#1: Physical Education Methods (EDPE 3100)
When I first started this class, I had no idea I would even end up liking it. I honestly thought of physical education as being just a time for kids to run off energy between classes. Through this class I learned so much about the true purpose of physical education. I also learned that most of the things we did in my physical education classes as a kid are not things that are encouraged now! This class actually got me excited about teaching physical education, especially now that health education is so heavily emphasized. I’d love to incorporate mindful breathing and tricks for coping with anxiety in my future classrooms.
#2: Language & Literacy 1 (EDLL 3100)
This is probably my favourite class so far. I knew I was going to really enjoy this class because books have always been a huge passion of mine, ever since I was a kid. My mom wasn’t able to buy a television for us until I was 5 years old, and I was an only-child with a full-time working single parent. This means that my main form of entertainment was books! My mom and I would go to the library every weekend and fill a huge bag with books to read for the week. This led to a lifelong love of reading. One of my main goals as a teacher is to hopefully inspire this same love of reading in as many students as I can. This class gave me so many ideas to help with this goal. I found the textbook of 50 reading strategies the most helpful, along with the final project where we created a class booklist.
#3: Social Studies Methods (EDSO 3200)
I learned so much from this class that it’s honestly difficult to put it into words. This class was all about social justice, and how to teach from a socially just point of view. As someone who considers themselves pretty well versed in social justice issues, I was so surprised (and deeply appreciative) of how much I learned from this class. I got a lot of really fantastic resources from this class, and got to be a part of a lot of really interesting and informative discussions. My favourite part of the class though, was all of the guest speakers we got to hear from. Every single one of them was so insightful, and it really recontextualized some issues for me after being able to hear it from a first-person point of view.