Ready, Set ... Back To School!

©Bruce Trails. 2015. [online image]

I've been in my placement once a week for the last 3 weeks. We need to back up a little bit and talk about how it all started. After all the anticipation of where I'd get placed I found out I'd be at an elementary school in Milton. The school is relatively new and not too far from my house so all in all I was pretty excited to get started. 4 of my classmates are also placed at this school so on the first observation Wednesday we arrived early filled with nerves and anticipation. 

From the moment I arrived I knew I was lucky to be placed in this school. We were greeted by the vice principal who had food and drinks ready for us in the conference room. In a school of 1200 students Jane is one of 2 vice principals. She spent the entire morning getting to know each of us as people, asked what we hoped to gain from our experience and told us with pride about her amazing school.

The school is beautiful. The facilities are new and they have state of the art technology. It is evident that everyone in the building takes pride in their school. There are Apple computers in the library, new instruments in the music room and science tools in the labs. The school is extremely multi cultural with 80 percent of the students from the middle east, Asia and Europe. With that said, there is very little diversity on the staff but this is something the school is extremely conscious of. As an example, they understand that many students cannot see themselves in the teachers so during the lunch hour they bring in volunteers from the community to be classroom monitors. This allows the students to have adults who they can identify with. This is an excellent attempt to close a gap between students and instructors. 

While we toured the school my jaw continued to drop based on the sheer size of the school and the resources the students had access to. The school has two full time ESL (English Second Language) teachers, 4 SERTs (Special Education Resource teachers) and 2 LTOs (Learning Resource teachers). I wasn't even sure what all of these teachers did until I shadowed them on later observation days. What was clear was that students were put first and every attempt is made to give each student a chance to be successful.

I am beyond excited to do my placement at this school. The staff cares about the students and one another, there are amazing resources at their disposal and there is a culture of acceptance and passion for learning. I found out that my mentor teacher is a grade 7 language and arts teacher. I look forward to becoming apart of this school community and can't wait to document my experience!