Early Hibernation

Day 8 (of 187) – September 13, 2018

OK… It’s the end of my “full week” of work. Of course I’m going into work tomorrow to connect with colleagues and GET THINGS DONE, but I don’t teach on Fridays. Anyway, I woke up this morning to SUB-ZERO temperatures. Blue sky but what’s up with the -8 degrees??? This coastal-girl has some adjustments to make. The learning curve is HUGE. It snowed a bit yesterday and I turned on my seat-warmer in my car going to work… and yet, I wore my CROCS and NorthFace anyway. Take that!!! BTW: denial runs deep.

It was great coming to work today. Checked in with my colleague Deb K to say hello and she gave me these cute handmade mittens with a hole for the finger tips as a gesture of kindness and WELCOME to the cold weather. Sheesh. I love them… and that was exactly what I was thinking when I was walking from my car to the university. I need gloves!!! And, voila. It was a very serendipitous moment. I very much enjoyed my EDUC360 class today. This is a great class. Secondary, first year, teacher candidates. Today, we finally completed our course SIGN-UPS and started to talk about BC’s New Curriculum.

I think about what makes me tick and I am still driven by ENHANCING THE LEARNING EXPERIENCES OF STUDENTS. It truly is my purpose. I just love trying to figure out, now in higher education, how students can sense-make through complex content in a dialogical and collaborative way. I love social engagement as part of the learning process. Within 110 minutes, we finished our class SIGN-UPs, discuss again what the course framework and momentum would look like, watched Shelley Moore’s TEDxLangleyED Under the Table, discussed curriculum as policy, introduced students to the BC’s New Curriculum website, First Peoples Principles of Learning, and the Educated Citizen.

To make sense of BC’s New Curriculum, we started a learning activity where students got into subject speciality groups, co-imagined a learning activity in their subject areas (as learners), and worked BACKWARDS through BC’s New Curriculum from finding the course and grade level, identifying the content and related curricular competencies, then next class identify which BIG IDEAS their learning activity captures, start composing “I can” statements as they relate to the Core Competencies, and make connections to the First Peoples Principles of Learning. Whew. This does not include personalized learning, interdisciplinary learning, and assessment and evaluation. This is complex. I love it.

After this class, I zoomed down the hill to meet with one of the EDtech sessional instructors. This was so wonderful to meet another person from the School of Education and SD57. We chatted about e-Portfolios and how it will work for his class and our vision for practicum courses. We worked out a plan for this year and discussed what next year could look like. I also realized that I have to connect with another EDtech sessional instructor to see what this person thinks as well. This journey of collaboration to include and incorporate ides and needs of the students and faculty is all about compromise and finding the best fit for all. It’s been a fun process so far and this vision is definitely emerging. I will keep you posted but I am excited about the potential e-Portfolios can bring to the School of Education to make student learning cohesive and visible.

With all this excitement… all that I want to do is NAP. I am so tired this week. The one late night of course prep and a jammed packed Wednesday proved to me that I’m not the undergrad from the 80’s who used to do all nighters to get things done. I have NEVER BEEN an early to bed, early to rise person. I will get up in the morning, but it’s likely I went to be late. That’s just how it is. I am very happy that my classes start later in the day at UNBC and I have plenty of time to work done. But my Tuesdays, Wednesday, and Thursdays are jammed packed. Yay for Friday!!! Personally, I like to believe that it’s the COLD weather that is making me sleepy. EARLY HIBERNATION. It’s mid-September and it’s snowing and below zero. What? I’m going to bed. I may not wake until the spring.