Friendly greetings to my fellow MAEL colleagues. My name is Ursula Neuscheler and I am a TWU alumni. I graduated from the school of Education in 2015 and earned my BEd degree. I knew after my first semester that I really wanted to pursue my Masters but at the time I was really super passionate about Urban Studies and thought I would take my Masters of Urban Studies with long term hopes of combining my interest in city planning with my interest in politics. After giving it a lot of thought and praying about what to do, I ended up deciding to pursue a Masters in Educational leadership instead.
My short term goal is to become a VP and a long term goal would be to somehow use my experience to bring about policy changes within municipal or provincial government. Maybe a school trustee would be something I would like to pursue some day? After 501 I will only have three more MAEL courses to take and once my fourth literature review is complete, this December, I will be busy compiling my thesis. It is all going by very quickly.
Currently, I teach 142 grade 9/10 students Social Studies, ELL Socials and Career Life Education at a local high school in Langley. I love my job and I am super passionate about spending time mentoring teens. Here’s a short list of all the different areas I currently am involved in:
- I sponsor three clubs (Grad Council, Gavel Gators, and Lighthouse Club)
- I sponsor one school team which is new this year (Swim Team)
- I am organizing an EF tour to Italy and Greece for spring break 2020
- I am a member of the Health and Safety team at our school
- I am part of three departments and attend all meetings (Socials, ELL and Career Life Ed)
On the home front, my husband and I are celebrating our 20th anniversary this Christmas and we have an 11 year old daughter. Our daughter attends a Christian school and aside from German school on Saturdays, she is very busy with her competitive ballet schedule which consumes almost every week night.
I grew up in the lower mainland and moved to New Brunswick for university where I graduated with a BA in History from Mount Allison University back in 1995. After living in Toronto for a year and a half I moved to Germany in hopes of becoming more fluent in German. I also thought I would like to be a translator but that is when I met my husband. We lived for seven and a half years in Germany (Hannover and Munich), but also lived another seven years in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) before moving back to BC 10 years ago.
Before I went back to school to earn my B.Ed. I had obtained my TESL certification and taught ELL for 17 years in various private schools in Ontario, Germany and one local one in BC. I always wanted to pursue more education and am thrilled to be in the midst of fulfilling one of my dreams right now. I am encouraged that God is my strength, my rock and my salvation and I trust that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I am very blessed to be able to pursue post graduate studies through TWU.
This semester will be extremely busy for me as I have numerous obligations with course work, a swim team competition and a week-long Parliamentary Democracy conference in Victoria, alongside all of the other responsibilities that come with our teaching profession and home life. Thankfully, it is not a federal election year, as I am eager to re-join my local EDA board and get more involved in the up-coming Federal election.
Hello, Ursula! Glad to “see” you again! Your school year sounds extremely busy which is probably just how you like it, right? I am looking forward to learning from and with you in this course. Your blog site looks like it has all the bits & pieces necessary to handle the responsibilities of this new format. It is all a little beyond my ability right now which is why I am still invisible.
Thank you for sharing this part of the journey!
Sally
Hi Sally,
Thanks for your post. I am still learning how to maneuver around in this new space. There were some major tech issues that I was not able to figure out on my own. Sometimes I think how much stress could be eliminated if we did not have all of this technology to slow us down. Without a patient tech support person I wouldn’t be able to do keep up. At school this week we just received our brand new Dell computers. Everyone in the entire district. As you could imagine there is an added amount of stress and tension for almost all staff district wide. I have two lunch our tech sessions this week to learn how to use my new computer, new passwords etc..And tomorrow I need to transport two computers to school since our new ones do not require a dongle but just in case they don’t work automatically the way they should… I’ve been advised to have a back-up plan. It’s really all a blur but thankfully we (the district) are all in the same boat. I am trying to find your post so I can comment to it but I am only seeing three peoples posts on my home page?
Hi Sally,
I thought I said commented on this post? Let me know if you already received something from me? I need to set the notifications so I know instantly when someone has sent me a message:)
Sally,
It looks to me like only you and Doug have responded to my post? I wonder if others are not seeing my message? I need to find your initial introduction.
Hi Ursula;
Great to have your post today!
I look forward to the engagement as we move forward.
See you tomorrow night!
Doug
Hi Doug, I sent you two emails with some questions. I am wondering why I cannot see more than three peoples blog posts on my create.twu.ca/ldrs501 page and why I haven’t seen my own blog post as it is so new it should be at the top of the list?