Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Untitled

I have found that my writing can get pretty structured around whatever idea I title my entries, so I thought I would leave this one a little up in the air and see what happens.

The first week of the winter semester of my B.Ed. is well underway. The snow is aplenty and the freezing rain super-annoying! It seems like the air at the Faculty is pretty upbeat considering the weather - most of us are enjoying that we are back in classes being given the chance to review what we have done in practicum and to continue to get interesting ideas from one another. I could have used with a couple of days of vacation from my break to do nothing before classes started, but have found that doing no work has done about the same thing. There are drawbacks of course; I have yet to get any real move on with my resume and covering letter writing and I have an appointment to have it reviewed in less than two weeks.

In the first three days of classes and special programming I have already heard a few things worth writing down and attended another social justice lecture. This one was about Environmental Education, and was pretty interesting as I had not really thought of Environmental Education as a social justice issue prior to yesterday. We got a taste of a couple of good resources too. There is a video that shows you what the world would be like if we kept proportions the way they are but decreased the world's population to 100. You can view the video here, it is pretty short so watch it if you have a few minutes!

One of the things that has been said since I returned to the Faculty that has really stuck with me is "Beware the 'teacher reaction' - make sure to know the facts and react accordingly". I think that is stuck with me and led to me writing it down because it is so easy to relate to. I have had many moments in my life that I can relate to this statement. It's that reaction that I have from time to time that has the look "are you seriously saying/doing/acting like that right now??????" Many social and ethical issues have become so ingrained in me over the years that it can be easy to forget that it is not necessarily the norm in society (yet) and that the individual is a result of his experiences. Which leads me to something someone said today - we must remember that we are not just teachers in the classroom, we are educators everywhere. And so, with this thought in mind and having seen myself overreact to situations in the past, I will strive to remember to step back, take in everything, and then deal with a situation. And I will strive to be an educator in my every day life and to continue to try to be an even better active witness.

Well I think that I have shared enough for tonight. I hope to continue to find things worth sharing with you!

Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!

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