I decided to donate food to the food bank in my home community twice instead of alternating and donating in Regina because my k-12 school is doing a fundraiser for Halloween called "Scare Off Hunger." The idea for "Scare Off Hunger" came from the Me to We organization.
The food drive is going door-to-door in Allan and since my family lives on a farm, I left some food with my mom to drop off at my grandma's in town so that it can be picked up while I am back in Regina for classes. I do consider donating in Regina a priority, but I also want to contribute to food drives in the community that I grew up in. It would be amazing if we did food drives more often, rather than just for special occasions. We would likely be shocked at how many members in the community are willing to donate when someone actually comes to their home to pick up the donation. People sometimes tend to use travel and making time to donate as excuses to not do it.
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Our second day was much different than the first. We finally had the opportunity to meet all of our students and interact with them in their classroom. I found myself spending most of my time trying to remember everyone's name and their seating arrangement. Our introductory lesson was creating individualized poems with the students and then some group work and sharing regarding the expectations that they have for us as their teachers. I noticed after our lesson that we could have been more clear with both instructions for the tasks as well as time management.
I was greeted at recess break by a very talkative kindergarten student and I must say that he definitely put a smile on my face as he was telling me all about himself. Even though I do not specialize in teaching the little ones, it was still nice to interact with a younger student. We taught our second lesson in the afternoon and we had a choice on what we would teach together. We chose to teach about the water cycle. We had some prerequisite questions for the students and then we watched a short video together. We created definitions together as a class for evaporation, transpiration, condensation, precipitation, and ground water. The students had many great ideas and had lots of background knowledge on the subject. We then did an art activity/visual representation activity with the students. We created small diagrams of the water cycle on a sheet and then folded it a certain way that if you opened a flap of the paper, the definition would be underneath. We unfortunately did not even have enough time to complete the drawing portion because the students had to go out for recess. Our coop teacher said that the lesson would be finished at another date and we need not worry that we ran out of time. The students seemed to not understand our instructions on how to draw the diagram as a cycle or leave room on the page for the definitions. I think for the second lesson we also needed to explain instructions better. Overall, we had a pretty good first day for teaching two lessons in one day to some students that we had barely even gotten to know. Our coop said that even though our science lesson did not carry out as planned, we did okay for a first time teaching lessons to students. After all, we are still learning too. On the first day of pre-internship, we went to Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Lebret, Saskatchewan. We had a tour of the church as well as some insight into the history of Lebret and how the Qu' Appelle Valley received its name. We then had a brief lunch outside and then participated in the Stations of The Cross on the hillside.
We ended the day with the choice of either playing "prey and predator" or doing a scavenger hunt in the cemetery. The students that participated in the field trip were the grade 7's and 8's whereas the classroom that we are in is grade 6/7. The field trip did not allow us to truly get to know our students because not all of them were present. We did not discuss the Lebret Residential School even though we were very close to the site. This somewhat bothered me because the site was so close and so important. The students would have greatly benefitted from the learning experience. The game and scavenger hunt were both fun activities, but visiting the Lebret Residential School would have incorporated some curriculum outcomes and indicators as well as beneficial knowledge. This past week has been very busy for me, yet I did find time to finally make my first donation to the food bank. I donated to the food bank in my local community of Allan, Saskatchewan. The donating process was actually a lot more difficult than I thought that it would be. I never would have thought that donating in a small community of 650 people would be more difficult than donating in a larger city such as Regina.
When I opened my pantry at home, I found a large amount of expired crackers, juice, Jell-O powder, instant pudding mix, peanuts, etc. Coming from a family of five, I have noticed over the years that my family always tends to buy food without looking in the pantry to see if we already have what we need at home. It is almost as if we tell ourselves that if we buy more it will not be a problem because if we have some at home too, there will just be plenty of food. My mother was mortified to see me throw out a full garbage bag of expired food from our pantry. I mentioned in my first blog post that I wanted to donate to the food bank because too often food goes to waste (likely in more households than just mine) and that food could have easily been donated and gone to an individual or family who could really use it. I take so much for granted and I was still able to come up with a care package to take to the local food bank. My small community does not have convenient drop off times or multiple locations for drop off which made it very difficult for me to actually donate. There is a donation box at the back of our local church (which is only open on Sundays) and there is a box at Allan Composite School, but that location is only open during school hours. I took my donation to the local Co-op to find out that the donation box that they had is no longer being used as a pick up location. I also found out that there is only one person in my community that is taking charge of distributing food to the 16 local families that need it because no one else wants to take on the task. This news was very disheartening to hear. Small communities such as my own need more people to take action and be engaged citizens as well. I have reflected lots this past week on how it is easy to say that you will do something, but it is a lot harder to actually go out and take the action. I thought donating to the food bank was going to be “easy” to commit to, but it is actually becoming a lot more difficult to incorporate into my schedule. I have been reflecting on how my pledge will directly affect me as a pre-service teacher. I will gain skills on not only balancing responsibilities, but also on focusing on the lives of others. I focus so much of my time on my own life and as a future teacher, I will need to focus on the well-being and lives of my students as well. I will need to observe the needs of not only myself, but also of my students.
Last week we were asked to reflect on whether our pledges were a normative narrative of being an engaged citizen. My pledge is definitely a generic idea that people come up with when they initially think about being an engaged citizen. I am not assuming that I am simply a good citizen if I donate to the food bank and I can accept that donating to the food bank is not necessarily a unique way to give back to my communities. However, I do not think that my pledge is not as good as someone else’s because my pledge works for me. I am still going out of my way to do something to benefit my community and that is more than I could say I was doing a few months ago. Last week I was unable to carry out my pledge. It is not that I simply did not want to, but I spent the weekend in the hospital in Saskatoon with my grandfather who was just recently admitted on Tuesday. Sometimes we need to recognize and accept that “life gets in the way” and tampers with our plans. I had to think about my priorities and what was more important at the given time. As a teacher, I also need to be understanding and open with my students if they are struggling and need some extra time too. |