Hello everyone. My name is Siobhán McPhee and I am a faculty member at UBC in the Department of Geography. This is my third MET course and so far I’ve really enjoyed all aspects of the experience. I am taking the MET to enable me to better design curriculum for the students I teach, specifically for the international EAL (English as an Additional Language) students. As I spend a lot of time engaging and thinking about the internationalization of the curriculum I use as well as addressing the different linguistic and learning backgrounds my students come from, I spend a lot of time thinking about ‘text’. I struggle the most with having students get excited about writing because the institutional approach is still very focused on the academic paper as the ultimate showcase of a students’ ability to write. I am really enjoying exploring alternative approaches to get my students excited about writing and about ‘text’ in general so am really looking forward to this course.
The image is one I took in New Orleans when I was there early April for a conference. Irish names have unusual spelling – well they really do not as it is essentially an entirely different language but the letters are anglicized in sound. I get a lot of enjoyment seeing how people choose to spell my name. The USA above the name on the cup is apparently an appreciation the coffee shop use for an americano coffee. So Siobhán is pronounced ‘shevon’ – in Irish S is a ‘sh’ sound and bh is a ‘v’ sound.
JamieTooze
May 21, 2018 — 10:06 pm
Hello Siobhán,
I can relate to your introduction to some extent – but flipped around. Let me explain. I work in the Faculty of Commerce at UBC as an academic advisor and international student coordinator. As with every advising office at UBC, and probably across Canada, we have the fundamental problem of students not getting excited about our “text.” Granted our material is not as mind blowing as they find in GEOG122 (I always hear many great reviews of this course) but it could be “a life saver” at one point and we too struggle with getting our message out -especially to our students from overseas. That said we are having some recent success with flipped advising approaches, borrowing from the flipped classroom model.
I too hope I can use what I learn in MET to help give them the best, and most successful, experience possible.
All the best
Jamie
Marcia
May 27, 2018 — 11:49 am
Hi Siobhan,
I can relate a little bit in regards to the name mispronouncing. Mine is spelled Marcia but actually pronounced Marsha and I always get the Mar-see-a pronunciation. When I correct, some people even go on to say, “But it’s spelled..” Thank you, I know how it’s spelled! haha It really made me more aware and sensitive to how I first pronounce students’ names. I have worked mostly with really young children and some are too shy to correct an adult and I feel terrible afterwards! Welcome to the course and best of luck to you.