About Me

Hi, I am Em.G. Thanks for vis­it­ing my web­site.  Here are some tid­bits about me and why I made this blog.

I am a life­long learn­er who has trav­eled many career paths in my time.  I first start­ed out by pro­gram­ming in the video game indus­try. After 10 years in that indus­try, I switched from pro­gram­ming to teach­ing Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage (ESL).  After liv­ing and teach­ing ESL in Japan for over 15 years, I have since returned to Cana­da to par­take in the UNBC Region­al Teacher Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram.  I wish to become a cer­ti­fied teacher in B.C., so I am keen on improv­ing my teach­ing skills.  By doing this 18-month pro­gram, I hope to gain valu­able class­room teach­ing expe­ri­ence and learn from teacher mentoring.

Although I have only just begun pro­gram, I can already see var­i­ous ways to improve my teach­ing.  One these ways is by apply­ing the First Peo­ple’s Prin­ci­ples of Learn­ing. These prin­ci­ples sup­port a holis­tic and inclu­sive approach to learn­ing and this over­laps with my own  prag­mat­ic phi­los­o­phy towards edu­ca­tion. I have had to do a lot of self-reflec­tion and obser­va­tion dur­ing this first aca­d­e­m­ic block.  Truth­ful­ly, this has made me feel a bit antsy, and I think I am expe­ri­enc­ing the calm before the storm. Very soon my fel­low teacher can­di­dates and I will begin to teach in the B.C. class­room.  Despite my pre­vi­ous over­seas teach­ing expe­ri­ence, I have seen first­hand how dif­fer­ent the class­room set­tings can be in B.C. and have wit­nessed just a few of the chal­lenges that teach­ers must face on a dai­ly basis.  I wish to use this web­site as means of track­ing my edu­ca­tion­al jour­ney via posts of self-reflec­tion on var­i­ous edu­ca­tion-relat­ed top­ics, aca­d­e­m­ic course­work and per­son­al intro­spec­tion. I hope you enjoy my learn­ing e‑portfolio.