My volunteer experience and extracurricular activities have helped me begin to develop the skills and qualities that make for a successful educator.
Volunteering to present at Dr. Elin Kelsey’s Climate Action Event at Thompson Rivers University
Volunteering to present at Dr. Elin Kelsey’s Climate Action Event at Thompson Rivers University
While completing my Arts degree, I took English 4770: Pathways to Hope and Resilience. In this course I had to complete a project based on hope, so I did my project on the importance of hope and how it relates to climate action. I decided that the goals of my project would be to educate others on the importance of hope for overcoming challenges, how to be more hopeful, and what they can do to act against climate change. To achieve these goals, I did a presentation for a Biology 11 class that taught the students the importance of hope for combating climate change, provided students with different ways to combat climate change, and to shared different organizations that spread a more hopeful message about the future. Once finished with this project, I volunteered to present the details and findings of my project at the Hope Matters! Climate Action Event at TRU.
This experience was impactful for my teaching practice as I gained confidence speaking in front of a large group of people, I developed my communication and presentation skills, and I learned that nurturing hope in education can help to improve children’s wellbeing and academic performance. Moving forward as an educator I will try to implement hope into my lessons, in effort to support my students more effectively.
Link to the presentation I gave at the Climate Action Event: (I begin my presentation at 00:44:00).
Presentation slides shown to the Biology 11 class:
Volunteering as a Volunteer Activity Leader
From October to December in 2020, I worked as the Volunteer Activity Leader for the Lillooet and District Minor Hockey Association. As a Volunteer Activity Leader, I completed the Hockey Canada Respect in Sport course. With this course I learned what young people need to be healthy both physically and mentally, how to keep kids safe from injury, and how to recognize and respond to behaviours such as bullying, abuse, harassment, and discrimination. With this course and job, I also learned how to help create a safe, fun, and respectful environment for the team members. This is all applicable to my teaching practice as I better understand how to help my students live healthier, more active lives, I am more prepared to create a safe, respectful classroom environment, and I am equipped with the skills needed to recognize and respond to bullying, discrimination, etc. in my classroom.
Hockey
For 8 seasons, starting in 2010, I played hockey with the Lillooet and District Minor Hockey Association. In 2019, I began playing hockey with the Kamloops Women’s Recreational Hockey League and I have continued to play since. Throughout my 14 seasons playing hockey so far, I have built a stronger work ethic, and learned how to work as an effective team member and leader. This is useful for my teaching practice as I will use my work ethic to be the best educator I can be, I will be a more successful leader and role model for my students, and I will be able to work effectively with the other teachers and school staff.