Until Next Time...

Examinations

 

Exams: a word that causes an instant feeling of stress to many students just by hearing, seeing, or reading it.

5 Differences Between Public High Schools and Catholic High School

Before coming to Pius, I was against catholic schools due to their association of requiring a uniform. In fact, for my first two years of high school I went to a Public school. However, since coming to Pius I’ve grown to love the school. Here are five differences between Public and Catholic high schools:

Teacher Evaluation

In Ontario, teachers are evaluated based on a system called Teacher Performance Appraisal (TPA). This system is split into two categories,one for ‘new’ teachers and one for ‘experienced’ teachers, and is designed topromote teacher development, promote meaningful assessments of teachers’performance that encourage professional learning and growth, identifyopportunities for additional support where required, and provide a measure ofaccountability to the public. New teachers are all teachers hired permanently for the first time, while experienced teachers are those who have passed the NTIP or worked prior to their current hired position.

Multiple Intelligence: William Glasser

"Effective teaching might just be the hardest job there is" - William Glasser

Multiple Intelligence Quiz #2

Multiple Intelligence Quiz #1

Technology in the Classroom

(Image taken from google, NOT MY OWN)

“Education is evolving due to the impact of the Internet. We cannot teach our students in the same manner in which we were taught. Change is necessary to engage students not in the curriculum we are responsible for teaching, but in school. Period.” – April Chamberlain

Rita Pierson: Every Kid Needs A Champion Reaction

Sublime

Non-Traditional Teaching Methods: Their Uses and Impact on Students

(Dr. Kathie Nunley)

Dr. Kathie Nunley, an educational psychologist, developed a style of teaching, coined as the Layered Curriculum® method, incorporates every type of student.

'Create A Space'

For my Create a Space Assignment, Dr. Bilaniuk let me choose some diagrams from the unit in the textbook for the students to create. The unit the students are working on right now is Optics, more specifically how light is produced. When I was looking through the textbook for ideas, I found 5 diagrams which show how light can interfere with objects and how colour is produced. The 5 pictures below are what I had the students produce.

Classroom Rules

After this year, I'll have been in school for 14 years including junior/senior kindergarten. Throughout these years I've had numerous teachers with all different personalities and teaching styles. One thing that hasn't quite changed throughout the years though is the same rules each teacher seemed to have. Thus, I've developed quite the critique on the rules teachers have set in the classroom.  

We Day National

On Wednesday, April 1, I was invited to attend We Day National an initiative of Free The Children to celebrate, inspire and challenge youth to make a difference both globally and locally. The day was filled with inspiring speeches from actors, activists, and youth who all support and follow Free The Children, along with performances by Free The Children Ambassadors and lessons on how to create change. The day was exciting, fun and an amazing experience, definitely one to remember.

Educating the 'Whole Child"

To the doctor, the child is a typhoid patient; to the playground supervisor, a first baseman; to the teacher, a learner of arithmetic. At times, he may be different things to each of these specialists, but too rarely is he a whole child to any of them.
—From the 1930 report of the White House Conference on Children and Youth

Personality Types

I have actually been interested in personality types for a while. It was actually two entertainers on YouTube who inspired me to learn about them. So doing this assignment I knew what my Myers-Briggs personality type was, which is INFP. However learning about the other two personality assessments and even doing a quiz to see what my Keirsey Temperate was interesting. As you can tell from the photo above I was given idealist. I’ve always thought I was the opposite of an idealist due of the childhood I had, but I guess I was wrong; it must have had the opposite effect. Reflecting on my life now, there are four simple truths, which are connected to me being idealistic. 

Characteristics of an Excellent Teacher

A teacher is the most important job in the world. In short, they are the people who educate the leaders of tomorrow the theories behind everything and how to apply these theories. However, in order to teach students effectively, there are certain characteristics to enhance the short amount of time each teacher has with the multitude of students. After observing my teachers this past week, observing Dr. Bilaniuk in my mentorship classroom, reflecting on all the teachers I have had in the past and researching what others have found to be characteristics of excellent classroom teachers, I have found 5 common characteristics. The characteristics include understanding, resiliency, passionate, patience and determination. By having these characteristics teachers are able to efficiently educate students. 

Behaviour

Student Observation
In every classroom, no matter what grade or institution, there is always the loud and obnoxious student who likes being the center of attention. In my mentorship class, this kid is ‘Jesse’.  Jesse likes being in class but is always speaking across the room to his friends or telling jokes when he should be doing work. I can tell Jesse likes to be in class because he is always present and on time to class, hands in his work on time and always asks or answers questions. Where Jesse is misbehaving is when Dr. Bilaniuk is teaching a lesson and he asks questions to receive a reaction from his friends, when the class is doing an experiment and he fools around trying to make his friends laugh, or when doing work independently and always talking to others very loudly.

The Effect of The El Salvador 2015 Social Justice Experience

I wanted to go on this trip to learn how others deal with their difficulties, to learn about a new culture, to experience something new and lastly to travel to a place I had never been to. Over the course of 8 days, I accomplished each and every one of these. By learning how others dealt with their difficulties I was able to overcome some my own personal difficulties, which did change me. By overcoming these difficulties, I was able to deal with things that have been holding me back. By learning a new culture and its history, I have been able to become more compassionate towards strangers as I now realize that each person has their own set of difficulties that they are battling.

The Education System in El Salvador

I went to El Salvador with this preconceived notion that the people there had less than me. While this was true in some aspects, it was also untrue in others. These ideas were false mainly involved the education system of the El Salvadorans.

To begin with, the actual education system in El Salvador has both differences and similarities than the education system in Canada. Firstly, when we asked René, the representative from Salvaide in Ottawa travelling who travelled with us, how the education system worked he told us his story of moving to Texas and being more advanced than the students.