Saying Goodbye – Week 12
Aw… saying goodbye is not easy to do. We just had our last class together. The summative journals are rolling in and they still have a curriculum project to write and send. Aside from that, all of the participation activities are complete and all IGNITE presentations done. The course is complete… with a mound of marking to do soon. I look forward to reading what each of them had to say. We personalized learning in this class in light of BC’s New Curriculum. We focused on curricular and core competencies and used curriculum development as course content. Brilliant.
What an incredible group of students. We had accomplished what I had hoped to accomplish and more. These students exceeded my expectations time and time again. They explored what was important to them in the context of curriculum development. They reflected on their lived experiences as learners and shared those experiences as teachers. I walk away from this class richer and wiser. They have enlightened me and taught me what is possible. I said to many of my students tonight, us coming together in Educ 471 was serendipitous. We were all interconnected and co-contributors to this course. How lucky am I?
Even the photo was inspired by my students. They thought I should be in the picture as well and one of my students started asking me technology questions and why wasn’t I doing it. Hmm… Why not a selfie? That seemed more inline with my current understandings. It turned out pretty good, I must say… unlike the “crazy” photo I asked them to take. If you follow me on Twitter @ChristineYH, I posted a “before and after” photo. We took a serious planned pose and a “crazy” pose. Well, after weeks of talking about creativity and critical thinking… we were not that crazy after all.
All I can say is… thank you, thank you, thank you. I wanted to hug everybody. It got weird sometimes. Some students seemed like he/she wanted to hug, but didn’t. I hugged some students that did really seem to want to be hugged. And, I hugged many where it was definitely mutual. I wished I could have had this class all school year. I was just starting to get to know each of them, their strengths, and their interests. I wish them all the best in their future endeavours. Not all of these students are education bound. Many are in economics and the humanities. Nonetheless, I hope they have a better understanding of education and curriculum development.
This will be my last blog in this series. Not only am I say goodbye to my students, but I am saying goodbye to this blog series and teaching up at SFU (for now). I did not post the 13 week blog reflections of Educ 471. I might post this one. You can certainly read the rest of them by scrolling back. Sigh… I guess that’s it. I had wanted to tell my students that I had finished my final draft of my dissertation before class started today. I had a few unexpected hiccups (as I was working my car in the parking lot), but I did manage to finish the current draft of my dissertation, which I just sent to my committee to review less than an hour ago. Woohoo!!! Yay, I did it. If any of my students read my blog (and I know some of you do)… it’s done!!!
ULTIMATE REFLECTION: One of the best teaching/learning experiences ever!!!