In the end the classes I attended were excellent. Super informative and reminded me of some of the great things I had taken away from my certification year. I think all of the courses could be linked in how they're used in the classroom. The first was on "Inquiry Buddies" and the whole idea of inquiry learning in the classroom. It's a key aspect of BC's new curriculum and really should be used in all classrooms as a way of engaging learners. The second class was "Using Technology to Support Learning". She had a ton of amazing ideas for tech in a classroom. Some of them would really only work for intermediate or middle school kids but it was neat to see how the tools could be used and it gave me some ideas of how I might use them occasionally in a primary classroom. The last one was great for someone with an interest in history like myself. It was called "History is a verb". The whole point of the lecture was to talk about how our understanding of history is defined by what historians are able to piece together from the limited evidence they can collect. While everything, meaning every tiny occurrence, is a part of the past, a historian makes sense of and shares the bits they can collect to present for future generations. It opened my eyes to the finite amount of knowledge we gain from historical readings and ways in which our perception of history is distorted based on lack of evidence. I appreciated the ideas the presenter shared with us in regards to challenging our students to see how much more there is to history.
While I know it may be some time before I actually get to use the ideas presented to me I was thankful to be in a learning space again. I realized part of what makes me a good teacher is my own passion for learning and the need I have to keep my practises up to date and relevant to the learners in my classroom.
