Community Pathways Program Teacher for VSS
What do you love about your job?
What I love about my job is just seeing the students motivated, seeing them engaged and seeing the smiles on their faces; to me that is what keeps me going and this gets me up every morning. I also love when I get to witness students learning new things and telling me about the things they’ve learned with excitement. That is never more evident than when I see progress from students who have been struggling with a specific concept and then a couple days later they find it very easy and understand it. This is why I’m here! I want to help them grow and help them learn. However, more importantly I want them to take what they’ve learned and apply it to their daily lives. Students are going above and beyond to do that and seeing that brings me joy.
This is my first teaching job! I teach in a Community Pathways Program classroom which is typically a small class size of 8-12 students with two EA’s to help support us. Our class mainly focuses on developing life skills, social skills and basic communication skills. We integrate that with general math, general science, culinary skills and general life skills. We try to build sociability through collaboration amongst each other and prepare them for the real world when they have to integrate with the community. We are aiming to build those basic people skills and independent living skills.
In this challenging year, what have you tried and that is working?
One thing that really works with myself and my class is providing plenty of opportunity for discussion, group work and there is a time and place for independent work. So for my class, I create space for students to be interacting with their peers. This is something that they might not do as much because they are with VSS and they might not have the opportunity to interact with their peers. I want them to take advantage of that time where they have their peers on screen, then they have those social interactions, conversations and they are acquiring those new perspectives.
What has been a challenge?
Sometimes the challenge that we faced was having the students engage in independent tasks where they have to use technology on their own. Having the students work asynchronously was a challenge especially with tasks such as navigating websites or features in a google doc. They needed the support and modelling, but more importantly they needed the peer to peer connection, as these strategies gave them the motivation to work. When we would just give them a task, they would not understand what to do and some of them would not have the motivation or attention to complete it. Sometimes we will really have to be their guides. The challenge was not only about us assigning them work but about us guiding them through the work everyday.
What is one tiny victory that you have had this year?
One thing that has been the most rewarding under these couple of years is learning about the amount of teaching resources that are available to us online. I wasn’t aware of all the resources, helpful websites, certain technologies and virtual resources. I will take a lot of these with me when I go back to teaching in person. I am going to keep using these as I found a lot of helpful resources. I’m a simple person and I don’t like to overuse resources. I definitely like the ones that help my class collaborate such as Nearpod, Jamboard, and many more.
What words of encouragement do you have for staff?
Sometimes what you think is the most important thing for a child to learn might not be the most important thing for that particular student to learn. Really get to know your students and understand their circumstance before engaging in any sort of instruction with them.
What is your proudest accomplishment?
My proudest accomplishment to this day, I would say beyond anything, was me overcoming certain circumstances in my life to become who I am today. While that might not seem like a great accomplishment, I am actually not going to say it is me becoming a teacher, or graduating from school or getting a job. More importantly, it is becoming the person I am today and who I strive to be in the future. It’s the work habits I’ve built over those years and the amount of resilience, perseverance and responsibility that I’ve developed through life’s challenges. That’s my proudest accomplishment: just me being who I am in the present day. I’m more so proud of this than monetary accomplishments or accolades; it’s about me growing as a person.
What is hidden talent do you have that would surprise people?
A hidden talent of mine that people wouldn’t really know is that I am an athlete and I am compete in martial arts. In about a year I hope to be competing in a Muay Thai competition as an amateur. The training is rigorous, I have two practices a day. This training has lots of strength and conditioning work and lots of sparring. I have had minor injuries. I have been doing karate for about 13 years. During the pandemic, I got hit with some boredom and I decided to learn Muay Thai. This sport involves lots of punches, kicks, knees, and elbows. The competition is in venues such as sporting arenas. This sport is very big in Thailand, not as big in Canada. Thailand is where the grand competitions take place. I hopefully will travel the world and compete. The sport is definitely not for the faint at heart!
