My Adventures in Education

This past week or so has been crazy! It has been very uncomfortable for me, for all of the reasons that had me doubting this whole blogging journey to begin with - vulnerability and putting myself out there. It started when a fellow Halton colleague tweeted my blog out to the world - this scared me, and to be honest, it still scares me. I had only shared it out selectively to a few colleagues to get their input and to see if I was even any good at this whole blogging thing! I hadn't yet convinced myself that I was brave enough to put it out there for more people to read, especially if they knew me! Well, the cat's out of the bag - and many people have reached out to me about it. It amazes me how afraid I was of people reading these thoughts/reflections about teaching. I always try to do my best, but I also recognize that I am nowhere near perfect, and that I make mistakes just like any other human being. I think I was afraid that people would concentrate on the things tha...

This year has been spectacular in terms of Professional Development. I won't lie, I'm not one that enjoys the forced PD, so I attempt to find learning opportunities that interest me and that I feel are important to helping me develop. Well, this year I have been successful in finding PD opportunities that fit! Rather than relying on traditional PD, I reached out and got involved based on areas of need/want in my own teaching practice. One of those areas: Guided Reading. My interest in this area began a few years ago when teaching ESL C. For those that don't know what course that is, English as a Second Language courses are broken up into levels A-E, where A are beginning learners, and E are approaching grade level. I teach the students that are smack dab in the middle in terms of English acquisition. That being said, it's important to understand that ESL courses are credit-bearing courses, so as long as students can achieve 50% of the curriculum, they are abl...