Getting to Know Me

After a few years of teaching middle and high school English Language Arts I realized that my interests were in the areas of reading comprehension, redefining literacy for the 21^st century, engaging reluctant readers, engendering lifelong literacy, and being an instructional leader. I wanted to take my learning to the next level and I knew that the TLDL masters program was available but I thought it was out of the question for someone who was not a teacher-librarian.  A friend of mine, who is a TL, gave my head a shake and told me to just go for it. So, I started my first course as a “wannabee” teacher librarian. This is my third TLDL course, but my first officially as a teacher-librarian.  I am currently working  in a K-8 school as a half time teacher-librarian, and half time middle years teacher in the Saskatoon Public School Division. I love reading YA books and I keep up with my reading by being on our Saskatchewan Young Readers' Choice provincial book awards selection committee. I am also on the executive of our Saskatchewan School Library Association where I am the co- editor of our online journal.  In my spare time I like to spend time with my amazing husband, family and friends. I am very excited to explore and analyze a wide-variety of web 2.0 tools with all of you this term.

A "Just Right" Blog Name

As I began the process of uncovering a title that I felt would be suitable for my blog I was reminded of how my husband and I brainstorm names for our future children.  We consider family names, people we admire in our fields of study, names that represent our heritage, and sometimes we look at names of people who have influenced or shaped the world.  Over the course of the years we have found a few names that have felt “just right.”  Finding a blog title that was “just right” was not an easy task and required time to think and reflect.   As I thought about names for my blog I focused on what the purpose for the blog was going to be and how I might represent this in my title.  I asked myself the following questions: 

 What am I actually doing when I am blogging? 

   I am on the internet, but blogging occurs in cyberspace.  But, what is cyberspace?  To me, cyberspace is the environment for intellectual interaction and exchange and of information.

Why do people blog?
   Blogging is a method of communicating and the blogging platform can be thought of as your paper. 

How can this enhance my professional learning?
 As we learn about, experiment with, and critically examine a wide variety of tools I will be required to look at each and every tool through the lens of a teacher and a teacher-librarian.

How might blogging allow me to become a more reflective practitioner?
 Reflection is an important part of learning and will allow me to grow as a professional in the field of education.

As I compiled the answers to my questions I uncovered some of the key concepts and mulled them over until I came up with a name that I felt was “just right. ”

I look forward to sharing my thoughts and reflections as an educator and teacher-librarian with all of you in cyberspace.

Tamzen Kulyk