Competencies

Communication:

For the past few years, I have been working on my communication skills for my students. From my experience, the best ways that I can accomplish effective communication is to adapt my communication to various contexts directed towards my audience.

To work on my communication, I participate in WestCAST, a Western Canada Education conference where I presented on a passion project of mine, The Art of Mindfulness in the Place-Based Science Classroom. This allowed me to adapt my communication, directed towards a large older audience of educators that share similar topic passions for their classrooms.

In the classroom, I work towards encompassing all learning preferences when communicating to my students. I have a sample visual for my students that my kinaesthetic and visual learners can observe and touch, I verbally explain what I’m looking for and take questions for clarification, and have a documented copy for students that prefer to read the instructions. Each of these challenges affirmed the importance of multiple communicative avenues for student learning.

 

Collaboration & Teamwork:

Collaboration and teamwork are crucial in improving your teaching practice, and developing new and innovating ideas for students. This past year, I had the phenomenal opportunity to co-teach and Environmental Science and Geography 12 course with a fellow teacher candidate. Working together we developed resources, and planned phenomenal Place-Based activities for our students, such as a fieldtrip to the Vanderhoof White Sturgeon Hatchery, and an outside lab in the local forest calculating the Shannon Index of a plot.

I learned a great deal being a part of and attending the School-Based Team at my recent practicum, and attending the Math and Science Department meetings. In these meetings, we bounced ideas off of each other, and helped solve some problems or questions.

 

Creativity/Innovation:

To spur my creativity, I have been attempting to try new things throughout my whole last practicum. I’ve created inquiries where students would enter a metal and woods shop, where I’ve had to seek additional help because this hasn’t been my strength in the past.

I developed an Inquiry where students drew blueprints of any model or object they would like to create. They could use any materials of their choice, and create the model, as long as they showed their calculations of the scale factor enlargement or reduction. Students then created a model of their blueprints to the correct scale.

In this process of attempting something that was a bit more challenging, I learned a great deal about my students, and how passionate and creative they are when given the opportunity.