why am i (really) here?

I wrote an autobiography about what moments in my life led me to become a teacher and now, in true teacher fashion, I am going to reflect on what I wrote. The main aspect we were to focus on was our aversion to addressing our race, gender, socioeconomic status, and sexuality. 

In my autobiography, I did address these parts of my identity, but I took a questioning lens. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote:

“Was I unknowingly steered into this field by society because of my identity as a white, middle class, heterosexual female? While I like to think that my passion for education is all my own, I can’t deny the fact that a large portion of the teacher population is made up with those who identify themselves the same way.” 

(I also addressed this question in a previous blog post, “just a little tuesday afternoon thinking…” from March 19th, 2013 if you want to hear some more of my thoughts on this matter) 

So while I did let the reader know who I am in regards to these identifiers, why didn’t I include an outright proclamation of these things as the very first sentence, or in the first paragraph? When we introduce ourselves in real life, we usually don’t have to say, “Hi, my name is ______ and I am a white, middle-class, heterosexual female.” And my question is, why not? We can’t determine any one of these things just by looking at someone. There are people in the world who may self-identify as black even though their skin may look to be a lighter shade. There are those who feel they were born in the body of the opposite gender of who they really are – so while they may look male on the outside, they self identify as a woman. We can’t judge socioeconomic status or sexuality by merely looking at someone, either. So why don’t we introduce these things about ourselves?

Obviously, it is not a cultural norm. But WHY not? Is it because only privileged people who are close to us get to know some of these deeply personal things (like sexuality)? Is it because we are embarrassed of a part of who we are? Is it because we expect people to know these things without us saying them? It is interesting to think of an alternate universe in which we are open about these fundamental parts of our identity. While this (most likely) will never catch on in society, it does make us question if we are hiding pieces of our identity from ourselves for some reason.

As a future teacher, I think that uncovering these pieces of ourselves is an important stepping stone into truly knowing yourself – which is the first step to realizing and appreciating differences as a window to anti-oppressive education.

a recap of my semester in pictures

So, here I am at the end of my third semester here at the U of R… and it feels both amazing and strange. My lovely mother pointed out to me the other day that I only have 4 more semesters at the university (as one will be spent in a school for my internship in my 4th year)! It is crazy to think that after this next semester is over, I will have completed HALF of my DEGREE! I know I haven’t posted in a while, so I thought I would post some photos in order to show you my semester! Enjoy! 🙂

This is my floor’s bulletin board in residence, which I made for my RA job at the University. In true teacher fashion, I had to make a cute little theme, and later added a speech bubble for the polar bear saying, “The COOLEST place to be!” Puns for the win.

This is the masterpiece that I made during my “Jackson Pollock Painting” event in residence. This was SO fun to make, and below is what it looked like AFTER the splattering! What a fun (but messy) project to do with younger kids, too! 

I also had the privilege of watching my alma mater (and my little sister) win volleyball provincials! It was even more exciting, as my hometown was hosting the event AND it was the women’s team’s first time to ever MEDAL – and they got gold! Definitely a proud moment for a veteran Wildcat. 🙂

My mentee and I made these crazy ‘foldovers’ and we both had a blast. He is very into zombies and robots, in case you didn’t notice – haha. I remember doing these in art class in school, so I was happy to try it out on my ‘guinea pig’ and it will definitely be a favourite activity for my future classroom. 

We also have played homemade Battleship on paper, which is a fun and easy game that can help with learning grids and cartesian plane coordinates in Math!

In between all of these super fun activities, I actually buckled down and got some serious work done – believe it or not! I wrote two term papers and had a binder full of practicum assignments from my KIN 120 class (pictured below).

Speaking of my KIN practicum, the amazing little guy my partner and I had the privilege to work with gave us these on our very last day. Needless to say, our hearts were melted. 

During my frequent Instagram scroll-throughs, I found this and fell in love with it. It’s so strange to see these things said in these contexts, but in relation to mental illness, we hear things like this all the time. It really made me step back and think…

To get into the holiday spirit, my mentee and I made a gingerbread house for our last session together for 2013! It is so hard to believe that another year is almost over. And finally, in order to celebrate the end of classes, my friend and I dressed up as presents! 🙂 So to anyone who stuck around long enough in order to get to the bitter end of this post: Happy Holidays, or Merry Christmas, or Happy Hanukkah, or Happy Kwanzaa or Happy Whatever-You-Choose-To-Celebrate-Or-Not-Celebrate! Have a lovely holiday season and cheers to a brand new year full of even more awesome memories to come! 

Sincerely,

-KKF

word of the day

It’s truly amazing the times of day I get the urge to write a blog post. The idea that sparked this post came to me while I was washing my face (I always get my most brilliant ideas when doing the most mundane of tasks – showering, brushing my teeth, washing my face, laying in bed at night, etc…). In one of my previous blogs, I made a goal to expand my vocabulary and realized that I was failing miserably at carrying this goal out. So I have decided to do a test run for Word of the Day during the month of August! I will (hopefully!) be tweeting out my new finds every day, so please check it out on Twitter @kfidelack! I am a big believer in goal setting leading to goal achieving, so fingers crossed that I will follow through!

Maybe I’m crazy in saying this, but I actually feel that I am MORE busy this summer than I was during the school year. Or maybe I just forget what it felt like to be IN school, because it’s been a LONG time! It will be weird to get back in the swing of things. And I don’t think this school year is going to slow down by any means. I have signed up to be an In-School Mentor once a week through Big Brothers of Regina AND have a job as an RA (Residence Assistant) on top of being a full-time student, so I will definitely be busy! Good thing I pride myself in being an expert on time management. I can sleep when I’m dead, right? Never have I found the wish for ‘more hours in day’ as true as in my life after high school – and I was plenty busy then, too! Thankfully, I seem to thrive on keeping occupied so I think the bustling environment of an Elementary School classroom is the perfect niche for me! 🙂

Just a super quick update on tutoring:

It’s going really well – at our last session, my student absolutely nailed his Silent E words, which I have been drilling into him for a few sessions now! He is a very hard worker and I am really starting to see him warming up to me – I think it helps that I can be such a goof to ease his nerves. When we learned how ‘R’ affects vowels, I made up actions to go with them and I think he giggled at my seal noises and clapping for ‘or’!

And to finish, I thought I’d share with you the new word that I learned today: Pareidolia. It’s the ability to see faces where there isn’t one. For example, this sink:

I learned this from a YouTube video on the channel Vsauce. Go check it out! His videos are all very informational and interesting – and his enunciation is superb! (Note: it really is amazing all the educational resources you can find on YouTube – I have used a couple of videos in my tutoring already!)

Until next time, I challenge you to go out and learn something new! It’s truly a gift of life that there is so much for us to learn about this amazing world we live in!