Friday, August 5, 2016

Teaching in Canada (From 2005-2016 and counting…) What I Like The Most



Hamdan (2012) argues that: "the tie between intercultural learning experiences and how they contribute to a learning process that is further facilitated through the methodology/process of autoethnography.”


There are so many things I love about Canada!!! The people, the food, the safety we feel when we walk on the streets, the economy! Just about everything!

Teaching in Canada to me has been an amazing experience. I wanted to move to Canada, I wanted to teach in Canada. And, here I am teaching in a Spanish Bilingual School in Calgary by choice, and I love it!

When I was about to move to Canada, my Brazilian fellow teachers once told me: “you are moving to a land of plenty.” Little did I know how much accuracy this statement would carry... We have everything we need here in our “ True, North, Strong and Free Land.” Our schools are well equipped; we have great technology available, even though we think we don’t… We have tons (and I mean it: tons!!!) of school supplies available to us daily in our classrooms!

I have so many books in my classroom library; I have other several books dedicated exclusively for home reading. I have two massive book collections, one in English and one in Spanish. My Math resource’s closet is full of manipulatives.
I have a few globes and several maps for social studies. I have another shelf full of materials that resembles a “mini-lab” for science. I have a brand new Smart-Board connected to a new Mac Lap-Top, plus two Mac desktop computers for students’ use. Our gym has several materials that enable me to create different physical education units for the whole school year. We have plenty!

I am sure I have forgotten to mention several other resources that I have available for me and for my students at my school. However, the point that I want to make is, we have so much stuff, and we hoard things; we underutilize resources and we waste our supplies!

I have talked to my administration, to the students' parents and to my fellow teachers about our daily waste of materials at school. We held several discussions with our students about saving our resources starting in our classrooms. We have accomplished a lot so far! We have adopted the famous motto: “reduce, re-use recycle.” Our students are becoming more mindful of the amount of resources we use daily in the classrooms. They are becoming more creative, they are developing a different mindset regarding the attention that they give to their personal belongings. They are making a difference in our classroom and at their homes! And that is what I like the most…


Reference:

Hamdan, A. (2012). Autoethnography as a Genre of Qualitative Research: A Journey Inside Out (pp.585- 606) In International Journal of Qualitative Methods 11(5). Retrieved from: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B2Oop6sNUy2HU0pPN2RILXhkS2c




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