Thoughts on teaching, learning, and transitioning into the professional world of pedagogy.

Today I discovered what the best job in all the world is:

Answering letters written to Santa – or, in my case – Scuba Claus.

Scuba Claus is what we call the Vancouver Aquarium’s version of Santa – did you know that up until Christmas Eve he feeds fish, whilst swimming alongside them? This year, Aquarium visitors can leave a pledge to help the environment for Scuba Claus, and I help Scuba Claus write his responses back to the letter writers. It is so fantastic.

More broadly, volunteering keeps me sane. I believe strongly in volunteerism (and it’s ability to foster positive and strong connections to community) and have been doing so since high school. My first volunteer experience was required in order to graduate high school (seriously: excellent idea, Ontario school system!), which I spent running my hometown’s Community Services office at night during weekly legal aid sessions. Since then I’ve volunteered for a number of causes over the years, and now I spend my time at the Vancouver Aquarium. Volunteering for VanAqua has been such a wonderful experience; I’ve been able to flex so many muscles: imagination, play, curriculum development, leadership, teaching, learning. Yowza. What could be better?

I take great pride in my VanAqua Volunteer shirt.

The ISW Handbook for Participants (2006) describes 4 major qualities of effective teachers, one of which is:

Content expertise – having knowledge of the subject area, clear goals and objectives, effective selection and organization of course content, enthusiasm about the course.

I jumped for joy at this statement because the summarized title does not match the description of attributes whatsoever. “Having knowledge” of content does not deem one an expert – or does it? Because that’s much less intimidating to novicey ol’ me. The rest of the description has to do with “pedagogical logistics” (like it? I just made it up): effective use of learning objectives, curriculum design, and enthusiasm. Skills that have to do with the process of using content, not the content itself.

What’s neat is that the text says “over the years, many learners have been asked for their perceptions about the qualities of effective teachers they remember”. So I wonder: did the learners come up with broad qualities (i.e. “content expertise”) and the pedagogy specialists broke it down into attributes? Is that why there’s such a disparity?

I love this disparity! What great insight into how a “content expert” in one’s eyes is really just an individual with a great pedagogical toolkit in another’s.

Earlier today I returned from a weekend-long retreat on Bowen Island, more specifically the Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) Fall Institute. At this institute, we focus on celebrating and developing our skills as facilitators of ISWs.

My attitude during this retreat was interesting, consuming. Whenever I attend workshops for facilitators, I can get a little hypersensitive. I’m a “beginner” at facilitating (and feel like a novice among all the facilitators I sit with at the ISW Fall Institute) and worry about all sorts of stuff. I worry that my comments are too “novicey”, too uneducated in terms of teaching and learning (which I actually don’t feel too bad about since this is not my current academic endeavour), or somehow too offensive or rude, which I never intend (I just overanalyze everything that comes out of my mouth afterwards). My confidence level is shot after one unintended flub. It can be fairly draining.

Despite my harsh self-criticizing, I actually enjoy going to the Institute. I went last year and had a trying time, but overall I would say that the time is so valuable. Just because I feel self-consious doesn’t mean I don’t learn, gain new ideas, or engage with the themes we discuss and try on. Now, I’ll share a point form list of tidbits I have walked away with this year, though I won’t flush them out tonight. I am mentally drained, and have a lab meeting presentation to prepare.

-I came across this wonderful quote, “until further notice, celebrate everything!” (Unknown). I try to maintain a joyful state in life – which I can’t deny is challenging at times – and so I resonate with this quote as it sums up my most positive state perfectly.

-I connected with some old, and new friends. I was able to reconnect with some people I haven’t seen since last year’s Institute, and got to know the new participants. In some cases I didn’t interact much with some of last year’s participants (the size of last year’s group was more than double this year’s), and so I was able to build my relationship with them this time around, which was great. I had some very special moments with some of the participants; some seemed to read my (most sensitive) mind and help me work through challenges, and I connected in teaching philosophies and ideas with others.

-Does expert vs. novice mean the same thing as teacher vs. student? In general, I think many students (and teachers) would say yes. I discovered through reflection this weekend, with the help of some very excellent facilitators, that one of my major pedagogical goals is to correct this, as I disagree with that view. It was a very wonderful realization, and not only that, but I received some ideas and guidance from these excellent facilitators!

-I challenged ideas. Sometimes I felt like the only person speaking to one perspective (well…at least one time that I remember specifically). In another moment, I was actually offended by the task at hand. It ended up being a very wonderful moment, as I was able to work through my upset with someone I admire, and she seemed to read my mind. She honed in on things that I hadn’t even realized about myself.

-I gained a number of little tips and tricks I plan to apply to my own practice. I also gained a list of ideas to consider in teaching/learning/facilitating. I wish to build a teaching portfolio in the next few months, so it was great to get the wheels turning on some issues.

Alright…time to science.

Now that I’ve established what I’ve got going on (to put it most “loosely”), maybe my blog tagline makes more sense now. Basically, I will write about frustrations and successes I have as I continue/finish my thesis. I will post reflections about my teaching experiences, about working on my thesis in general, and likely about juggling thesis work and my extracurriculars.

I intend this to be a nice reflective tool for me; I hope having the blog will encourage me to reflect often and I may gain understandings about myself from posting often. For the readers…hopefully my life, probably better known as “my juggling act”, is interesting. Perhaps some of you other UBC bloggers have very similar experiences! I invite anyone who stumbles upon this blog to leave a comment.

Hi all (everyone and no one?),

I have created this blog with the intention of writing reflections on what it’s like to be a M.Sc., or more specifically, a M.Sc. student who is pursuing a decent load of extracurriculars, and has already realized her ideal career aligns better with a different subject than that of her thesis.

Let me fill this out with a little more detail.

I’m working towards my M.Sc. in Biological Oceanography in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences. I love Oceanography and I love the fieldwork; I’ve been lucky enough to go on 2 research expeditions to the Arctic Ocean (more specifically, the Beaufort Sea)  and the North Pacific. I’m less enthusiastic about the lab work and intimidated by the reading, but it’s going okay. I hope to finish in a little while – but I won’t jinx myself by saying when.

I volunteer at the Vancouver Aquarium, which is a wonderful experience. This came about by my desire to get a little teaching experience. In my first semester as a M.Sc., I took a course called Teaching and Learning in the Earth and Ocean Sciences (EOSC516) which I fell in love with. I knew quite quickly my ideal career path involved pedagogy, but I didn’t know if I was into teaching kids, teens, adults….or simply discussing the theory, more “behind the scenes”. What I do at the Aquarium is volunteer with a School Program that brings in 2 classes from grades 5 to 12 weekly. I’ve been volunteering with this program since October 2009, and have gained experience teaching this wide range of ages. I have since concluded that although I love interacting with these students and seeing their excitement over the animals, I am more interested in teaching/”behind the scenes” work in higher education.

For the past 2 fall semesters, I have T.A.ed the course I mentioned above. Not only this, but I also did a T.A.ship for EOSC516 this past summer, in which I got to organize the course for the upcoming semester, including design a Vista site and design assignments. The course is finishing up this Friday, and I’m nervous for some of the feedback on that…but I’ll write a reflection on that later! I routinely write reflections about my facilitating successes/challenges after course sessions, so I’ll post some up on this blog soon.

Finally, I keep myself busy with EOS Grad Council, I fairly-regularly take teaching & learning professional development sessions/workshops at the Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology on campus, and I try to keep active, but fail miserably.