About Me

At the start of every MET course we have been asked to make introduction posts about ourselves for our peers to read, in most cases we are asked to cover – where we live, our professional background, where we are in the program and any other little piece of information we would like to share about ourselves. As this is my last and final class, I guess this is the last time I will be doing this. When I started first started the program and writing these posts I was living in Burnaby, since then I have moved to Coquitlam which is closer to work. I work in the Coquitlam school district (SD43) at Riverside Secondary School. There I am a student services teacher, working in the learning center with students with learning disabilities.

Due to the layoff and recall process that has been going in my district (and many others) I have done a fair number of different teaching jobs. In fact, this coming September will be the first time I be doing the same job for two years in a row! I have previously taught many different subjects at the secondary level (planning, social studies, geography, skill development, among others.) This is in part why I was drawn to the MET program in the first place, it was not subject or grade level specific. Despite having to change subjects and classrooms every year I have been fortunate to stay at the same school for most of my years teaching, and I am even luckier that my school that is 1:1 with a focus on digital fluencies. This is the another main reason I chose the MET program as it aligns nicely with the goals of my school.

In the summer time I work for the International Education program in my school district. I have taught in several different EAL programs over the years including drama, which is way out of my wheel house. Currently, I work mostly with the Canadian Ambassador groups. It is basically a very fancy summer camp where the students alternate classroom days learning about Canadian culture and improving their English, and field trip days where they explore the tourist attractions of the greater Vancouver area. This job allows me to explore my own city with new students every year. While I do dream of a time when working summers is no longer a financially necessity this is about as good as a summer job as any teacher could ask for.

My sister, father and I after coaching our BC summer games team to a gold medal!

A very big part of my life outside of the classroom is basketball. I coach in the girls basketball program at my high school. This past season, I coached our school’s very competitive and talented Sr. Girls team. After a stressful season, full of injuries, we placed 5th in the province! In addition to the school team, our group of coaches also run a club program called JABOGS (Just A Bunch of Girls) for students from grade 3 to 12. Between the school and club teams coaching is 11 month of the year commitment. This hobby is both important to me and very time consuming, hence why I chose it as my metaphor. It is also something that I do with my family making it extra important. My dad is the head coach at my school and in the club program (despite the fact that he is not a teacher.) My sister teaches at my school and also coaches with us. For some people this might feel like my world is a little small, but I feel incredibly lucky to be able to be able to spend so much quality time with my family while doing something that we all love.

Over the two years it has taken me to finish the MET courses, I have been pretty busy with coaching, teaching, and working on my courses. However, when I do get a moment to do something different I try to workout a bit (swimming and biking) and I love to bake, especially cupcakes.

You can see a visual version of my introduction here, created for ETEC 510: