Month: June 2014

Hoops for Hearts !

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Hoops-for-Heart-Logo

Hoops for Hearts was one of the best days of my practicum! This day was organized by Terry Jones and his team. The idea behind it is that money is raised for the hospital and the students are able to take a day out of traditional education and spend the day being active and having fun with their fellow students.

Students and teachers were given the option to play basketball, volley ball, or ultimate frisbee. They were then given the task to come up with a team name, uniform, and raise money for the hospital. The best part of this was hearing the reaction from the students! Hoops for Hearts day was one that they seemed to look forward to from the very beginning of the year! When I was first introduced to my students back in October, they immediately told me about Hoops for Hearts day. The good cause behind this day of fun was defiantly not ignored. What i heard from the students was “and its for a good cause Ms. Fresu!!!!”.

Mr. Jones and the rest of the staff put emphasis on the need to help out institutions within our community. We never know who might need a little more support from our local hospital, and the students understood that. Not only did this promote unity for the community, but the teachers were encouraged to make teams with students who normally would not participate. Seeing the look on those kids faces was something I truly never will forget. Even if they lost every game these students in particular were having a blast. Teachers who made these teams were true role models for students, and often I saw more kids being open to adding those who they normally would not have to play on their teams! It was in this small act of kindness that I saw the true reason behind Hoops for Hearts day. Not only did it promote community awareness, but it promoted school unity. This day was not created for the kids who were already on sports teams. No! this day was created for those who have never been on a team, so that they could experience that truly unique feeling of teamwork.

Yet, the benefits of this exciting day did not stop there! Students got to play against teams of teachers. You can trust me when I say that their is nothing a student loves more then winning against a teacher. This promoted two things. 1) it allowed for students to get to know their teachers on another level and 2) it provided an outlet for teachers to have fun with their students and their co-workers. Therefore, this is not only an artifact that shows promotion of social responsibility so students can make positive contributions to society, but also shows the development of appropriate supportive relationships.

I have never had so much fun playing sports! Even though I am pretty sure that I am the absolute worst at volleyball, I wouldn’t take back a single minute!!

 

 

PS. CHECK THE LINK BELOW!!!!!!!

Collaboration Days!!!

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Hi my name is Rikki Fresu and I am a WKTEP student! I was fortunate enough to participate at my old highschoo JL Crowe Secondary for my extended practicum. Even when I was a student here I always found that the staff had a strong team mentality! They always seemed as if they were on the same page and supported each other through out the whole school year. Even through very difficult times within our community, the staff appeared to face every obstacle as a whole.

Therefore, I wasn’t surprised that on my very first day of practicum a new strategy was being tried out to make the team even stronger! Therefore, my first “artifact” to show contribution to the profession and engage in collaboration had to be the Collaboration days! One day every other week is dedicated to professional collaboration. The staff is broken down into groups within their subject and as a team they come up with an inquiry that they want to experiment with. For example, in my collaboration group, we were trying to recreate the grade eight Social Studies curriculum. The idea was to make it more project based in order to increase engagement within the classes. Other groups were working on effective essay writing, and backward classroom theories.

For me collaboration days were wonderful. This was the time that I could get away from my tiny little desk in the back of the room and discuss teaching with those who have done it for years! All the teachers seemed more then willing to share their ideas and strategies because they knew it would benefit the kids in the long run.

I hope that which ever school I end up with has a similar strategy because i really believe that this would promote a solid team within the school community.