The moment my practicum ended, I was fortunate enough to be asked to work at Walnut Grove Secondary School for the Outdoor Program “Edge,” teaching Social Studies 11.
It is an incredible honour and a dream for me to have this position right out of BEd program. The moment I made the decision to pursue a career within teaching, my goal was to work my way into the Edge program. At the time, I knew that this goal was unlikely to happen so I was prepared to work hard, get established within a school, and try to start an outdoor program on my own.
To my lucking stars, a position opened up within the program and since I have very close ties with those who run the program, I was the frontrunner to get the position. With 2 days left in my practicum, I was offered the position by the program director with the condition that I get hired within the Langley school district by the following week. This was obviously exciting but also extremely stressful as now I had to prepare my resumé, submit it, get an interview, and ultimately get hired within a week.
I spent restless nights working on my resumé and cover letter, having friends and colleagues proof-reading them. I pulled as many strings as I could to get my application to the top of the pile. On Friday, I finished my last day of my practicum. That afternoon I got the call to come in for an interview on following Monday. I rocked to interview and was officially apart of SD35 on Monday. Wednesday I went in to WGSS to sign the job share papers. And that was that. Within 6 days, my life turned upside down and I couldn’t be happier.
Now I am finishing my BEd program at UBC while trying to plan for my upcoming school year teaching Socials 11. My first big trip with the program is only 2 weeks into the school year to Garibaldi Provincial Park. I have to plan a Social Studies component to the trip. Typically the component was an assignment on glacial features. I am hoping to change it up slightly to more closely tie the assignment to current environment issues like global warming. And I would like to move the project to a online presentation platform instead of the classic poster project.
We’ll see what I will end up with, but I am very excited.