Goodbye Summerland (but not forever)
Final Practicum Reflection
That’s it. It’s over. With all of the anxiousness, preparation, and disbelief my practicum was starting I’m having a hard time realizing it’s actually over, and an even harder time realizing that I’m writing this in London. I’m in London. Let it sink in.
My thoughts on my practicum to date: That was an amazing teacher. I don’t know what kind of physics those practicum heads are at UBC but they couldn’t have placed me with a better sponsor teacher in a better school. Summerland Secondary was the school of dreams. It’s located in a wonderful location, it has amazingly polite and talented kids, and the teachers are energetic, fresh, and they really care. I don’t know if that’s such a rare thing, but I think it’s rare to have all of that wonderfulness all wrapped into one. Not to mention the wonderful, beautiful, ball of wisdom and energy that was my sponsor teacher. Marnie Mennell was not only a wonderful mother, person, and teacher, she was the most wonderful mentor. Marnie was always challenging me to go further, giving m other options, and she always made sure I had a back-up plan. I owe my entire practicum to this woman.
It was hard to say goodbye to my kids. “My kids”, I say that like we were one bog happy family, because at the end I believe we were. We had a groove and people were learning and enjoying themselves. We all made jokes, we all had fun, and we all learned something every day. They made me the sweetest card when I left and I will treasure that forever. Some students even took foods again this term because they thought I was teaching it, I felt terrible when I had to tell them I was actually leaving. I really felt like I made a lot of good connections with my students. I feel like I got to know them and their personalities really well.
I loved teaching foods. It was an experience I wasn’t expecting, or professionally prepared for, but it was so much fun. I felt like we covered so many things in such a short time. We canned wonderful apple butter, we made breakfasts from every country imaginable, we made pancakes with blindfolds on, we made so many lunches from every part of the world (lettuce wraps, nasi goreng, Panini’s, and so much more) and then we dived into appetizers and dinners. Dinners were wonderful and fun. We made pizza from scratch, we made home made pasta, we made Caesar salad, we made sushi, and we made so much more.
We still did theory, and after getting the initial sobs of “we’re not cooking today” out of their system, they actually responded quite well to written assignments. My favorite assignment was where we analyzed the amount of calories they burnt during the day, made a goal for themselves, and then created a meal plan to obtain that goal. With written examples written under every question, the students seemed to have a much clearer picture of what was going on and were much more successful in their learning.
My mind is still a jumble of everything that has happened, and it probably hasn’t helped that I’ve been up for 23 hours now travelling toward my CFE in Scotland.
I’m going to miss everything about Summerland Secondary, Marnie Mennell, my two wonderful junior foods classes, my senior foods class, and my fashion club. Till next time Summerland.