I have noticed in my 18 years of teaching that we teachers value being heard, validated, and supported, especially in difficult times. I am often sought as a mentor for many staff with a range of struggles from the classroom to personal life. …
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For the last few years the first assignment my Grade 12’s write is their This I Believe blog. This assignment immediately reveals the hearts and minds of my students and helps us to quickly bond as a community of learners, readers and writers. …
(No Ratings Yet)Loading...Blogging Goals: Communication, Trust, Respect, Courtesy, Integrity, Scholarship, Self-Discipline
The blogging experience is, as I’ve said time and time again, an opportunity where the walls of my classroom disappear and the students begin to engage – as both writers and readers – in a medium where they find comfort – the virtual landscape. …
(No Ratings Yet)Loading...The Graduation Toast to the Class of 2015
Greetings and gratitude to all here tonight, but most especially you – the students, the graduating class of 2015. I humbly thank you for this honour.
Sitting in the ceremony this morning was a moment of great pride and inspiration for all of us.…
(No Ratings Yet)Loading...About a half-dozen years ago, as an English teacher – a lover of reading and writing, my heart was breaking as my students seemed to be floating further away from my love of books and the craft of writing; I was getting older and feeling irrelevant in the world of my students – an annoying necessity of a class.…
(No Ratings Yet)Loading...In May when I received my classes for the 2014-2015 school year, my heart sunk a little because I was assigned a Grade 10 ELA class and I had been spoiled with Grade 12’s and 11’s for the past few years.…
(No Ratings Yet)Loading...“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;”
(Juliet, II.ii, Romeo and Juliet)
Counter to our dear Juliet’s philosophies, I argue that I would not be as sweet if I were to be called something other than Pamela Hunnisett.…
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I believe in magic. I believe in the power of positive thinking, positive words, and positive feedback. As a high school English teacher, this has served me well to build long-term relationships with my kids. Maintaining positive interactions with my kids has been a truism of my days, in this way the cycle of validation and feedback for who they are – as I see them to be – must be present in my communications with them, always.…
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It’s the end of New Year’s Day, and I am pondering resolutions. I should have probably already made some, but the end of 2013 took over my heart, and I am a little behind.
My husband’s grandmother passed away two days before my sweet mother.
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One of my favourite university courses was my first full course in statistics. I still remember the first day when our professor indicated that there were two ways that she could teach the course.
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