I was born and raised in Vancouver. I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Kinesiology from UBC specializing in Physical and Health Education. Growing up, I played a variety of sports and am an advocate for putting children through multiple sports before specializing. I played soccer, baseball, volleyball, golf and did Taekwondo. I enjoy being active and still play sports depending on the season but I am now more involved with coaching. I coach club volleyball at the high school level and have accomplished a few notable coaching feats. In 2015, a Division 2 Championship at Nationals at the 18U level and in 2016 – winning bronze at the 18U Provincials and placing 5th place in Canada.
2015 Division 2 Champions in Calgary.
3rd place finish at the 2016 BC Provincials.
My teaching philosophy:
My basic teaching philosophy has a lot to do with nurturing and growth of students. The nurturing teaching perspective relates to how I teach my students and how I think (in terms of how I want to see my students grow) as I do have a nurturing personality. I believe my nurturing philosophy comes from the way I was raised by my parents and by coaches that had similar outlooks on seeing growth from their students. As a coach, I have a similar coaching philosophy where I want to see my players develop and mature into young adults that learn not only the game they practice, but also life skills that can be used in the outside world. My teaching philosophy is definitely to develop students so they are able to interact and succeed in the “real world” without the fear of failing. Pratt (2002) says “people become motivated and productive learners when they are working on issues or problems without fear of failure”. I want to challenge my students, but ensure that they succeed and I want my students to grow and strive to do the best of their abilities.
I want to create a classroom environment that feels like a community but still has the classroom vibe where students know it is a learning environment. I want my students to feel safe and respected, having no worry about being judged on their performance. This is important in a physical education setting because often times, students may feel embarrassed to participate because of their abilities. As an educator, I want all my students to feel valued and I am going to try to connect with all my students by doing small things such as asking them how their game went or talk about any interests they may have. Hearing different stories from students is something I genuinely enjoy as everybody comes from such diverse backgrounds. All it takes is a few minutes out of each day to make students feel valued and to have a sense of belonging in the classroom. To me, it is important to build a professional student-teacher relationship where students want to come to my class because it’s fun and they are learning useful material for their futures. Bridget Hamre and Robert Pianta (2006) published an article that states that “children who form close relationships with teachers enjoy school more and get along better with peers” – this is something I firmly believe as I was once a student and the bond I developed with certain teachers ended up being my favorite teachers throughout high school and I always wanted to be in their classes because I enjoyed them.