A Dream Coming True?

A month back I made myself a treasure map in order to visualize my future dreams. In the centre of my map I had a picture of an African girl without education. I have always wanted to do voluntary work but had not quite known how. I do not think I would ever do it through the church -I have an etchical conflict wih the idea of exporting religion. Anyhow, I have now figured out what I want to do: I want to educate children that may not have an access to education otherwise.

In order to achieve my goal, I was planning to take this course. I have applied to it already once, and even got an invitation to an interview. Unfortunatelly - or fortunatelly - I was not selected then, but I am now more confident about my competences in studying in the programme. Now it is time to focus on other things in life though, but I will most likely apply on this course still one day! It would also give me the possibility to do research in the future.

So earlier I thought that I need to complete the Master's Degree Programme before doing voluntary work. But yesterday I found out that one of my studying friends has founded a vocational school in Uganda, and they are more than happy to receive voluntary teachers. I think I will take my family over there one summer, and see how I can help my friend and the local children.

Closing Seminar

Day 1

We are having the last contact days as a whole group, and it is time to reflect our learning during the last 12 months.

We started the day by choosing two postcards that describe us as vocational teachers now and in the future. For me the year has been challenging. Combining two courses, children and marriage, and feeling quilty for not doing any of them well enough, has been hard. Also a serious illness in the family has affected our life.  But here I am, almost at the finish line! Now it is time to relax and spend time with my family. Therefore I chose a nice picture of a parent playing ball with a little boy. That is me for the next couple of months. I will be baking cakes on a sandpit! Anyhow, I will return to work in August. My second picture, a hunting bird, illustrates the next step I will take as a vocational teacher. It is time to start looking for a teaching position soon!

For me the iVet course has given mainly new teaching tools and technology. I have met great poeple and made contacts. I hope we will continue learning together even after the course! I had a great possibility to do my teacher training abroad and experience different school system. My MBA studies will be finished soon, too. They have helped me to gain more pedagogical competence; I understand the world of vocational students better now, and can recognise the factors that put a student at risk for dropping out from school.

I got nice feedback on my pedagogical method of motivating students to take part in a discussion task during the VOCII course. I think VOCII gave me a great opportunity to try teaching in an online environment which is not used for teaching that often (Facebook). I think Facebook is a great tool for sharing ideas and learning together when you want the students to contribute daily for a short period of time. Obviously it requires that the students are willing to register in Facebook. Also Facebook has got its limitations: quite soon the Facebook page starts looking messy, and some content may get missing or finding it is difficult. I would also ask the students to document their learning in another platform due to the limitations of Facebook.

Today we were also practising evaluating ourselves. It was rather difficult! I shall think about my competences in vocational education more later on. I think this blog is a good starting point for documenting my competence.

Anyhow, it is time to go and pick up my children from the nursery. Later tonight we will gather around to one of our fellow students' house and have a barbeque. Time for a party!

Day 2

So it is the very last day, or actually the very last hour together as a STUDY group. It has been a discovery journey like one of us described the last year yesterday. I think I have gained a lot of competence in vocational pedagocy, but there is still areas where I have to develop myself, special needs education f.ex. But I am definately ready to start working as a teacher. As I stated in one of the first posts, I think a teacher is never ready. There is always something to learn. You have to be a life-long learner in order to expect that from your students.

Finally Summer!

We've got finally summer also here in Northern Finland! 

It's soon time to start a summer holiday! But first I'll attend the 'Closing seminar days' of iVet. I'm going to miss all my studying friends! Thanks guys for the great year!!

Then one more optional course (Managing People). I'll leave one optional course (Drama in teaching) for autumn. I'm looking forward to that course!  I've also promised to meet the new students and tell them about my experiences of doing teacher training abroad.  Hopefully some of them will take the challenge, too. Here's a link to an article concerning my practice by the way.

I've been mainly concentrating on my final thesis recently. I had my second seminar the other day. Still a lot to do, but I'm still planning to graduate from my MBA studies in August. Soon I can put my feet up and plan what to do in my garden this summer! It's time to start writing my gardening blog again.

Have a great summer!