Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Kathryn, and I am entering my fifth year at UBCO. I have finally stuck to a major: English. I was doing psychology for a while before I found out that it wouldn’t work towards what I wanted to do. I love children, and my goal after my Bachelor of Arts is to become an elementary school teacher.

When I think of Canadian literature, I think of a very terrible Sociology class that I took second year. My teacher ranted about history being inaccurate, that everything of it has to fit in a tiny, neat little box of tiles and that we all should feel the white guilt that is sent upon us from our ancestors. This kind of turned me off of focusing on Canadian literature as a whole, but this looked interesting enough that I wanted to try and have a more positive experience this time.

English 470, or as we are calling it Oh Canada…Our Home and Native Land? is a Canadian literature course that will look into the intersections between European and Native literature and their origins and the power of stories that we tell ourselves about being here. Through this class, us as students will strengthen our literary skills for both literature and storytelling.

I am looking forward to the different learning environment; this is my first online course. I am interested in the difference of an online area of communication instead of sitting in a classroom, which is what I am used to. It is interesting to think about the different ways of learning. I was watching a Ted talk by John Hardy about his “green school dream”. He and his wife created schools that started in Bali with no walls, and desks that weren’t square. They used raw materials from the wilderness instead of ones that made to be manufactured. It is amazing the different concepts that can be used for better learning environments.

https://www.ted.com/talks/john_hardy_my_green_school_dream#t-165834

Work Cited

Hardy, John. “John Hardy: My Green School Dream”. Online video clip. Ted Talks. Ted Talks: July 2010. Web. 15 May 2015. https://www.ted.com/talks/john_hardy_my_green_school_dream#t-165834

Paterson, Erika. English 470A: Canadian Studies. University of British Columbia, 2015. Web. 14 May 2015.