Some Thoughts on Teaching and Learning

I remember the feeling I had when I discovered that I wanted to be a teacher. It was this flash of, wow, I could do this. I was in grade 9 science class, and the teacher had to step out of the room, so had asked me to keep taking up the science homework on the overhead projector (remember overhead projectors??) And it was nerve wracking, but I very quickly started thinking about how I could phrase the questions and got students to answer, and I distinctly remember her sitting back, crossing her legs and being all casual, like, you got this... carry on, when she came back in the room. I quickly let her take over, but that moment almost 2 decades ago, has stuck with me.  I remember the feeling when I found my current school, which, no matter where I go afterward, will always have my heart. I cried driving back from Ottawa to Kingston, thinking I would never see the teachers I had worked with ever again, nor work with those students (spoiler alert: I got hired the following September,...

At my school, a job change doesn't mean getting shuffled down the hallway, or getting a section of a course that you're unfamiliar with. It means going to work in a new building, with a different set of colleagues, a different work culture, and students with a different profile. The rhythm of your life changes. You don't see the same people every day or take the same way to work. The students -- they're different, but not so different. In fact, they're probably the easiest part of the transition, because students are students, no matter where they are. I think all of this change is what makes a significant portion of the staff at our school a little bit nervous come staffing time. We know that teams can be split up, and our day-to-day can look very different, regardless of the fact that we're still teaching the same English course, or whatever.  In my teaching career, there's been a bit of a rhythm to these changes. I haven't been in one spot for longer ...