Being My Authentic Self
October 13, 2024 – Do what you love
What a wonderful day. It was a very hectic week. As much as I love having my weekends, the natural consequence is having a very fulsome work week. The week started with attempting to complete three conference proposals to Congress 2025. Initially, I had no intention of going to Congress next year mainly because I am trying to catch up on my expenditures of travel for work. A long story short, I chose to go to conferences to present my work when the travel costs exceed my annual allotment of professional development funds. This pro-d behaviour is not new. I went to a lot professional development events when I used to teach in K-12 schools. What I have learned in the last year or two is, I love going to conferences. I love connecting and re-connecting with people, I love learning new ideas, and I love to present and travel.
If anything, I underestimated the time it would take to complete these proposals. In all three proposals, I took the lead in writing them. I guess that could be my first problem. The first proposal I completed was with and for a TRIAD of teacher candidates who have been engaged in a program-long inquiry about land-based pedagogies and student wellness. We are presenting in Kelowna in a couple of weeks and we have presented in Calgary and Prince George. They have been honing their presentation and now I have joined the team. We are planning to write about their LESSON STUDY with hopes of publishing it. The second conference proposal was with my colleague and friend about un-colonizing assessment. We’ve been presenting about it a several times as teacher professional development. We are planning to implement some of our ideas during my assessment course next term. It will be PROGRAM EVALUATION. Finally, the third conference proposal was about my work with IN-SITU learning and my assessment course. This paper is single authored.
The due date for these proposals was October 9, 2024. I finished all three proposals by October 8, 2024 and submitted them in on October 9, 2024. Yay. That took many long days to get those proposals completed and folks had to engage in its completion as well. I was so happy to get them done and submitted, and I’m grateful that I was able to meet the goal of getting all three complete and submitted. Each paper went to different associations (i.e., CASIE, CAARE, and CATE). I hope it goes well, but only time will tell. They are now under peer-review. That evening, on October 9, 2024, I had my night class online with graduate students then curriculum class with teacher candidates the next morning. Switching gears from writing and research to teaching (and vice versa) can be tricky and time consuming. I am so grateful for my night class and the work we are accomplishing. We just finished reading and discussing about PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED. That is eye-opening and powerful work written by Paulo Freire. Then, after being on line for 3-hours, I had to prep for my Thursday morning class. I had to update my syllabus and make copies the next morning.
In the end, the hard work is rewarded with learning outside. We went to Cottonwood Island Park. The fall weather as cool and sunny. We spent the morning lesson planning and learning how to navigate BC’s Curriculum. Although it may have been a bit cold, there is something to be said about learning on the land. Unfortunately, I did remove one more outdoor learning experience from the course syllabus as well as a final assignment (that was adapted into something else). The more I am learning about this group and what I want to achieve, sometimes it’s ok to say goodbye to a couple of things so that we can slow down and appreciate what we are learning about. There is so much to learn in teacher education and my one course is only one of many they take during their 16-months within the program. It’s ok to let go and take the learning in stride. There is no question that I was very grateful to head into a long weekend. Although I missed the northern lights on Thursday night due to cloudy weather, I had a fruitful Friday with several online meetings and then LOTS OF SLEEP.
If anything, I am very grateful for the work I get to do. I love the learning and the students. I could not ask for more from this job. I look forward to what’s next.