About Me

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I have been an elementary and secondary school teacher and administrator. Currently, I am a faculty member in the Faculty of Education at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. My M.Ed. and Ph.D. had a focus on the educational and linguistic experiences of children who moved from other countries to Canada.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Dodgeball, Career Options, and Pick-up Lines: Highlights of the day in Cap-Haitien

Our team split into four groups today:
-Bruce did some follow-up special education work
-our Laurier Enactus group spent the day at the centre where they are supporting the micro-credit
-our "French leadership participants" had meetings at College Notre Dame to plan some workshops on math/science
 -the fourth group - our Laurier B.Ed. students - is the focus of today's blog post...

We started today by visiting College Regina Assumpta, a school we have worked with in the past. Our B.Ed. students spent the morning working in two classes where the teacher failed to show up to teach! The Regina students loved the opportunity to interact with our Laurier students and our students are looking forward to returning tomorrow for a giant game of dodgeball! Our group loved watching the girls play dodgeball ... there was some serious competition and cheering when a team won!

Three of us then went to College Susan Shenky to talk with the Philo (gr. 13) students about career options. It was interesting to hear how many wanted to be doctors. We discussed this later ... perhaps so many want to be a doctor due to the prestige, job security, and income. However, clearly not everyone would be a doctor in the room of 50 or so students. So we tried to encourage them to consider their skills and attributes in relationship to other career options.

In the afternoon, our Laurier B.Ed. students spent time at Susan Shenky working on conversational English skills. Some students worked on food items from Canadian grocery fliers ...


In the other group, I loved watching the students work on their "pick-up" lines (really, just casual interactions between friends!). Although parts of the lines were scripted, the students completely engaged in the roles! The highlight of the afternoon was one of the students singing a Celine Dion song ... with the whole class joining in!




We were delighted to welcome Rob McBride to our team today. Rob is a BlackBerry executive who has been a significant supporter of the work we have been doing in Haiti. Our team is now complete!

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