I love learning. It’s part of the reason I became a teacher. I know for a lot of people learning is the last thing they want to be doing, and school is the last place they want to be. For me going to work every day means a new learning experience: new information making its way into my brain; new lessons from my students about what it’s like to be them, about what it’s like growing up in this modern world; new skills and activities from other teachers that I can use in my own classroom; and new learnings about myself and what my why is. Learning new things is well as truly within my comfort zone, ironically.
I also love travelling. When I graduated high school, I couldn’t wait to leave the country. I lived overseas for just over a year, working and living in the US and Canada. I love learning about new cultures, trying new foods, finding new ways to get around countries (the trains in India are an experience in themselves), experiencing different climates. Travelling is well and truly within my comfort zone.
Becoming a Facilitator was definitely something I had wanted, but for a while was maybe afraid of wanting it too much. So, when offered the chance to combine learning and travelling into one experience, I jumped at it. I also learned that my comfort zone is not as big as I thought it was, which is actually a really good thing. I didn’t like standing in front of people with content I hadn’t written at the beginning, because as a teacher, I write my own. I didn’t receive feedback very well to begin with, because as a teacher, I usually give it. I didn’t like teaching my peers things at the beginning, because as a teacher, my students are younger than me. I got in my own head a lot, and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get out of it. But then I learned why. We write our own story in our head before we’ve even lived it, most of the time. So, I rewrote mine. I’ve never learned so much about myself in such a short period of time, and to do so was so overwhelming. But it was also an opportunity for me to learn to accept myself and love parts about me that I definitely hadn’t before.
There are, of course, so many new skills I learned that I’m beyond excited to bring into Green SuperCamp Australia, and that I want to bring into my teaching practice. But there are also so many learnings about myself and who I am around others that I want to bring into other facets of my life. In understanding myself more, I’m able to spend more time understanding my students, my colleagues, my friends, my family, the people around me every day. Because of that I can learn more, and I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I love learning.