Graduation.

Welcome to Summer! 

I don't know about you, but I am really happy it's finally summer. Here in Canada we had a pretty harsh winter, and to finally feel some warm air touch our skin is a real treat.

Along with summer, I have found myself at the end of grade 12, which means I have graduated and I am ready to take my next step; going to university. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, I do have all summer to enjoy.

Graduation is a concept that can be very intriguing. I mean, think about it. The definition for the word "graduating" is the receiving or conferring of an academic degree or diploma; the ceremony at which degrees are conferred. Yea, that's great, but, let's look to the root of the word which comes from the Latin word, gradus, which translates to "degree" or "step". So when we graduate, we are taking a step. Graduating is usually only thought of in school purposed, which leads to big steps, but in a way, don't we graduate everyday? 

Yes, everyday we graduate, or everyday we take a step on this path called life. When we learn something, we take a step and we graduate, when we accomplish something as small as trying a new food is graduating. If you were to look at a small child, every time they accomplished something small, their eyes light up in excitement and happiness. But it seams as we grow older the pleasure in the small things diminish, and we only see triumphant accomplishes in the larger things.

Last night I thought to myself, what if we just went and made a big deal of of the small things? I don't think I even need to go and recherche this when I say that when we feel good about our accomplishments we strive to achieve more and do more, and it just increases our overall possessiveness. Likewise, when we have a failure we are more likely to feel bad and not attempt to do more and better things.

This is why I like to celebrate the small stuff. Graduate and make it seam big, that way when we do have an unsuccessful attempt, it doesn't seam so bad, because look! I already made a big accomplishment today! Who knows what people would accomplish? If we celebrated classroom achievements for small things, made more students would participate, or maybe they'll attempt more on test. Whatever the outcome, I believe that small things are big things in the whole scheme of things.

As I always like to say, we call all learn a lot from babies.

From my journey to yours,
Amber

Photo's from here and here. 

How I Learn

Bonjour à Tous!

This week was my last week of high school, and I am soon going to be diving into my exams that I start writing at the start of next week. Of course, I have had to be studying away, and upon my study's (more specifically for French) I discovered something about myself.

When I was looking over my tenses I found that I was memorizing everything, just as pretty much ever student taking French has done. I was memorizing just how to form the tense, that I didn't even know what it meant. Now, just think about how we have learned our maternal language... when you needed a word to express something, that is when you learned it, and until you needed it again, you would use it again, and perhaps learn it's other meanings. When we learned the word "go" we didn't have to think about changing it into another tense to "went" or "gone" or anything like that, so why do we learn another language like that?

Now, I know the easy answer to that, basically that we have a standardized curriculum that needs to be obeyed and it's only by measuring up to that curriculum that we can get the "all powerful and mighty marks" that determine a pass or fail. This leaves me and many other students memorizing everything like the digits in pi (which I actually know to 50).

This idea of memorizing things and not actually learning it by functionality and necessity. Let's face it. I have yet to encounter a day where I have needed to know how to calculate the area of a circle, or use the quadratic formula. Some things are just pointless in math. Don't get me wrong, I love math (it doesn't really love me) but just to be memorizing a ton a formulas that don't have any connections to us.

I don't know about other people, but I have a great short term memory, and when I memorize something, it sticks for as long as I need it to get me through (like a test or exam) then it's gone and I might as well have never learned it in the first place. But when I had to learn French (like the past summer), I had to actually learn things, and not just memorize. And that is stuck with me.

From my journey to yours,
Amber.

Photos from here and here. 

A Tribute

This is to the two most important people in my life. 

I never would have thought I would be in this position.

I consider myself to be the most lucky person on this planet to have known not one, but two absolutely amazing people. Allow me to introduce my Great-Grandmother, and the best cousin anyone could ever ask for.

Both of these people I had an extremely close connection to. Every Monday night I was at my Great-Grandmother's house, and for a long time, my cousin Ken lived with her. I remember waiting up for him to come home and lift me up to the ceiling (I was too short to reach, where he was just super tall.) Then after we would go and play Crash Bandicoot on his X-Box.

The three of us made an unstoppable team. They were both the most smartest people I knew. Even though my Great Grandmother had to drop out of school early in order to take care of her younger siblings (caused by the unexpected death of her own mother at 16), but despite this, I could always count on her to have a great deal of knowledge in everyday life problems. Every evening at Grandma's consisted of the same; Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, Monster House, Monster Garage, and Orville Redenbacher Pour Over Popcorn. Oh it was good.

Ken made everyone in our family so proud. He graduated at the University of Windsor, and he became an editor. Some of his works included look-a-like, bathroom divas, and the George Stroumboulopoulos show on CBC, which was sadly his last job. Ken loved his work, and ask anyone he worked for (or any viewers of the show for that matter) and they would say that his attitude definitely showed through in his work.

I am who I am today because of these amazing people. They are the ones that encouraged me the most to succeed at everything and to reach for my dreams. My Great Grandma lived a long and fulfilling life, but my cousin Ken had his life cut way to short, but nevertheless he lived each day to the fullest. He was more like a brother to me; my best friend. I don't know how I'll due it without you.

From my journey to yours,
Amber.

Photo from here (other photo is my own).

My Steps So Far

What I've Done

This obviously wasn't a decision I made overnight. As I might have said in a previous post, I've wanted to be a teacher for a long time, but I want to take you through some of the steps I've taken to start my journey; this time one in particular, my Explore program experience.

So, as you should know if you've been following along, I am going to have my major first teachable in French. I love the language; it is romantic, expressive, and just fun in general. It's actually amazing in a way that I decided to go into French. I was never in any point of my life in French Immersion School, nor did I have parents who spoke it at home. I didn't have any close family member who spoke it as a matter of fact.


I started French a year early in elementary school due to the fact that I was in a grade 3/4 split class. Although it would not count for anything, we were still expected to participate. Throughout elementary school we didn't have much of a learning experience. French class was a joke; like a second recess really. The most we ever learned was passé composé with avoir only.

It is lucky to say that gratefully when I went into grade 9, the French teachers basically assumed you knew nothing. Despite this fact, I had an irrational fear of going to French class. My French teacher from elementary school installed a fear. She'd say that when we get to grade 9, the teachers will only speak French and expect you to only speak French to them. It essentially said to me that I was going there to fail.

Now, I'm a bit of an over achiever. If I have a grade below an 80, I'm crying my eyes out feeling like I might as well have gotten a 0. Yes, I do realize the pros and cons of being this way, but It's me and I can't help it. But with this in my mind, it made me utterly afraid of going to French class. But thankfully that wasn't the case.

I am very thankful to have gone to a school where there are many nice teachers that are very caring and passionate about what they do. My grade 9 French teacher was a very enthusiastic person who made French class one of my favourite classes of all time. I also had this same person as my grade 11 and 12 French teacher. I think it is safe to say that she was the one who sparked my love for the language and encourages me on a daily basis to keep going with it.

So, because of my new found love for this language, I started doing some research, and then I plainly decided that I wanted to be a French teacher myself. But I had one issue... I wasn't really good at it. I couldn't speak, and I couldn't make it flow like how it should. So I had to look for a way to improve it, without leaving to do a student exchange (my parent's didn't like the idea of me going to another county where I have never been to one before.) So that is when I found the Explore program.

Both of my French teacher in high school did the Explore program, and they saw my passion and encouraged me to do this government funded bursary program for 5 weeks of intensive immersion in the French language. So, this past summer (summer of 2013) I went to Gaspé Quebec. My oh my, if you get me talking about this amazing place, sometimes it can be hard to shut me up. I went there with 21 percent fluency... I was worse than I thought. But with the great group of people, the fantastic
councilors and teachers, engaging activities, and picturesque town, it made the experience so much fun. And not to mention I doubled my fluency level, to 42.

The result of this amazing journey has given me so much more confidence and has made me so much more successful in pursuing my French career.

From my journey to yours,
Amber :)

This time the photos are from my own :)