Twenty years ago, had I been asked to name the doings of my future self, I would not have been able to envision the fall I’ve just been through. Concurrent with beginning this Master of Education program (though entirely unplanned and on a three-day turnaround while camping with my family in Saskatchewan), I also started teaching part time on a probationary contract at an online school for my local school board. My experience with online teaching has spanned a dozen years now, but this is only my fourth foray into actual contracted employment as a teacher — everything else was either as a substitute teacher or where I was technically considered self-employed. The previous three contracts were to fill a maternity leave (a duration of less than three months); a single fall semester, COVID-19-related part-time assignment for a board 500km away; and a summer school position this July for a fully established board for whom I’ve been working since 2016 (which makes it feel like coming home).
Read MoreMonth: December 2023
(…ish)
I’ve been having a ridiculously difficult time coming up with a subject for this last post (of the first course of my first semester of the M.Ed. program). In fact, as I write this, I feel very much as though I’ve warped backwards in time to my university-student-self, who often wrote essays the day before (*cough* ok, in the wee hours of the night of the day) they were due. When lamenting to my sister-in-law, she suggested that I write about my day — and I realized that she was on to something.
You see, I ended my morning of work (in which I had a one-hour online Google Meet with one of my classes) with a trek from my upstairs desk in Central Office, to the main floor where our school has an outreach centre. Normally, I don’t have a chance to actually see many of my students; today, I’d been made aware that three of my students were in. It turns out that they had come in for an “engagement day” organized by the family wellness worker who works for our school, which would run in the afternoon.
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