About Me

I can’t imagine working as anything other than an educator. After almost 25 years of teaching, I still love working with kids and continue to push my practice to improve and stay current. I recently began a whole new adventure in life and in teaching. After living in the interior of BC for over twenty years, my family made a huge move in the summer of 2017. We now live on Vancouver Island and I absolutely love it. I lived by the ocean for many years when I was young, so in many ways, I feel as if I’ve finally come home.

I am very excited to be working in a new job with School District #71 at Navigate NIDES. I’ve known about this school for a very long time as many of the people working there were early adopters of educational technology many, many years ago. I’m enjoying the professional challenge of updating my practice in this new learning community with new students, new families, new colleagues and the new BC curriculum.

One aspect of the new job that feels very familiar (and that I love) is that I am once again a member of a collaborative team of educators. One aspect of the job that surprised me (although, in retrospect, I don’t know why…) is the blended learning model. I love working with the students face-to-face in my classroom for part of the week and I love being a teacher facilitating online learning, online portfolios and other technological aspects of teaching/learning for the other part of the week. Even though I’ve never done this exact type of teaching before, I’m really enjoying it for a number of reasons. A good topic for an actual blog post at some point, I think!

At this point, I’ve taught all grades from Kindergarten to Grade Twelve. I started my career teaching elementary students of all grades from 1996-2003. During my years as a high school teacher from 2003-2010, I taught visual arts, photography, textiles and information technology at the local high school. I have always loved working with children of all ages. They constantly amaze me with their energy, insight, creativity and talent. In September 2010, I joined the Elementary Connected Classrooms Project. This is a very cool, collaborative, technology-rich learning environment in which my students and I had virtual and face-to-face connections with classrooms in other communities in the district. To create this connected learning environment, each classroom was outfitted with a 1:1 netbooks, video conferencing, and shared platforms like Sharepoint and Moodle.

In 2011 I completed a Masters of Education in Educational Practice at Simon Fraser University. My research evolved into three strands: visual arts in education, (digital) citizenship, and indigenous beliefs on education and learning. I created three main inquiry questions. What are the schools of thinking around visual literacy and how can I teach using arts-based methods in the context of the Elementary Connected Classrooms (ECC) project? How is my pedagogy shifting in this technologically-rich teaching and learning environment? What are the traditional Métis and Cree beliefs surrounding education and child-rearing? That third strand of inquiry was particularly powerful as my great-grandmother was a residential school survivor. I adopted the mixed methods approach of qualitative research, employing teacher inquiry, living inquiry, performative inquiry, arts-based inquiry, writing as inquiry, and indigenous inquiry at varying times throughout the research. My masters year was absolutely transformational both professionally and personally.

The most important focus in my personal life is looking after myself and my family. I’m a mom to two amazing teenage boys. They are my everything. I’m also a big sister to four siblings and have four adorable nephews. I work very hard to live a healthy, active lifestyle and look after my whole self. I think life is too busy and complicated so I strive to keep things simple. I enjoy photography, nature and running outdoors. The visual arts are my passion and default comfort zone. I love learning, yoga, music, baking, reading, writing and chocolate. I have strong faith. I think of myself as a realist with an optimistic edge.

I started to blog for many reasons. I love to write, especially for professional reflection.  Writing helps to clarify and solidify my thoughts. I also wanted to learn how to use Edublogs before using blogging as a tool to enhance the learning in my classroom. The final reason I started to blog was to grow and maintain my personal learning network (PLN). I am truly thankful for all the amazing people, from those in my blogroll to colleagues and special friends, that motivate me, make me think and help me learn.

Thanks for visiting and reading my blog. Please comment as I’d love to hear what you have to say!

5 thoughts on “About Me

  1. I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog. Love the layout – so easy to follow. I’m very envious – you’ve come up with a great blog title. I find those sorts of decisions very difficult – no creativity!

  2. Pingback: Joining in the Discussion | Literacy Resources

  3. It sounds like you had an amazing experience doing your masters at SFU!

    I am also considering doing a masters in education there (specifically a Master of Arts Education). I am curious about your experience at SFU. How traditional were your teachers? Was it what you expected? I would love to hear your thoughts. I myself am an educator, and have recently shifted my teaching style dramatically, away from being a lecturer to being facilitator of learning. I am hoping SFU will be receptive to this.

    Cheers,
    Lee
    agentsage@gmail.com

  4. Hi Lee,
    The MEd was absolutely the most amazing learning experience I’ve had to date. I’m still learning and processing from that intense year of study!

    I would highly recommend the SFU graduate department. My professor, Dr. Vicki Kelly, is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. She is, to quote another prof of mine, “one of the rare gems”. She was masterful as coaxing the learning out of us and never really ‘lectured’, although at times she’d start talking and we’d sit and listen, usually in awe of her amazing intellect, trying to soak up as much as possible! I was not disappointed in the program – it pushed me to rethink everything about myself and my practice with a strong theoretical base but at the same time it was very flexible so that I had ownership of the direction and scope of my learning.

  5. Hi Ms. Gregory,

    I love that you are reframing education in your own way – it makes me think that we might be working on an idea you will find of interest.

    Do you think your students are interested in starting their own business? We provide seed funding of $100 to classrooms and tell stories of ethical companies as we facilitate the kids’ learning. At the end of the program, their revenues are donated towards building schools in developing nations.

    Have a moment to chat?

    Thanks!
    Jeff

    jeff@earlyentrepreneurs.ca

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *