My name is Anna Lennox and I am currently working towards my BEd as a subsequent degree. I am also taking ADED 3F90 this term, and hope I can manage as I also work full time as an HR Coordinator and Recruiter in the nuclear industry. My involvement and interest in learning about adult education relates to my work in HR as I conduct training and onboarding sessions for new employees. 

Fantasy Facilitation
A learning session that I've completed already and enjoyed was delivering a session on resume writing. I enjoyed this as it combined my expertise in human resources and my passion for working with others as a mentor. Ideally, this type of facilitation would include a presentation with a hands on activity with opportunities for one on one interactions.

I have never really considered my “fantasy facilitation” but I think I would want to choose something that I know a lot about so that I felt comfortable presenting. Keeping that in mind, I would likely want to facilitate a workshop for toddler parents or do something related to cooking/baking. I would likely lean towards workshop-style facilitation- something a bit more hands-on for everyone involved.  

I chose Brocks Adult Education degree program for multiple reasons.  The first being convenience, I work full time, have two young children and a small farm in which I love!    The second reason being, I want to provide the best experience and facilitate an effective and supportive learning environment for all students sitting in my lectures/class/labs.  

My expectation of this course is becoming familiar with different pedagogies and just getting one step closer to supporting student learning more effectively.  

My learning goals for this course is solely to ‘keep up”.  I want to be able to understand the readings and if not, looks a little deeper to ensure clarity.  

My ‘Fantasy Facilitation” would be “Help Sustain Yourself”.  I am all about growing and nurturing in many different capacities.  I would love to organize and complete a workshop on growing vegetable gardens- planting, growing, collecting, pickling, and storing what you grew.  I also have chickens, ducks, cows (hopefully Emus and goats this year) and absolutely would love discussing how to keep them happy and healthy for optimal egg/meat gathering.     I always said if I won a million dollars, I would build a HUGE greenhouse and sell plants between the times I am taking care of my animals.  

I would love to lead a walking tour of my neighbourhood, picking out all the plants that grow wild and talking about which ones are edible and which are poisonous. I would also bring a herbalist along on this walk and they could talk about the plants that can be used in first aid and health more generally as well as someone familiar with the original uses of local plants from an Algonquin perspective. Of course, at the end of our walk, we would have a city salad with the ingredients we picked along the way. 

Part 1: 

I decided to enroll in the BEd program at Brock to learn more about adult education, and to help me become a better instructor overall. I’m a little bit nervous to be enrolled in the Spring term because I’m expecting my second baby in early June, so I will have some challenges ahead with mapping out my coursework, but I am extremely excited to continue with my studies. I took ADED 2F90 last spring and haven’t been able to fit this next course into my schedule until now. 

Part 2: 

A workshop I have always wanted to facilitate is a prenatal massage workshop for other registered massage therapists. I have had the pleasure of teaching a maternal and infant care course at the college level, as well as being the clinical instructor for the placement portion of that course for a few semesters, and I think this would be beneficial for those who are already working in the profession. I hear often that RMTs feel they didn’t have access to this type of information while in school since some programs simply don’t teach about this topic in-depth, so the pregnant population is not one they are comfortable treating upon graduation. I also feel there is a lack of course offerings for continued education in the North so this could be great for my community. 

Looking forward to getting to know you all over the next 10 weeks!

 

Im not overly creative but I would say that I would like to teach a “basic lab skills” workshop. I found that especially over covid, a majority of my students lacked basic lab skills and ability to complete basic procedures. Not that it was their fault, doing these things online is not the same as in practice. I would love to have a lab filled with various types of microscopes, tools, and materials for various procedures. I would ideally like to do a Monday-Friday workshop for maybe 2-3 hours each day. Students could form groups of 2-3 individuals. Each day I would have them attempt to answer a question related to a specific concept that required the use of various materials and methodologies. Everyday groups could rotate to different problems. This way groups can ask those that have already completed specific tasks for help. By the end students should hopefully have gained some skills relevant to lab work. 

My expectations for this course are to learn some additional facilitation techniques to become a better educator for students. I would say my fear is keeping up and perhaps understanding everything.  

 

My fantasy facilitation would be to run a series of workshops on accessible recreation environments (pools, parks, trails, arenas, fields, passive open spaces). As cost and location are no object, different workshops would be held at various locations around the world that are examples of excellence in accessible recreation environments. We would tour and have panelists from the selected location who would share with us things like the design, how the place is run, maintained and used to ensure it is as accessible for as many people as possible.  

 

My name is Juliana – nice to virtually meet y’all! I reside in Mississauga, ON – a stone’s throw away from Square One to put me on the map. I currently work in HR in an IT company and am in the process of transferring from working at home in an IT setting to working in the office in a new organization that is in manufacturing! I am currently taking my Bachelors in Adult Education to complete my education/training (and potentially move on to my master’s in education) – fun fact, this is my second degree from Brock (Go Badgers!). I have also completed a Post-Graduate Certificate in Human Resources from Humber College along with a recruiter’s designation, so please feel free to connect with me about anything HR related! I am so excited to be back and learning – I love learning and expanding my knowledge and overall wellbeing and want to push that out to the employees I support as well. I expect to become a better person when I complete this course – and hearing and looking at the answers from everyone’s introductions along with Dr. Sharmaine’s support, I think we will do absolutely fabulous! My passion is people – and I want to ensure that I support you and vice versa. 
 
 

Part 2: 

 

My fantasy facilitation would be something with history—I love learning about Canadian history and overall understanding of how we became a country. Though I am proud to be living in a beautiful and vastly unique lands with different though processes, beliefs, and values, I think we need to continue to work on and support the Indigenous groups and work on the 94 calls to action. I think I would like to do a retreat of some sort, showing people how things came to be and where important war heroes stood as they fought in battle. 

 

Though I do facilitations on a weekly basis (thanks to HR onboarding and orientations for new hires), I am quite comfortable speaking in front of large groups, even though my height says otherwise. I can grab someone’s attention if I am passionate about the topic at hand. 

My ‘Fantasy Facilitation’ is to run a mentoring program. An ideal class I would like to facilitate is leading a student and peer mentor session where they meet for the first time and learn about the impact of mentoring. They would exchange their experiences and ideas, and I would help them design a program that works for each pair of mentors and mentees. Also, I would like to be able to see the results of the program and it would be nice to know if the mentoring program was a success so a debriefing session would also be great.