hot potato, which was s huge hit.

All in all though being here makes me appreciate how privileged teachers are in Canada! We don't have to worry about Internet going out all the time, for the most part we don't have to teach 3 different grades at once, and we don't have to worry about parents refusing to speak to us because we're "gringos" (which is apparently something that happens here.)

Tonight, one of the locals has invited us to his place to have quail for dinner (that'll be a new experience for me), and then we've invited the students to come to the volunteer house to watch a movie. Looking forward to what tomorrow brings.

Ecuador !

Yesterday I landed in Quito, Ecuador and it's been an interesting adventure so far! My lack of Spanish has definitely left me feeling a bit out of the loop (and made every conversation that I have more comparable to a game of charades.)

I was picked up from the airport and we drove for just over 2 hours on winding roads to the town of cosanga. (I also learned that while their are rules for the roads here, nobody really follows them. Red lights seem to be more of a suggestion, and passing on blind corners is totally normal.)
When I arrived at the volunteer house in cosanga last night ? I was met by 2 other volunteers, and a handful of locals who kept asking me questions in Spanish...while I sat there regretting not learning the language before I left. I went to bed exhausted and feeling a bit isolated. I've learned a few things about cosanga though.
1. there are dogs and chickens roaming around everywhere.
2. The temperature is pretty much always the same. (Around 18 degrees.)
3. It rains. Always. Everyone tells me living here has really made them appreciate the sunshine.
4. You don't know on people's doors here. You just walk up to their house in the street and yell their name or "Buenos Dias."

Today was a whole new day though. I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to face the day. The other volunteers have all been here for at least 6 months, so they have classes that they teach. When one of them was leaving, he offered to have me come along with him. So off I went to a class consisting of grades kindergarten, one, and two. The town is extremely small, so they combine the grades (there were around 8 students in this class.) I was floored by how welcoming the students were. They all immediately gave me hugs and hellos and wanted to hold my hand and show me around. They're a great group of kids. It's interesting watching the teachers plan their lessons. There is internet in our house... But it's terribly slow. Think dial-up, but worse.
The younger class spent a lot of time colouring (they're learning animals so today they learned the word anteater.)

After that, I helped out with a reforestation project they have here. The hike to get to the site is about an hour and a half each way up a mountain, and it's pretty treacherous (and muddy.) It was absolutely beautiful though. So much green here! I think I'm going to be spending a lot of time helping out with the reforestation, so I'm looking forward to that. I didn't bring my camera today because I don't want to appear too touristy right off the bat, but I'll have to next time we go because it's so beautiful.

I've made a few friends here, although they speak little English. I think they like hanging out with me so they can ask me how to say things in English (and I can hopefully pick up a little spanish from them).. Looking forward to what tomorrow brings !

Frontenac round 2

Being back at Frontenac for the second time was a wonderful experience. Although it definitely started off on a little bit of a hectic note. Day 1 was of course a snow day, with most of the teachers not present in the school. Surprisingly all of the student teachers made it though! I still hadn’t had a solid confirmation of what classes I would be teaching, but I was told when I got there that I would have 2 grade 10 science classes with one teacher, and a senior math class with another one (since I still needed a senior class for my practicum requirements.) However I later discovered the teacher I was placed with for the math class actually had a grade 9 class that period, so it was a scramble for me to try and find another math teacher with a senior class who was willing to have me in their class. However, I found a teacher with a grade 12 calculus class who welcomed me into his class, so that was a good experience! It was definitely a different experience teaching a senior math class, as I’ve only ever taught 9/10 classes in the past. There were essentially no classroom management issues, but the content was more challenging of course.

I observed the calculus teacher for a few days, and it was a much different teaching style from any I had observed before. He’s clearly very intelligent, and goes through lessons quickly with lots of time for individual practice. However, I found whenever he would finish the lesson; a lot of the students would just leave the classroom. There seemed to be a lack of motivation in the classroom, but they general attitude seemed to be that they were grade 12s, and that we should let them do what they want. I was a little nervous to teach them, because I know my teaching style is different and I didn’t want to fall into the trap of becoming my associate teacher. He gave me a few suggestions the first few days, and then at the third day he came up at the end of class and said “you don’t need me anymore,” (which was nice to hear, even though I know it’s far from the truth.) He told me that one of the important things you can do as a teacher is to want to be there, and that will come out in your teaching, and that it was obvious that I wanted to teach the students and was super comfortable in front of the classroom. He was really supportive and it was a great learning experience.

My other host teacher (in the grade 10 science classes) gave me essentially total freedom and control of his classroom from the moment I got there. He was in the middle of the climate change unit, and asked me one the snow day if I wanted to teach the next day (although he didn’t give me a lot of information about what he had covered so far.) It was interesting having the freedom to do whatever I wanted, but I would have like a little bit of feedback at times. Even after making the unit test and asking him if he wanted to see it first, or check over my my marking after I had done it, he always said no. I’ve never had a teacher who didn’t want to see how I was evaluating the students.

He was a very interesting teacher, who I don’t think shared a lot of views that the rest of the science department did. He would rarely eat lunch in the science office with the rest of the teachers, and told me once that it was because he couldn’t stand to listen to the conversations that they had about students, and some of the negative talks that occurred in there. I found his perspective was always interesting to hear about, and he often make me think differently about things.

After the climate change unit he decided we would do optics next since it would give me some experience in some physics teaching. That was fun, and I think I actually grew to like optics more than I ever did when I was a student. We did a few POEs, which the students seemed to enjoy. (They’d never heard of the secret vote of science before!)

Classroom management in this class was definitely more challenging, as we had several kids with ADD, and there were taps in front of every other seat. So the taps were on and off all the time in the lesson. I learned to just let that happen for the most part though, because if it wasn’t the tap they would find something else. I developed great relationships with these students though, and had an awesome time.

Tomorrow I’m off to Ecuador for another adventure, and I’ll try to post there whenever I can get internet! (I have more to say about my time at Frontenac as well, but I’ve got a flight to catch in a few hours so that’ll have to wait for another time.) 

Working hard for something we don't care about: stress. Working hard for something we DO care about: passion.

"What the heck do I want to do with my life?" has been a pretty common thought lately.

 The other day, I was having a conversation with an old friend about what’s been going on in our lives. I’ve known her since birth, and we’ve always been really close, despite seeing each other less and less as we get older. She graduated last year with a degree in geological engineering and was working in a job in her field in Toronto for a while. But now she’s back in Kingston, and instead of her fancy job in Toronto, she’s working at a yoga studio. So naturally, I asked her if it was because she couldn’t find work in her area. She told me that it wasn’t that, it’s that she realized she wasn’t passionate about what she was doing, and didn’t see herself doing it for the rest of her life. So she’s taking some time to figure out what she wants to do, and working somewhere close to home so she can still make money.  And then she said something that caught me a little off guard. “Are you really passionate about teaching?” It was a pretty forward question, but that's something that has made us such great friends. Sometimes you need someone to ask you the questions you don't want to ask yourself. 

So I really thought about it, which is something I don’t think I’ve done in a while. Is this what I want to do with the rest of my life? Have I been telling myself yes just because I’ve put all this time and money into becoming qualified to be a teacher?  My roommate recently told me he’s excited for me to be back at placement, because I was always in a good mood then. Now, this could mean that I’ve just been a huge grump lately. Or, it could indicate that teaching makes me genuinely happy. I think it’s the latter. Teaching is what I want to do. But I think the aspect of it that I’m really passionate about is working with kids, and the relationship that you have the opportunity to make with these people. That’s what I love. I think it is so important to do something you love. As they say, “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”
...(because they aren’t hiring in that field.) Just kidding, I’m still hopeful.

I’ve also come to realize that teaching grade 7 and 8 sounds like something that is totally up my alley. While I love physics and math, I took classes in a variety of subjects while in my undergrad (one of the benefits of the extra year, and enjoyed a lot of them, and was more successful than most of them than I ever was in my physics class. And I’ll be honest, I love crafts, and would love the opportunity to do that with students. I love the idea of having the opportunity to teach students more than just science and math, and interacting with them in other ways. Moreover, spending more time with students, and having chances to take them on field trips just means getting to know them even better as individuals. Having  all these guest speakers in has been a great experience. I love their honesty about the job, and the passion for it is so evident in the way that some of them speak. I did a 3 week placement in a grade 7 class in my third year, and that is by far the placement that I had the most fun at. Maybe it was just that they were such a great group of students, but it was a blast, and I can honestly say I learned so much from them. I know some say it’s more work, without the benefit of better pay. But let’s be real, is anyone really in teaching for the money?

I’m looking forward to the next couple of weeks at McArthur, and then back to Frontenac. I’ve recently found out I’ll be teaching grade 9 and 10 science, and a senior math class. I was really hoping for a physics placement (4 placements so far, and I’ve never had one in physics somehow), but the science will be a good experience, and will definitely challenge me. Plus, it makes the unit plans we’re currently working on super applicable! 

Life After B.Ed

Once again, life has astounded me with how fast time is moving these days. I must admit that I took a substantial amount of time off over the break (aka pushed school to the back of my mind and hung out with my family.) While it was great for my sanity, and I don't regret it, coming back to Queens I feel like I've been busier than ever. There's the usual school work of course, which for some reason seems to be more considerable in this block, but then there's job fairs and seminars on how to write resumes, and interviews. I feel like the pressure to find a job and find it now is on. I almost wish I had a break from school stuff to figure out my career. But I know life doesn't work that way.

I't's also caused me to think a lot lately about what I want to do when I finish here in April (which by the way is only 3 months away, which is terrifying.) I think my main issue is deciding where I want to teach. I love Ontario, but I'm not super tied to it. I love BC. I love new experiences. Do I want to go abroad? The decision-making and contemplating my future feels too much like "adulthood." It's pretty overwhelming at the moment.

We had a discussion in class recently where we all shared what our plans were for after our time here at Queens. I was looking forward to this discussion, because I'm genuinely interested in what my classmates plans are (especially those who don't plan on teaching in a traditional classroom.) However, the conversation to me at times seemed to be pretty dismal. It seemed to me like several people were feeling pretty disheartened by the current job market for teachers. I understand it isn't great, but there ARE jobs out there. I took an extra year doing my undergrad at Trent, so all the people I was originally in Concurrent Ed with have graduated already and are out in the real world. I've kept in touch with many of them, and what most have told me is that it's not as bad as they thought it would be. I know so many of them have teaching jobs (even a few around here!) So despite all the negative things we hear about getting a teaching job, and how "we shouldn't expect one for the next 5 years," I remain optimistic. I like to think that as a bunch of people who majored in physics, we don't fear a bit of a challenge. I'm a firm believer that we grow a lot more when we are challenged than when things are easy. So bring it on real world.