The majority of the posts in this blog are assignments for a Masters in Educational Technology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
Photos from the files of CTradewell.
Preparing for the Journey
I grew up on a mixed farm in southern Saskatchewan, wearing clothes my mom made and eating mainly off the farm. Going ‘into town’ meant luxuries like soda pop and cheese and maybe some wieners. Starting school in Grade 1, I was bilingual in English and Ukrainian, which was lost with the concentration on learning good English, even though we started back with a weekly Ukrainian lesson in Grade 3. Summers were spent on all the chores a 2-acre garden and 7 ½ quarter mixed farm involved, but my brothers and I had plenty of time to ride our bikes down to the river to build rafts and get into trouble. I learned the value of hard work, creating from and appreciating what you have, and how to find work-arounds for what you needed to be crafted from what you had access to.
We always walked to my Baba’s rooming house for school lunch. One of her renters introduced me to the piano when I was 8 and subsequently informed my parents that I was going to be a piano teacher when I grew up. Therefore, I needed a piano and lessons. They acquiesced and eventually, bought me a second piano to install at Baba’s so I could practice and teach there. In Grade 8, I started instructing my own piano and singing students. By Grade 10, we had to drive 2 ½ hours to Regina for my lessons because I had outgrown what was available in the nearest city at the time. I taught 10-12 hours of music lessons a week until I graduated and moved to Regina where I started a full-time job teaching music lessons at an Academy while taking part-time university. After a couple of years, I moved to Saskatoon where my parents had moved so I could attend university full-time and complete a Bachelor of Music in Music Education with a secondary teaching area in mathematics. Unfortunately, due to conflicts with my music program, I had to abandon the mathematics education area and take on English. While at university, I crashed our IBM compatible with a 14 page document and, as a professor’s assistant, had to learn how to create a music festival program on one of the first 6 Apple IIe computers purchased by the University of Saskatchewan’s Education Department after only about 15 minutes of instruction (because no one knew how to use them). I completed my last course in the BMusMusEd degree after moving to be with my husband in La Ronge. Through correspondence courses, I also completed a BA in English that first year.
Apple iiE “File:Apple Museum (Prague) Apple IIe Enhanced (1985).jpg” by Benoît Prieur is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 , Photo from files of CTradewell, Blue Imac – “imac – 3” by Teppo is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
The Northern Journey
I taught around 30 hours of private and group music students a week in La Ronge. The schools allowed me a space to teach out of as they did not have a music teacher. In return for my students leaving class for 30 minutes a week, I provided a choral program for the elementary and high school as well as helped elementary teachers learn how to teach their own music classes to fulfill ministry requirements. I also subbed at the local schools, including a two room band school north of La Ronge. After 12 years, we decided to move so our daughter would have access to more opportunities. We spent one year teaching during the week in La Ronge and then driving 2 ½ hours to Prince Albert so I could start up a private teaching studio. Luckily, at the end of that year my husband was offered a job with the local school board. The following year, I was offered a full-time job at a private school, teaching choir, band, math, and whatever else they needed (information processing courses Grades 7-12, Science 9, Accounting 10, Christian Ethics . . .) I spent a fair amount of time teaching myself programs so I could teach students to create spreadsheets, advanced word processing documents and databases, and also how to do photo editing, graphic design, audio editing and video editing, and how to create websites and use music notation software. Our daughter developed her musical talents and we played together regularly. We spent 8 years in Prince Albert and when my husband was eligible for retirement, I applied for a job teaching choir, band and math in Victoria at an International Baccalaureate (IB) school.
The Western Journey
Teaching in an IB school, I realized how much my private teaching background had influenced my teaching. I had always been attracted to inquiry-based teaching as my private students needed to do a lot of work figuring things out on their own and my job was to give them the tools to do this. The Middle Years Programme (MYP) of IB focuses on teaching students how to inquire and develop their investigating skills on real-life problems. Within a couple of years, I had grown as a knowledgeable IB teacher and was trained to give feedback on mathematics tasks sent to me by IB from schools all over the world. Over my twelve years at the school, my job changed from music and math to design and math to administration as academic coordinator. Over time, the IB MYP trained me as a workshop leader for maths, design and the arts, a school evaluator, a maths examiner, a consultant for schools becoming IB MYP schools, and a reviewer of MYP units.
The Current Journey
Now that I have retired, I am continuing my volunteer work for IB, completed a Masters in Educational Technology from the University of Victoria and volunteer for BC & Albert Guide Dogs as a puppy raiser. Our first puppy is now our pet as she did not qualify for advanced training.
