Digital PortraitWhere do I belong?
To figure out where you belong I believe you have to know where you are from and understand how that past has shaped you in the now My name is Brandon Lowe and I am from Etobicoke Ontario, which is the other half of Toronto that is not Downtown. I have had many positive influences on my path to being a teacher candidate at uOttawa and I would like to share some of them with you. I have a huge family that now includes 10 brothers and sisters, from oldest to youngest are Tiffany, Myself, Jaideene, Brittany, Kiandra, my twin brothers Jailon and Jordon, and I now have 4 foster/adopted brothers and sisters Brianna, Logan, Tristan and Cassidy. Labour for Learning “ Labour for learning before you grow old For learning is better than silver and gold Silver and gold will vanish away But a good education will never decay” Growing up I was primarily raised by mom and my grandmother who we call Nan. Every morning before school Nan would make us recite this poem and none of us enjoyed it. We didn't understand what it meant or the significance of the message and we just wanted to go to school so we could hurry up and get back home. As I grew older I began to understand what the poem meant and the importance of a strong education. My mom also had a big influence on my drive to want to become an educator, first off she was always pushing us to read. Growing up my favorite question was why and I would ask my mom a million questions a day. Instead of just giving me the easy answer she would find a book for me to read that would answer the questions I had this lead to more questions and more books.While I am not a big reader I still love knowing why things are the way they are and researching finding those answers and learning something new everyday I am hoping to explore this strategy as an educator and encourage my students to ask why rather than just accept what I am saying as fact and also for them to find the answers on there own and I know from that will lead to even more questions and hopefully more knowledge. Although I did not grow up with my dad I always felt a connection to him and when we were able to spend time together I was able to understand why. My dad is the ultimate giver and sometimes he can be misguided but his heart is always in the right place. I consider myself a hard worker and I take after my dad who takes after his dad and that something I am extremely proud of. When people say I am like my dad it is a huge compliment, he and my step mom have a huge heart opening up their homes to my foster brother and sisters. My Dad was recently inducted into the Canadian College Sports Hall of Fame for basketball and he is definitely where i get my love of sports from. I have a deep love for sports and all things sports related and growing up I played every sport imaginable. This would sometimes get in the way of my studies. My mom would have to threaten to not take me to my sporting event if I didn't get my school work done. Through sport I learned a lot of valuable lessons that I believe shaped me into being the person I am today and I believe can be used to help shape students of the future. The lessons learned through sport range from being responsible to others on your team or in your group, time management, leading in stressful situations, and patience. Through sport I believe that students can learn these valuable lessons better than they can in other settings and with these new or improved skills they will help the students excel in the classroom and I hope to explore that further on this blog. Growing up I also had a learning disability that went undiagnosed until I was in the 9th grade. As an athlete I was always a visible member of the school community, I was very social and a strong public speaker. The problem was that if I was speaking from memory I was strong but if I was reading from a sheet in a pressure situation the words all looked like a jumbled mess. This frustrated me as I grew older so I began to participate less and less. Teachers took this as me being defiant when all it was was that I was uncomfortable and afraid I would sound stupid so I stopped participating. Teachers would send me to the office for not participating and call home, this lead to a cycle of anger and me losing my passion for school. From grade 5 to grade 8 my marks continued to slip and I proceeded to get labelled as an anger management student and I almost had to repeat the 8th grade. when I got to highschool I thought it would be more of the same when in my grade 9 math class my teacher Dr Kitchen asked me to read a word problem out to the class as I had so many times before I refused, he asked again and again I said no. After asking a third time and getting the same response I was sure I was going to the office instead he continued with the class and asked to see me after class. We sat down and he introduced himself and began to talk about sports after a while he asked me if I read the article in the paper about the Blue Jays and he asked me to read some of it to him. I started to try and the frustration started to set in when he pulled out a ruler and had me hold it underneath the line I was trying to read all of a sudden there was no more jumble and I could read clear as day and all it took was someone to show some patience with me instead of shipping me off to the office and calling home and for that I am forever grateful. The patience he showed with me lead me wanting to become a teacher and wanting to make a difference especially with students who might need a little bit more attention for whatever reason. Going over my life I belong in an environment where I can be around people and help give back all that has been given to me. I belong in a classroom where I can help students find their inner voice the same way I did. |