For the grade 9, take your kid to work day, I went to work with my mom. She’s a grade 3 teacher at Leigh Elementary, while I was there, I got the opportunity to help younger kids with their spelling, sentence structure and grammar. Later in the afternoon, the students in my mom’s class had PHE, I participated in a game of bench ball, as you might assume, playing against young, elementary school students wasn’t that complicated. Although, it does make yourself a bigger target compared to them. Literally and figuratively. I went outside for both recess and lunch, I got to play with the younger kids and two other grade 9 boys from Riverside. After lunch, we did some simple math games and then had a lesson on weather changes in different environments. Shortly after that, we went outside with the class Ipad’s and took pictures of erosion on the school grounds. I quite enjoyed my day at my moms work, I wasn’t kept in an office all day, I was able to interact with the students and I also knew many of the teachers from previous years.
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The Picture from the beginning of my post is a picture of me helping out a kid in grade 1, while my mom was in a meeting, I went to another teacher’s classroom, mainly because I’ve known her since I was in elementary school myself. As well as I know her son who also came for take your kid to work day because we went to summer school together as kids.
- What did you hear, see, smell, and feel in the work environment on Nov. 1st?
I heard the younger kids playing in the background, the pencils taping when they were working, the shuffling of chairs during lessons. I saw the teachers talking to each other about school related subjects, such as projects and routines. I felt the welcoming environment of the students and the staff at the school.
- What about the environment would motivate you to wake up every day to attend work?
Being in an elementary school is a very welcoming and warm environment. The younger kids look up to the older ones, and their bright personalities make everything a bit more interesting.
- What about the work environment would discourage you from waking up every day to attend work?
I feel like the students in the class would take up a lot of patience in the long term. They require a lot of emotional energy from others, especially the adults that surround them.
- What is ONE thing you found interesting about your workplace visit?
I thought it was interesting how the younger kids are constantly surrounded by screens, even if it’s a T.V projector. Unless they’re working on an assignment by hand, they have access to iPad for reading and writing. And even when they work outside for nature. Such as today, my mom took her class outside to document weather changes after periods of rain and strong winds. And instead of writing things down, they took pictures and made a slideshow. It was interesting to see how much their curriculum depends on technology.