I had an experience on Remembrance Day during my 10-week practicum that brought back my spark and made me so grateful to be a teacher. As mentioned in other blogs and pages, Harwin suffered a tragedy in the third week of my practicum when a grade 7 boy passed away by suicide due to online extortion issues. The happenings surrounding this event left me feeling as if I was sleepwalking through weeks 3-7 of my practicum- I was sleeping constantly but always feeling tired, I was teaching but only going through the motions and not really remembering anything I was doing with the students, and I felt very detached and like I had lost my spark as a person and for teaching that had been present in my previous two practicums. However, the events of Remembrance Day helped me start to feel as if I was getting a piece of myself and my spark back again slowly. Because of the tragedy that had rocked the school less than 4 weeks prior, the decision was made to have Remembrance Day ceremonies in our individual classes this year and to not gather as a school in the gym because we were not in the place as a school community to handle the grief and solemnity that comes with a group ceremony of this kind. My coaching teacher and I were responsible for planning the ceremony for our class and we decided as part of ours to play the YouTube music video for the song “A Pittance of Time” by Terry Kelly. This song has always been really important to me because I used to listen to it in my Remembrance Day ceremonies in elementary school and I always loved the meaning and the message behind the video and the words. I started the video and looked out at my kids and all of a sudden I got super teary and emotional. To watch the first class I ever taught full time listen to a song that I used to listen to when I was in elementary school and the same age as them made me feel very overwhelmed; Julianne in Grade 3 would never have guessed that I would be sitting in front of my own Grade 3 students as a teacher but she would be so proud of who I had become. Looking out at the students and seeing the poppies on their left and seeing them engage with the video as much as they were made me so proud to be their teacher. I felt like this day was the beginning of me getting my spark back and becoming more present in the classroom with them and I could not be happier for that.
