New beginnings are wonderful things. Though to be honest this is only partly a new beginning for me as teaching was a passion when I first graduated in 1991. But the location will be a new beginning for sure. Out of Ontario and into Alberta. So quite a move. My amazing wife is writing a blog about our move North. Whether that turns out to be quite as North as we think remains to be seen but still we’re moving, first West and then quite probably North. You can read her blog here. I wanted to write a blog about my personal journey back into education and the classroom. Sharing what I find along the way with educators and parents.
When I think back to my teaching days there is no doubt that I fell into teaching. Through some remarkable twist of fate I ended up in the fall of 1987 at St Katherine’s College then part of the Liverpool Institute of Higher education. Now it’s all grown up and is a fully fledged University in it’s own right (Hope University) but even then it was one of the top teacher training colleges in the country. How I ended up in the B.Ed program remains a bit of a mystery to me when I think back now. But my tutor that first year, a lady called Sue who must have been a little older than I am now was a revelation. Her enthusiasm for education was contagious and so by the end of my first year I was hooked. It was a shame that you didn’t keep the same tutor for the whole four years but then I suppose they had to share the bad tutors around. Still at the end of it I somehow passed, with honours, just, and got my B.Ed. Having to get certified in Alberta has meant diving into all my qualifications, transcripts and looking at the student I was 22 years ago. If only I could travel back in time and give that guy a shake… quite something to look back and discover you were a bone idle lay about who was more interested in extra curricular activities that studying. I was so busy producing / acting / directing musicals, playing field hockey, working at the college bar, taking part in the OTC (Officer Training Corps), discovering my public school education hadn’t really equipped me for the real world, socializing, playing dungeons and dragons that it’s amazing I managed to fit in any studying at all. When I came across my final year P.E. Dissertation it really was no wonder that reading it I felt more than a little embarrassed that this was the culmination of four years of studying.
Now it looks like I will be headed back to University for a little while anyway. Having talked with various people at The Albertan Professional Standards department I will in all probability have to complete some course work as well as a teaching practice. To be honest I welcome it. The idea of walking into a classroom unprepared isn’t something that I ever did in the past and not something I wish to embrace in the future. So ten weeks or so of supervised teaching will be time well spent getting back up to speed with both children and curriculum.
Thinking back to when I was first in college we were always making fun, in a nice way I hope, of the mature students. They were always so keen! It is ironic that I will now be one of them. How they must have laughed at us, the kids just out of school running around like headless chickens. As it turns out maturity does have it’s benefits and I will be making full use of them this time around.
