What’s in my bag?

First I will start with the bag. I have two ‘go to’ bags as my everyday to and from work, soccer, ball hockey, or coaching. This one is a bit more formal; it’s leather as I enjoy ‘dressing up’ for school and don’t want to look like I am heading to a sport function all the time. The second bag that is not pictured, is a Lululemon backpack, which is the perfect size to fit everything you see here and no bigger, as I dislike a large backpack. Both bags are black, as my children will tell you, black is my favourite colour. There is the required wallet, which contains all the typical items a wallet would have with the exception of my padi certification card. I haven’t dived in a long time but would love to pick up the activity again. The Starbucks gift card hasn’t made it into the wallet yet, but its always a welcome gift from a student.

The bulk of this image contains what the repair shop calls my ‘vintage’ MacBook (2015); it requires the largest plug, which I also must carry around as my computer does not hold a charge for long. It also does not want to be updated or it promises to do everything, much, slower. I plan on ordering a new one in the summer. Two things are new since the start of the pandemic, one is the hand sanitizer. My hands were getting so dry with the hand washing and sanitizing, so I found one I really liked and stuck with it. The second is the eos chapstick as all the mask wearing was drying out my lips.

The red and gold lanyard is a new purchase from Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios; I picked a matching one with my daughter, as we are huge fans #gryffindor. I have lost count how many times I have read the books, and now my daughter has picked it up the habit. The lanyard is perfect for my work keys as teaching requires a lot of unlocking of doors. The other set of keys is for home and car, but it has a kind of ratty yellow key chain from a trip to Germany that I took with my husband. It says ‘Liebe Das Leben!’ which translates to Love Life.

At the bottom of the image you will see an epiPen, which I acquired a need for this year. Who knew you could develop a bee allergy out of the blue, as I have been bitten plenty of times as I grew up and never needed one. Thats what you get for rescuing a bee out of a pool. #savethebees

There are five items left:

  1. A paper clip because school work always migrates from school to home.
  2. The second is an adaptor to play music during class. The joys of occasionally teaching culinary and textiles courses is that there is always a lot of action, which benefits with some great background music.
  3. Halls because I often talk loud, so it’s soothing and students are epicentres of germs so I am always fighting one bug or another.
  4. Sunglasses are essential for eye health and everyone looks good in them.
  5. Round container to hold my braces. I teach high school and they all have braces, so why not me.

As for text technologies, I am less often taking physical copies of student work home, and trying more to live within an online world when it comes to the giving and receiving of assignments to my students. First of all its more organized. I know where the assignment lives, and thats why my laptop is so important to me. It is an integral part of how I partake in teaching as well as learning. I have no desire to downsize to using a smaller device, which is why my phone is not in the picture. My phone is usually nearby on a table or rarely, in a back pocket, but I would much rather not be tethered to it. Secondly, beyond organization, using an online environment for disseminating information allows for students to revisit it if they need to, and saves me from carting texts (in the book sense of the word) to and from school. I love the adaptability and flexibility of technology, and the ability to update or adapt as needed.

I like to think that the unnecessary items are not clogging up my space (bag). I am a minimalist, which I feel is a characteristic that is not typical of the teaching profession. Many a teacher has been known to hoard items for the future, but my shelves are empty.  15-20 years ago there would be a couple things different (pandemic aside), but the basics would be the same as I have always disliked carrying around extras that I wouldn’t need. Probably a paperback would have been included. I am an avid reader (when not working on my masters) and love to share that love with students, but currently I love sharing music with them, so musical literacy is highlighted in my bag. Classic music from the 70s, 80s and even 90s are always well received and its always surprising when the students really get exited to hear the songs.

From unpacking my bag, an archaeologist could tell I am a reader, but, from the age of my computer, you cannot tell I love the most up to date technology; perhaps you can deduce that I am frugal cause MacBooks are pricy.  I do love to travel, which is perhaps suggested by my key chain,  but beyond that I am not sure much of the contents it tell my story.  Perhaps it’s the digital nature of many of the aspects of our lives, maybe our phones would provide a better picture than my bag.