Never Pass On Your Passion

            To me having a passion is having the ability to have a strong feeling of longing, learning, and extreme interest in a topic. I believe that everyone has a passion but have I have found hard is realizing what that passion is. What I think has deterred me from finding my passion is the way I was educated. Throughout schooling when I was young I was told what to learn and how to learn, and the things that I was learning in school I wasn’t interested in. I was stuck in the bounds of school walls and only taught what is in the curriculum. So you may be questioning what is my passion? It may sound cliché for a teacher candidate, but my passion is working with kids. Whenever I am with children and young people I am at my happiest, I get enthusiastic and feel like I am at my best creatively. How did I find my passion? Since my schooling didn’t give me the opportunity to work with kids, I found it on my own exploring the world that is available to me. I started falling in love with working with kids after volunteering at overnight camp. To this day these were the best days of my life, Camp Quin-Mo-Lac has taught me so much about working with kids and working in the boundless environment.

Retrieved from:https://www.pinterest.com/jmorgan1811/word-art/

            No need to worry, there is room for passion within your classroom! This can be done through examples such as Genius Hour. Genius Hour is one hour dedicated (a day or a week) to whatever you’re your students find interesting. Each student have the opportunity to choose their own topic that do not have any relation to what they are learning in class; and they get to create a project any way they choose to that they can share with the world. Students are given no guidelines or timelines, but instead are given freedom to do anything they want to. Teachers are only there to help facilitate and give feedback to students. Working with their passions students is able to enjoy what they are doing, but they also come across hardships while creating their projects. Even with these hardships that they come across while creating because they are doing something that they love to do make it worth doing it.

            An amazing example of a young person learning and working with their passion is Nathan Farbish. Nathan did a TED Talk with Cheery Creed Education where he talked about his passion of 3D printers. He describes passion as the thing that drive us to work, and “passion makes work not even feel like work”, “it is something we can loose ourselves in” in other words is that you do work because you love it and it makes you happy and excited to do it. I love his definition of passion because it really expresses how passion has a great power over what we do.  He found his passion because owning his own 3D printer was something that he has always wanted to do but it had kept on breaking down. This lead Nathan to learn how to fix and program his printer, he enjoyed it so much because of the want and longing he has had for owning this printer. After watching Nathan’s TED Talk you could really see his passion for learning about technology and programming. His passion has lead him to so many different opportunities such as going to a talk about the Programming program called Scratch at MIT and teaching his own tech teacher about programming. Like Nathan, students in our classrooms should have the opportunity early on to explore their passions which can lead them to other opportunities out in the community, where they can further their passion.

Nathan ends his talk asking the audience what are their passions? I would like to further this question and ask teachers, what are your student’s passions?

Looking Into The Mind of Mental Health Literacy

       Mental heath has created great conversation over the last few years, as it should, there have been many initiatives to lower stigma, and initiatives to provide treatment. According to the Canadian Mental HealthAssociation 10-20% of Canadian youth are affected by a mental illness or disorder. While, only 1 out of 5 children who are in need of mental health services receives them. Since school is one of the places that children and young people spend most of their time, how can educators attempt to help in promoting positive mental health? Mental health is linked to the Ontario Curriculum and school boards such as the Toronto District School Board has created Children and Youth: Mental Health and Wellbeing (2013) which is a two year strategy plan to help promote positive mental health strategies, identify, and intervene with and mental illnesses.

            In my 21^st Century Critical Literacies class a few weeks ago we had Dr. M. A. Castrodeale come in and talk to us about critical literacy, mental health literacy and ableims. He brought up this quote from the Personal Skills section of the Ontario Curriculum:

“Through the development of self-awareness and self-monitoring skills, students build a sense of “being” and an understanding of their own identity. They learn to understand their capabilities and strengths and to take responsibility for their learning and their actions. Through the acquisition of adaptive, coping, and management skills, students develop their capacity to self-regulate, respond to difficulties, and develop greater control over their lives. All of these skills build resilience – the ability to protect and maintain one’s mental health and emotional well-being while responding to the stresses and challenges of life.”

YES, this section does address promoting positive mental health for young students, BUT it also, places blame on the students, labels them, tells them if they cannot be “resilient” than they may not be able to succeed academically. Much like the TDSB Mental Health and Wellbeing strategy it focuses on curing problems with mental health. So my question is how can we change out school system to have a safe place where student with mental health needs can achieve academically and mentally, rather than trying to fix them to fit the system? This is a huge question, and to be honest I don’t even know where to start to answer it. It could be a large problem where the whole system needs to be changed through maybe boards can help create change, or even schools. Though as a teacher these are some things that B. Vanstone suggests that can be done in the classroom. For anxiety: allow flexibility in the classroom, encourage accountability and follow through, and provide choice in assignments. For depression: encourage positive speech, encourage group work, and get student up and moving. As a future teacher I believe the most important part about mental health in the classroom is accepting their all students for who they are and trying your best to help them learn in ways that suit their needs.

Opportunity of 21st Century Literacies

          To the new learners and educators arriving at my blog, welcome! I am Robyn and an aspiring teacher candidate at Brock University. Some of my interests other than working with and learning about young people are reading, swimming and eating as much dim-sum as humanly possible. In this blog I have created I often focus on topics of education that I learn within my classes that interest me. The next few post will be for my 21st Century Literacy's class, in which I will be discussing what I found interesting in class and hopefully new ways of implementing these ideas into practice. 

Brandy Agerbek (October 21, 2005). Retrieved from:
http://www.loosetooth.com/Viscom/gf/21c_literacy.htm

            Just a week ago when I thought of the word ‘literacy’ I usually pictured the basics of just reading and writing. In elementary and highschool when we were tested on our literacy skills I remember being tested on my ability to read and write, if I was able to do this I am deemed ‘literate’. During my first 21^st Century Literacies lecture this semester we were introduced to a vast amount of literacies such as critical literacy, media literacy, moral literacy, and multicultural literacy. So what does it mean to introduce all of these new literacies into classrooms? I believe that it means that it gives students more opportunities to advance in variety of subjects and areas of learning. Though reading and writing is ultimately very important, as times are changing we are learning that it is also important different types of literacies. A good example of this is the addition to media literacy, this is extremely important in schools today. Due to so many outlets of learning are now online we must teach students to properly access online material. From my own experience in classrooms recently I have seem technological literacy in action, where grade two/ three students are learning how to work on Google Docs (which is something I only learned last year). Therefore, as we are learning more about education and society around us it is important to educate students so they can keep up with what is going on in the world today.

            As I mentioned above I believe that these new literacties give students opportunity. Opportunity to advance in a specific learning area. Opportunity to widen their abilities and skills. Opportunity to find their passion for learning. Through introducing environmental literacy, multicultural literacy, and financial literacy students are not only able to learn necessary skills that are needed to be successful in society but also find interest in them and begin to create new ideas and solutions for them. This introduces the idea of critical literacy, where there is no right answer and there are multiple different ways of looking at the world. I believe that each new literacy can be looked at critically, can be transformed and further put into action by students. Through the implementation of 21^st century literacies students are able to strive among different contexts.

Small hands big ideas: Do you ever truly miss an opportunity (Aug 16, 2011). Retrieved from: http://smallhandsbigideas.com/business/do-you-ever-truly-miss-an-opportunity/