Educators engage in professional learning.

As educators, our journey of learning is never ending. There is a comparison that I find stuck with me the most while engaging in some of my professional learning days throughout the UNBC Ed program – a fixed mindset vs a growth mindset. I have a standard to meet in my career to be a lifelong learner, and the only way to uphold that standard is to develop both mindsets. While a fixed mindset does have its place in certain areas of learning, when looking at the bigger picture over the course of time a growth mindset needs to be primary. Teachers will always need to be adapting to new learning styles, different content, and the immense demands of students as they change every so frequently year to year. As part of my professional development in my most recent 491 practicum, I have been doing extensive work with Teachers to incorporate decolonization into my practice. This is an extremely important topic for English teachers, as I was able to include indigenous text The Marrow Thieves, by Indigenous author Cherie Dimaline into my grade 10 English First Peoples class as a novel study. This allowed me to not only attend professional development workshops, but also to apply what I have learned in those workshops into practice which is vital to all forms of professional learning.