Personal Narrative: A Reflection Into Who I Am and Who I Want to Become.

We tend to ask kids the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” without realizing how loaded the question actually is. Most kids don’t realize the pressure it puts on them to make up their minds at a young age, or get categorized into different groupings of people so young. Sometimes, people only ask that question once, seemingly harmless, when you’re a child, and often we don’t ask this to adults. This is usually because we think its a simple question meant only for kids as once we turn eighteen we are then considered “grown up” . I find that my answer always seems to change and has changed a lot since I was five. I progressed to essentially answering the question with more questions or by giving the answer “I don’t entirely know just yet”. I was never able to give one straight answer to this question because I have always been of the mind that you can do and be more than one thing. I know, starting off a paper about why I chose to join the profession of teaching by saying “I don’t know” seems to be ironic, but rest assured this question will be answered just maybe not in the way you think it should be.

Firstly, I should start prior to my undergraduate studies in order to give context to my choices thus far. In my high school, I was enthralled by theater and improvisation. These subjects and after school activities gave me a great outlet to let my creativity flow. I loved being able to be part of something bigger and to be able to explore my creativity with reinforcement from improvisation.

Being able to cultivate my skills in creating and exploring different scenarios was so exciting to me. Even more exciting was the opportunity to do so while simultaneously having fun with friends". This was not the only thing that I enjoyed while in school, I also loved to read and write and often this helped in making environments and characters come to life which ultimately lead to my studies in theater. My creativity allowed me to excel in many courses. This is mostly attributed to the amazing teachers that I had at the time who were the ones to implement more artistic strategies and types of assessment for me to really shine in my classes. This not only gave me options in showing the progress in my learning but also an opportunity to explore the ways in

which learning through art is beneficial.

While in high school, I had a lot of support from my teachers that gave me the opportunity to really cultivate my skills and use them in everyday life. These teachers made me feel seen by encouraging me to step outside of my comfort zone and use my arts skills as a tool to navigate my schooling and life. The teachers that inspired me the most and made me want to pursue theater and the arts in general were the ones who led the after school curricular activities that I participated in. These teachers took their personal time in order to create something with students that we could all be proud of. This opened my eyes to the incredible kindness and caring nature of these teachers. Their actions showed me that their students mattered to them and that our success is also their success. These are all aspects of teaching I hope to be able to exemplify by getting involved in my school's extra curricular activities and being able to show my support and willingness to be present with students. Ultimately, the actions of these teachers were one of the catalysts that actually led me down this path to becoming a teacher myself. Given my passion for communication, it just made sense for me to want to connect and communicate with learners in order to help them realize their potential. This helped me learn about more ways I can open and expand my own learning and potential to teach.

School also provided the opportunity for me to help others and come into my own as a person. I was able to explore leadership roles through improv tournaments as well as emerge as a leader in classes and group work. When the time came to decide “what I wanted to be when I grew up” I decided to go into something I really enjoyed and ended up applying to the University of Ottawa Theater program in French.

My passion for theater led me to start my post secondary schooling with a level of engagement and involvement in my faculty that gave me even more opportunity to learn and explore the vast world of theater. This was ultimately a great decision as I discovered that I enjoyed the backstage aspects of theater more than I did the onstage component. I enjoyed taking my time to decipher plays and come up with different atmospheres through abstract lighting and set design. Progressively, I also became interested in World Cinemas and decided to add that as a minor onto my Bachelor. Over the course of my undergrad, I was able to not only discover new creative mediums through backstage design and cinema. This gave me more opportunity to work collaboratively with others as an assistant to production and later as the mentor to someone just starting their journey into the world of theater.

This led me to think more profoundly about the possibility of joining the teaching profession. I was beginning to understand that working with a community of learners was something that interested me as I love to share my passions with people. Throughout my high school and undergraduate careers, people had told me that I would be a great teacher, but I only ever started believing it once I was given the chance to guide others and help them learn. With this in mind, I was beginning to think about applying for a Bachelor of Education but I wanted to start out in the theater industry first to see if that's what I truly wanted to do. In the winter of 2019 to 2020 I had completed my undergrad and was set to receive the certificate in June 2020. At this point, I had already started taking on contractual work within the theater industry doing set and lighting design. I was also in the process of getting another job with VIA rail in order to start saving money for the coming years. As we know, the COVID-19 pandemic started in March of 2020, this was just when I was in training for VIA rail and when we thought we would be back in the span of 2 weeks, this was obviously not the case.

2020 passed both quickly and very slowly as I was out of contracts, out of my job at VIA rail and sitting at home unable to do much else. During this period of time, I began to look inwards and visualize what else I could do after the pandemic ended. I began thinking about my other options should I not be able to return to the arts. This is when I started to consider teaching as an option for me. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense for me to at least look into it. I ended up looking into the program at the University of Ottawa to see what was available and found out that Drama as a teachable was only available once every two years, which happened to be the 2021 school year. I quickly made the decision to apply to the program. Fortunately, I had a wealth of experience with students while being a workshop coordinator and mentor to some at this time. At this point, I was really able to think about where I wanted to go and why , which led me to ask myself why I think I should teach and what makes me capable of truly enriching the experiences of my future learners.

In questioning myself and my abilities and reasoning behind why I think teaching would be for me, I came to the conclusion that my theater background will ultimately help me as a teacher and will help me provide better learning experiences to my students. As I was coming into the program, I was able to make close comparisons between what it is to be an artist (specifically in the theatrical sense) and what it is to be a teacher. What I found was that there are more similarities than differences between theater and teaching. Like theater, teaching can also be seen as a performance art as it not only takes planning with regards to timing, set up, installation, and overall atmosphere. Teaching also takes performance value and the ability to read, interpret and present the subject at hand in a more digestible and dynamic way. My experience in theater and the arts, in general, has already served me well within my teaching experience as it helps me think outside of the box and implement strategies from my own experience into the classroom. These strategies include communication and organization between students and their projects as well as creativity and design for feedback and activities presented in class.

My ability to work at an elevated pace within the classroom while being able to present subject matter to students in my practicum stems from the experiences I’ve had in theater as well as workshop building and implementing within the french community. The experiences I’ve had with students over the six years since I was myself a highschool student have expanded my idea of the role of teacher as mentor or as guide. Working with FESFO (Fédération de la Jeunesse Franco-Ontarienne) on a “being comfortable in your language” workshop was eye opening for me as I was able to just have conversations with kids about where I came from and how being comfortable with my accent while speaking french is something that didn’t happen right away. Kids know when you’re being authentic and when you’re not and I think that's really what stood out to me while working with them on that contract. I was able to work with students in providing the space needed for them to open up and start talking about their language insecurities when it comes to speaking French within a predominantly anglophone society. I hope that I’m able to continue having these discussions throughout my career and allow kids the space to explore these topics while guiding them and supporting them in their thoughts.

Something I’ve learned over the course of my first year is that as teachers, we will never be able to change the lives of every student we come across. There isn't truly a way to get through to each and every student, and that's OK! One teacher doesn’t have to change the life of every student, we simply do what we can to help progress these students on to the next step. Teachers create the best kinds of environments for change and growth. However, this doesn’t mean every student will be receptive to the attention and care they are given in each and every classroom. I find that learning the steps in order to help students succeed also helps teachers and teacher candidates to think about their learning as being done alongside their students' learning. What I hope to do in my future classrooms is to design an inclusive and welcoming space for all my students. This not only includes aspects of UDL (Universal Design for Learning) but also inclusivity in culture and individuality. I want to create inclusive environments for all my students by integrating cultural and interpersonal relationships into my classrooms.

I believe that creating the optimal space for learning inclusion and diversity will be the first steps in helping student succeed in my classroom, however, I still have so much to learn and know that my learning will never cease. Being a teacher also means being the student and allowing your classes to teach you as well. This profession is not an easy one because it demands us to be open and honest with ourselves about what we do not know and what we still need to learn. We as future teachers will need to take into account aspects of the entire student rather than just presenting ourselves as being the “giver of knowledge” or the “ruler of the classroom” and the students as simply learners. These titles are just not correct and should become common knowledge that this isn't how classrooms are actually run.

Taking into account the student as a person with mental, physical and emotional needs as well as a learner can be challenging as it adds new dimensions to our job as teacher. However, it is better for you and your students should those labels disappear from the classroom. I still have a long journey ahead of me as a teacher candidate and future teacher because as such, I will always be learning and filling in gaps here and there as time goes on. All I can hope for as a future educator is to be able to do the best I can and help others succeed in doing so as well, because at the end of the day, we are all still students and we are all still human.

Throughout the year, I have also noted how we need to view schooling as a student centered process rather than teacher centered. It would be amazing to see what it would be like if every class was student centered and, thankfully, it is starting to look more and more like this in schools now. My practicum experience this year, although not over, has taught me so much more than any formal classes could with regards to planning, implementation, and overall student teacher communications. Two main areas where I feel I could improve are in balancing the personal and professional aspects of the teaching profession as well as properly modifying and structuring course work for students on IEPs, ELLs’, or general modifications. Practicum has reinforced my passion for teaching through actually doing and living the situations we talk about in class.

In practicum, I have found my language arts and arts background to be an asset for me and my class as I am able to apply my creativity to my teaching style and in helping with other subjects such as math and science. One experience I had that made me realize what I, as an arts centered teacher, could do to help my students was while helping a student with a word centered math problem. I was able to use my language arts skills to separate the sentence and help the student see how to split up the information in order to better understand the problem.

In summary, I have done many things and been many people over the years and I intend to continue exploring opportunities as they come. I think that the role of an educator is never-ending and we should all strive to remain students as we will continue a cycle of lifelong learning, even when we are the ones teaching. My hope for my future as an educator is that I never think I’m done learning and never decide to stop building on my own knowledge and changing while gathering more information. When answering the question “why teach?” I always reflect back to that age old question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and wonder, if we were instead to ask students throughout their schooling “where would you like to be in the next few years” or “what interests you right now?” if we would have more varied answers or if we would be left to think more thoroughly on the question. As for me, I believe that teaching is currently my path, however, it is apt to change and evolve throughout the rest of my life. I believe I will most likely stay as an arts educator and continue to be an advocate for the arts in my future.