Candle Stick or Two Faces

I love this optical illusion.  What do you see?

Today, I attended my first day of three at the SFU-Burnaby campus to attend the INSTRUCTIONAL SKILLS WORKSHOP (ISW) facilitated by the Teaching and Learning Center.  The workshop is designed to provide instructional strategies to graduate students and university instructors.  The purpose of ISW is to improve instruction to improve the quality of student learning.  Am I wrapped around that like bacon?  Yes, I am.

What a great day… First of all, I was avoiding going to the Burnaby campus for months thinking that it would be extremely difficult to get to by transit compared to the Vancouver and Surrey campuses.  What did I learn today?  Going to the Burnaby campus is just as easy to get to as the latter two… Thank you SkyTrain.

Second, I experienced the candle stick or two faces flicker.  It’s an amazing feeling.  I applied to be a part of ISW to improve my instructional skills as a workshop facilitator and other public speaking activities I will engage in as a graduate student.  I got to teach a 10-minute mini-lesson to a small group of adults and in return they gave me feedback.  How many teachers get to do that?  Not many.  I had only read about “teaching in a lab environment.”

Ahhh… the flicker… then I flip right into my dissertation.  The premise, the framework, and the learning objectives of ISW are in-line with my research.  So, I was taking notes of key words and key ideas that related to my research.  I would flicker back-and-forth from being a learner as an instructor and as a graduate student.  What an amazing day…

I’m so grateful to the executors of the Jing Ye Fund, my parents, my husband, my girl, and my colleagues/friends for supporting me in my EdD endeavour.  My deepest gratitude.