I'm looking forward to spending the summer semester with you. If you haven't blogged before it is very user-friendly. We will take the first week to become familiar with the site and practice posting. Click on the "comments" link below and see where to post your comments.
This is where the student comments will be posted. Just type up your comments on your computer and save them all in one file, preferably a Microsoft Word document, dated by each class. Then you can easily copy and paste each one into the box below and you won't have to worry about losing any material. At the end of the semester you can e-mail me all your postings in one document.
ReplyDeleteHere is an interesting artcile about the indoctrination of student teachers I thought we would all enjoy.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.the-peak.ca/article/20918
Hi Everyone, I forgot to enter my name as Rachel.S. since there are two Rachels in the class. I am currently enrolled in PTEM 10. I work as an adult educator for Burnaby School Board teaching ESL to Newcomers and Refugees in the ELSA program. It’s my goal to continue working in an adult setting in the future, so I need the pdp to secure my job. I am married, and have two grown step-kids, two large (very naughty) dogs and a horse. Since I only got married three days before starting PTEM, I haven’t had much time to adjust to my new life. Juggling school, work, family and animal care is a huge balancing act. The ethics course sounds interesting, and I’m looking forward to learning more about ethics in education and getting to know everyone over the next couple of months.
ReplyDeleteMy name is Lorn K. I graduated from the University of the Fraser Valley with a major in English and a minor in applied ethical and political philosophy. I was part of the January 2010 PDP intake and have completed my 401/402 semester with my short practicum at C.A.B.E secondary school in Coquitlam. I am married with no kids and live in Chilliwack. Thinking about what we teach, why we teach it and how we teach is very interesting to me so this class fits perfectly with my academic interests.
ReplyDeleteHello! My name is Kim. I live in Abbotsford. I am engaged and have a beautiful daughter, Miriah (11 years old). I plan to be a social studies high school teacher and I would like to teach in an alternative program for "at-risk" youth. I graduated from the University of the Fraser Valley with a major in sociology/ anthropology and a minor in geography. I am part of the IPTEM January intake and did my short practicum at Richmond High. I was very excited to get into this class. I find it very interesting to hear others views on sensitive topics.
ReplyDeleteHello my name is Younis. I graduated from the university of Mosul, Iraq with my B.Sc. degree in Forestry and Master degree in Wood Science. I worked in different countries as Iraq, the U.S., Malaysia, Libya, and finally Canada. My work was research assistant, college instructor, and research officer. I came to Canada with my family as independent immigrants. I worked here with landscaping and joined Stenberg College for Special Education Assistant and I worked in an Independent school as SEA. I joined the PDP to be a high school Science teacher. I finished my 401/402 semester with Coquitlam Module and my First practicum was with Port Moody Secondary School in Port Moody. I am a father of three children.
ReplyDeleteI believe as an educator is to help children learning life skills and make their future, and I love to see them participating in the society life towards happy and peaceful world.
Hello, I’m Jude. I’m in the Counselling Diploma program and I plan to go on to an MA and, eventually, a private practice. This is a major career change for me (for the past several years I’ve been a writer/producer and publicist in television, on stage, and online), but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do and the time is (finally) right. I’m married, have kids, kids-in-law, and grandkids and I’m looking forward to the discussions we’ll be having in class for many reasons - not the least of which is that I might actually get a word in edgewise.
ReplyDeleteMy name is Sean and I graduated from Queen’s University in ’92. I have spent half of my professional career teaching and counselling in non-traditional classrooms and community-based programs (‘at-risk-youth’, mental health, employment and career development). The other half of my career has focused on the development of interactive educational multimedia. My career path seems to be concerned with the intersection of counselling/teaching, instructional design and technology. I am currently working through the post-baccalaureate diploma in Counselling and Human Development and I would like to follow up with a Masters in Educational Technology. On a personal note, I am a student of Vipassana meditation and love cycling.
ReplyDeleteMay 16, 2010
ReplyDeleteHi,
My name is Carrie and I am an elementary teacher in North Vancouver, currently teaching Kindergarten and ESL. This is my first attempt at contributing to a blog.
I was happy to see we have a very diverse group in our class, which should make discussions interesting. I was intrigued by the notion of what Plato might look like for me in my classroom, and realize I will need to read up a bit to find an answer. I am taking a Diploma in Environmental Education - probably because I always like to make life harder for myself!
I have three grown children and have discovered that being a parent doesn’t stop when they reach adulthood. I like to keep learning so that conversations can be broader and to keep my own mind active. I am looking forward to learning from others in this course and gaining new perspectives.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Kevin and I’m part of the PTEM module of the PDP program. I am taking this course as part of my 404 credits, and am interested in the philosophical focus of this course. I have completed my short teaching practicum and will begin the long practicum in September. I currently work in the North Vancouver school system supporting children with special needs, and look forward to becoming an elementary teacher in the future. I am married and have identical twin two year-old boys, George and Charlie.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Chloe and this summer marks the last semester of my undergrad English degree here at SFU. I've been accepted into the ITEM India PDP module for the fall (provided I pass all five courses I'm taking this summer) and will hopefully be a secondary English teacher in the near future. I'm what's called an "Area Coordinator" over in residence here at SFU. Basically I supervise a team of 9 residence advisors and help build an amazing community in residence. I'm turning 21 in August and celebrating the milestone with style in Vegas. I've wanted to be a teacher ever since I started elementary school, and it's nice to finally have the dream within reach.
Hi all, my name is Joanna. I just signed up for this course and I’m looking forward to meeting everyone in person this week. I graduated from UBC with a BA in English Lit and an MA in Comparative Lit. I’m in the ITEM India PDP module and I’m currently on the last stretch of the program, doing my 404 coursework. I completed my short practicum in Chauntra, India, where our module worked with the local Tibetan community, and I’ve done my long practicum at New Westminster Secondary School. I’m 27, engaged, and I love yoga and flamenco. I’m specializing in English; I love working with people and kids, and I’m excited to learn about ethics and their role in our personal and professional lives.
ReplyDeleteHi everyone,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Meghann and I am currently enrolled in my Post-Bac diploma in Environmental Education. I completed my PDP last summer where I was in the French module. I did both my short and long practicum at Fraser Heights in Surrey. I am currently teaching at LA Matheson Secondary in Surrey. This semester I am teaching PE and Planning and last semester I taught French and Social Studies. I usually enjoy running with my dog or gardening, but right now I am taking three courses and working full-time so my interests right now are mainly school work and marking.
I am excited about this course because I think that it will allow me the opportunity to integrate the different ideas into the many subject areas that I am teaching. I use Blogger at my school for one of my classes so I should be able to answer any questions as they arise. I look forward to getting to know you all.
Hi everyone! My name is Neetu and I am currently working on completing my degree in Criminology and recently finished my minor in Education. I hope to apply to PDP in January 2011 in hopes to become a future educator. I would like to teach elementary students from grades four through seven. I volunteer at Gilmore Elementary school once a week with two teachers working with grade six and seven students. Through this, I have learned a fair bit about working with students of various abilities and the education system. I work part-time at a grocery store and daycare in Richmond where I currently live. I am really interested in the topics this course has to offer and excited for a semester full of discussions. I look forward to working with you all!
ReplyDeleteMy name is Kahlyn. I am currently doing my Environmental Education Diploma. I teach secondary science in North Vancouver. I did a BSc. in biology at SFU, my BEd. specializing in computers at UBC, and I went to Aichi Gakusen College in Toyota, Japan when I was 19. In my 12 years of teaching, I have prepped 20 different courses in five departments. I currently teach Science 8, Science 9 and Biology 11. I consider myself a teacher above being a scientist.
ReplyDeleteRight now, I’m trying to juggle Educ 452 and this course on top of teaching full time and raising a seven-year old girl and four-year old boy. Wish me luck.
My interest in this course stems from the changes made to the science curriculum. We are no longer teaching facts that someone who has been dead a long time figured out. In Grade 8, we talk about water systems and our impact on them. I have to deal with cloning and assisted reproductive techniques in my Science 9. Although I don’t currently teach it, Science 10 has a unit that includes human generated problems like invasive species. Of course, Biology 11 always has to face the evolution debate.
I hope that I can be resource person to those of you starting out.
My name is Greg. I was born in Manchester, England. My family moved to Zimbabwe when I was a child--and then to Canada.
ReplyDeleteI moved to British Columbia to study at Simon Fraser University. I received a First Class Honors Bachelor of Arts from SFU (Major: English, Minor: Humanities) and a Master of Arts (English) from SFU. I wrote my Honors graduating essay on the European sources of bpNichol (a Canadian poet) and my M.A. Special Project on Roy Kiyooka (a Japanese-Canadian poet and visual artist).
I am interested in 20th Century Canadian and American poetry and poetics.
I was in the Vancouver Module for 401/402 and I am hoping to teach English in a B.C. secondary school.
Hello Everyone,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Patricia. I graduated from SFU with a Bachelor of Arts. I have a major in English, a minor in Learning Disabilities and a minor in Criminology. This is my last semester in PDP. I was in the Pathways module. I have finished my 401/402 practicum and my 405 practicum at Centennial Secondary in Coquitlam where I taught English 11 and Psychology 12. I am currently completing the Curriculum and Instruction minor as part of the Bachelor of Education degree. Having taught Psychology, which requires one to look at controversial issues from many different perspectives, I thought that this would be an interesting course to take. I am looking forward to the rest of the semester.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi everyone my name is Christian. I graduated from university of Victoria in 1999 with an undergad in social sciences. During my time at uvic I took a medical ethics class where we discussed issues around human life. I learned to enjoy and appreciate ethics at that time. I am a PTEM-11 student in my second symester. I did a short practicum at Cape Horn Elementary in coquitlam. I enjoyed working with the grade 2/3 split class that I was placed in. I have been working in the classroom as and aid with special needs and behavioural kids in schools in the New Westminster district for eight years. I am taking this course as a part of my 404 semester and am working until the end of June at Glenbrook middle school. I am interested in teaching in the middle school where I have accumulated the majority of my classroom experience. I will be attempting to tackle 4 courses this summer and my daughter just celebrated her ninth birthday. I look forward to the discussions that we will generate in this class.
ReplyDeleteHi everyone, my name is Cindy and I am working on my BA in English here at SFU.
ReplyDeleteBeing born in 1964 I was fortunate enough to grow up in a time when many people were concerned with social justice and making the world a better place. I have never forgotten what it felt like to live in a time when so many people were committed to the notions of truth, equality, and fairness, etc. Our culture seems to have very different priorities today than it did back then. My own priorities changed over the years too and they took me along a life path that ended in my sitting all day in a cubicle or, as Douglas Coupland would say a “veal fattening pen”, in a North Shore law firm. A few years ago I decided to leave my “pen” and go back to school and study literature instead. I love to read great literature and someday I would like to teach it at the college level. My secret ambition is to write great literature one day.
So, I’m taking Ethics in Education for a number of reasons not least of which is that the many life experiences I have had since the 60s have served to underscore, for me, the importance of ethics, particularly experiences I had while living both in Kenya, East Africa, and on a cattle ranch, situated near a native community, in the interior of BC. Unlike the hairdos and the clothing, the moral issues that people were so passionate about years ago have not gone out of style for me; and I’m hoping that by studying ethics and by examining my own it will help me to become a more effective and highly ethical teacher.
Hey everyone,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Kristen and I have just completed my 405 practicum in the Surrey School District. My undergrad is in English from Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo (I miss the island big time). I am interested in teaching high school English as well as Special Education. I switched into this class late, so was not at the first class, but look forward to meeting everyone and discussing some really important issues in education.
See you Thursday,
Kristen
Greetings and Salutations class mates,
ReplyDeleteSorry it took me so long to post I had to have my son show me how!!
My name is Jonathan Dillon but I go by Nathan or even easier Nate. And please don’t feel bad if you are tempted to call me a few other names during this course because I love to argue. My Wife often says I should come with a warning label. SO I am very excited to have this chance to look at some of the ethical issues that surround and shape education having decided to go into teaching later in life. I am currently in the PTEM module of the PDP program, which allows me to gain my teaching certificate while remaining working as an SSA for the Vancouver School district. I work in kindergarten at Strathcona Elementary School, in the East side of Vancouver. Where I live with my two sons, my partner of fifteen years, a dog, two cats and a lizard. I have taken a long road to find myself in the primary classroom having spent my late teens and twenties as a touring and recording as a professional musician. When my son was born I turned to working in mental health in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. I worked for the Portland Hotel Society, a non-profit group that recruits heavily from the Vancouver Arts community, for seven years before the sheer apathy of it became overwhelming. I still play music when I am not in class, parenting, coaching, or practicing my latest passion Brazilian Jujitsu. I’m really looking forward to this class and hope to hear the different views on these issues that each of us bring. Good to meet you all.
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteSorry for the late response here! I was sick with the flu for the past week. My name is Jeunesse Fong and I'm currently in my fourth year here at SFU. I am majoring in History and minoring in Philosophy and Education. I am not sure yet if I want to enter the PDP program. If I do apply to the PDP program, I would like to teach high school students social studies. I work part-time as a tutor and piano teacher in Vancouver. This looks like a very interesting course and I look forwards to getting to know everyone!
Hello!! My name is Sukh Sandhu and I am currently, a Simon Fraser Student. I am working on my B.A. in geography and I have a minor education. In the future I would like to get into PDP and hope to become and elementary school teacher. Ideally, I would like to teach intermediate students. Currently, I tutor students at a learning center and I have been there for 3 years. I volunteered at an elementary school last year and I worked with students in grades 5 and 6. I also taught dance at a high school from 2006-2008. I love working with children and I hope to become a teacher in the near future. When I am not at school I work at GM place at the Canucks team Store and I dance Indian Bhangra a few nights a week! I have taken Education 330 – Philosophy of Education and I am interested in learning more about issues that surround education. I look forward to working with you all!!
ReplyDeleteHi everyone!
ReplyDeleteI'm Amy and I am in my second last semester in SFU. I was mjaoring in marketing in the faculty of business but has decided to trasnfer to arts double minoring education in my last year of university. I enjoy many of the education courses and am thinking about applying for PDP when I have some volunteer experience in teaching after this summer. I have taken business ethics before and I am very interested to find out more about this topic relating to education and teaching. I feel ethics is an important issue to understand and accomplish in all areas of life. Ethics promps me to think about what I ultimately value and what my work means and will mean to me in the future. I am very happy to meet everyone in the first class and I hope together in this course, we can reflect and share on the meaning of education, its place in our life and in the lives of others.
Major Public Figures Morals:
ReplyDeleteThere are many people in the world doing things for humanity in different ways and all of them saying that they are trying to help the world but there is a major factor which determines how these people are attached to their goals as reflected by their other actions. The moral action and ethic actions can show how each individual is attached to the beliefs and goodness of the goal.
It is really important for the Nobel prize winners to be moral icons because they are doing a lot for humanity but we cannot assume that they must be 100% correct in everything. In this conception we are pushing them to leave their being humans and have to be optimum to meet our judgments. The winners are different in their attitudes, understanding, environments, and possibilities of doing their good things to humanity but we have to understand how they represent their goals and the way to reach them. Some of the winners did not touch certain issues in world life to stay away from being criticized by opposites as they are wrong. It is good to balance between how they can help the humanity to make peaceful world for all and their mistakes in which they will be minors in the comparison with their big achievements in world peace. So, it is good to focus on what they do for humanity in a good way and pay less attention to judge what they are doing in their own personal lives. They already developed moral values for humanity based on their consideration of their understanding other people values. For a teacher to act in his/her right moral that required by the school, community, and the Ministry of Education ethics, we are asking too much and also ignored the teacher's humanity and personal life in which it stresses the teacher more than what an individual ability limits
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI did something wrong last week.....
Here is what I should a posted..
Thankfully I have an 11 year old who can help!1
I loved our discussions this week about our personal presentations of our own morals. It became a recurring theme in my week. I was very interested to hear people’s views on personal interactions out side of work. Especially those that seems different than my own. As I said in class, I strive to be a member of the community that I teach in. With many of the students I teach having social connections with me that reach outside of the relationships I have with them at school. Some of them play sports with my sons. Some of them are friends of mine’s children. Some of them are relatives of friends. I am still interested to understand the concerns or expectations that people feel society has on them as a teacher and what aspects of their personal life they feel it would be unprofessional to have displayed.
I found this subject brought up when I ran into a colleague on the weekend. I had taken my son who is 8 to meet the UFC fighter BJ Penn. My son studies Brazilian Jujitsu as does BJ Penn and he is a big fan of him. I ran into a colleague who I have known for a couple of years and he was telling me that a teacher had expressed concern that he wore a BJ Penn shirt once to school so he didn’t do it. I felt that he seemed uncomfortable that I might share the knowledge that he was at such an event or that he was an apparent UFC enthusiast. Since I was lined up there with my son I found myself looking at the contextual ethical or moral dilemma I could be in if I was to acquiesce to such concerns.
So When we speak of this so called “Moral” obligations that teachers are under I wonder to what extent does the term “moral” need to be defined in a way that all are comfortable with. I for one am not sure I have the same moral outlook with a lot of people. Consequentially, I wonder to whose moral standard do I need to be held to account?
I am a 4th year economics major student. It's my pleasure to share my opinions towards morality and ethics, which could be argued forever. Rationality and reasoning are two important foundations for the debates on general or controversial issues on morality and ethics. However, as people have different standards towards rationality and reasoning, we need to respect the others regardless the right or wrong answers for a topic.
ReplyDeleteHope to have a great semester with all of you.