So it’s official! The day I’ve been waiting for since July has finally arrived! I got my practicum placement yesterday at 11.30am and I’ve been on cloud nine ever since! Yours truly will be teaching grade three in Nobleford. I’ve never been to Nobleford, but I Googled my future school and it turns out there are 600 people there and the school is K – 12. I can’t wait! My section of PSI spent at the U will come to an end on November 10, and then I have a long weekend – to go home and see my family! – and then I start Monday, November 15, teaching the third grade!!
Other cool things that have been going on in Ed include the Literature Fair. This was a whole Friday of PSI students hanging out, listening to William Bell, our keynote speaker, then going to smaller breakout sessions to learn about how awesome reading is and how we can incorporate it cross-curriculum. I went to “Surviving Middle School Through Literature,” “Books in Mathematics Education” and “Graphic Novels.” They were all amazing and interesting, but the middle school one awoke a burning desire to read anything and everything. For the past four years, I’ve put off any and all pleasure reading (except in the summertime). So I have been reading ridiculous amounts lately and I love it!
The other thing going on in my life is that I’ve decided to push up my graduation date. Instead of taking this summer off to work and taking a full year next year, I have decided to take a full course load in the summer and then opt to do my PSIII in the fall, hopefully in my hometown. This would be ideal, because then if I perform well, I could potentially have a job for January! There’s only one thing holding me back. As a General Social Science major, I need a “quantitatively-based methodology course” to graduate. This is a very specific requirement, and only 5 courses will fulfill it. I opted to take Psychology 2030: Methods and Statistics, because I have the pre-requisites and it will also count as my last Science GLER. This course was offered last summer, so I figured I was golden. WRONG. I talked to the Psych department and got them to print me off their summer 2010 course offering, and 2030 is not on it.
I’ll visit academic advising tomorrow morning, but I have a back-up plan in mind, juuuuust in case. My roommate showed me TransferAlberta, which is an Alberta Government website that shows you whether or not certain courses will transfer. If you’re transferring from ULeth or to ULeth or, like me, need a specific course but ULeth doesn’t offer it when I need it, you can search for directly transferable courses from that site. (http://alis.alberta.ca/ps/ep/aas/ta/transferalberta.html). So I’ve discovered that Athabasca University (distance learning) won’t transfer directly, but Concordia, Keyano, Red Deer College, MRU and St. Mary’s all offer courses that U of L will accept in lieu of Psych 2030. “Substantially similar” is what they call them. So I’ll talk to advising – located on floor 0 of the Student’s Union Building, if you weren’t already informed – and see what they suggest.
Otherwise, working some night shifts this week, which I don’t ever recommend, and the Rotaract Book for Babies Bowl-a-thon this weekend… where I will be dressed as a superhero to raise money for charity! Can’t wait!
– Bri