Perhaps I'm unlike many of the people who go off to university nowadays. Everyone has no clue where they'll head towards in terms of career, or what they truly want to do. There are others on this diverse spectrum who are brought up in a society where the pre-determined professional life of being an advocate, or a doctor who strive each and every single day starting from a young flourishing age towards that career path. I also do wonder, what goes on in those minds who are so TRULY determined to gain such a career path. How does God fit into that picture. Or is it simply a life of that is purposelessly driven – only desires to be "rolling in cash" where there is a lack of a better phrase or simply providing for the family.
However one comes to their career, it must all come down to the fundamental and initial desire / drive to step down that path.
As teachers you are forever a learner. Well it's probably practical to say that you are a forever a learning as individual tasks and whatever life throws at you makes you "learn", but you get my gist and what I mean as teachers as being a learner. Before I delve into why I truly want to be a teacher lets go back to they story of how I was reminded, only a short few days ago. It was that thing I just joined in the beginning of the year. Volunteering with Frontenac College in their literacy programme, well in particular their French reading circle one. It was only a one hour commitment every week that I started in late October / early November. I wanted to be out there, giving back to the community, on the side boost my resume and of course, have a little fun.
I guess it became a drag when I would almost forget all the time that I've committed my hour at 6:30 pm on a Monday night and end classes at 11:30 in the morning. With that huge gap of 7 hours, I move along in my life, going about my day and so forth. So the "drag" part came that I didn't enjoy my time. I worked with a number of kids, they were never constant and I was just getting flustered with the fact that the program is not working as I thought it would.
So it came to last week, where I even told the circle leader that I had another commitment and couldn't come to a meeting. I didn't lie or anything, but I think I could have still made a good 45 minutes of the hour. Digressing from that, it was unenjoyable. Period. It came to my turn to provide snacks and come up with a game for this week. So I went about heading out to the grocers to get some arrow root crackers and headed home to figure out what I'm going to do with all these kids. Talking to my can-mate the idea came to me. One of the games that I enjoyed as a kid was a fishing game. For some reason I associated simple arithmetic on the back of the fish although I've never played such a game.
I then had that "eureka" moment. Where I just put vocabulary words on the back of the fish, set up a bunch of fish hooks using paper clips and made fish with vocabulary words and a paper clip portion that could be hooked.
Ingenious I thought.
And so it turned out to be true. The last half hour before the reading circle ends there is time for a game. Although the children were first uninterested; at the end of it all they were truly enjoying the learning experience.
Learning is supposed to be enjoyable. It sucks when someone is shoving something down your throat, and that analogy applies to education as well. To simply see the kids desiring to play the game and to translate all the vocabulary before the other team was indescribable.
Teaching for me is a lifestyle, a career and my way of reflecting about what I enjoy the most– learning out of interest and of course for fun.
However one comes to their career, it must all come down to the fundamental and initial desire / drive to step down that path.
As teachers you are forever a learner. Well it's probably practical to say that you are a forever a learning as individual tasks and whatever life throws at you makes you "learn", but you get my gist and what I mean as teachers as being a learner. Before I delve into why I truly want to be a teacher lets go back to they story of how I was reminded, only a short few days ago. It was that thing I just joined in the beginning of the year. Volunteering with Frontenac College in their literacy programme, well in particular their French reading circle one. It was only a one hour commitment every week that I started in late October / early November. I wanted to be out there, giving back to the community, on the side boost my resume and of course, have a little fun.
I guess it became a drag when I would almost forget all the time that I've committed my hour at 6:30 pm on a Monday night and end classes at 11:30 in the morning. With that huge gap of 7 hours, I move along in my life, going about my day and so forth. So the "drag" part came that I didn't enjoy my time. I worked with a number of kids, they were never constant and I was just getting flustered with the fact that the program is not working as I thought it would.
So it came to last week, where I even told the circle leader that I had another commitment and couldn't come to a meeting. I didn't lie or anything, but I think I could have still made a good 45 minutes of the hour. Digressing from that, it was unenjoyable. Period. It came to my turn to provide snacks and come up with a game for this week. So I went about heading out to the grocers to get some arrow root crackers and headed home to figure out what I'm going to do with all these kids. Talking to my can-mate the idea came to me. One of the games that I enjoyed as a kid was a fishing game. For some reason I associated simple arithmetic on the back of the fish although I've never played such a game.
I then had that "eureka" moment. Where I just put vocabulary words on the back of the fish, set up a bunch of fish hooks using paper clips and made fish with vocabulary words and a paper clip portion that could be hooked.
Ingenious I thought.
And so it turned out to be true. The last half hour before the reading circle ends there is time for a game. Although the children were first uninterested; at the end of it all they were truly enjoying the learning experience.
Learning is supposed to be enjoyable. It sucks when someone is shoving something down your throat, and that analogy applies to education as well. To simply see the kids desiring to play the game and to translate all the vocabulary before the other team was indescribable.
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