My Journey

3 years ago, upon reflecting on my life experiences, I decided to pursue teaching. As a child I grew up in very multicultural and diverse environments, having lived in different countries in Africa, Europe, and North America. These experiences forced me to learn from various cultures and gave me a wider worldview, which I hope to translate as inclusive, creative, and knowledgeable teaching. Furthermore, these experiences spurred my enjoyment of learning languages, allowing me to learn French, German and some Dutch.  

My affinity for languages manifested itself in tutoring French in high school. This experience was not only rewarding to me as it further improved my own French comprehension, but it was also rewarding to me when students began to comprehend concepts and improve their French. This made me feel valued as an educator and further motivated me to provide the best experience for the students that I tutored. Moreover, during two of my summers, while I was at university, I worked as a language counselor for a company called Nacel in France. This job was my first significant teaching experience requiring me to teach English to a class of French teenagers as well as facilitate summer camp events with my other counselors. Through this job, I developed fun and creative language-learning activities and methods that I ended up using in the future.

My teaching trajectory continued, upon graduating from university I worked part-time for a year as a French teacher for Grades 1-3 at Trillium Waldorf, a private K-8 school in Guelph. Through this experience, I learned important elements for teaching in the younger years such as instilling firm boundaries and rules, developing a class routine, and learning when to loosen up and be silly with the children. I occasionally substituted classes for other grades during my time at the school and was involved in faculty meetings and get-togethers. This allowed me to gain a wider-ranging understanding of what it means to work in a school. During my time teaching, I tried my best to develop a diversity in teaching methods, through the usage of stories, songs, poems, skits, drawings, games and for the older years writing and reading activities. I hope to be able to share this passion for learning and creativity with students who are often so keen and interested in the world. During my time at Trillium Waldorf I accrued 650 hours of teaching experience. It was during this experience at Trillium Waldorf that I evaluated my life and realized that teaching was the profession I was most drawn to. 

After enrolling in Laurier's BEd program I spent my first two practicum placements at Saint-Theresa of Avila, a Catholic school in Elmira. The experience allowed me to teach Core French to grades 4 to 8. The experience allowed me to tailer different styles to different grades, and broadened my exposure to different grades. 

The following is an example of a grade 7 lesson that I planned and taught during the time.

A Grade 7 French lesson

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mU1HpEwCq76qVgb5yOG8NoMaRlQDL29uc7wjTb_yKdk/edit?usp=drive_link

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The following school year I was placed in a school in Waterloo called Laurelwood. There I taught 2 classes, a grade 7 class and a grade 7/8 split. The classes were French immersion and I taught French and History to both grades, two subjects I thoroughly enjoyed. Eventually, I taught 100% of my associate teacher's class time. This allowed me to develop a strong rapport with the students as well as incorporate long-range plans, one of which was a cultural roots project, in which students had to explain a family tradition and its cultural roots.

Homework assignment

https://nneverblogg.blogspot.com/2024/12/homework-example-1.html