Intro – Social Media Essentials Course

I’m working towards a certificate in Career and Academic Advising via the University of Calgary.  This summer I’m taking three courses: Ethics, Social Media Essentials, and Intercultural Communication.  I’ll be using the blog for posts about my learning and professional development in this field. 

Hello to all,

My name is Pamela Hunnisett and I’ve been teaching high school for 20+ years and I just finished my 13th here in Calgary, Alberta, at FFCA. I teach English, Creative Writing, and Drama 20 (acting and playwrighting) – it’s a beautiful gift to work with teenagers, to help them discover themselves, and to help them uncover their potential.

I live a life of gratitude with a wise husband, my two kind-hearted teenagers, and a cuddly-suck-of-a-dog. I fill my time with reading, writing, theatre-viewing and creating, researching, traveling (a wander-luster), hiking, nature-loving, bird-feeding, cooking, gardening, etc.  I love to travel and will have my bags packed in an instant whenever the prospect of travel comes knocking – we’ve journeyed to Argentina many times (where my husband is from), across Canada, the US, Costa Rica, Spain, France, England, and Switzerland – with so much more to see in this world.  But this summer we’re stay-cationing in lovely Calgary while we finish the basement to our new house in the NW and I work on courses towards a Certificate in Career and Academic Advising – a position I hope to do in the future at my high school.

Since 2009, I’ve pioneered blog writing and communicating online with my English and Creative Writing classes via Edublogs (a division of wordpress for education), Edsby, Google classroom, and Edmodo platforms.  This work is something that is ever-evolving and I learn more every year to improve what we do and how we do it in my classes.  The social media world is constantly shifting, so as experienced as I am, I constantly feel like a novice and keeps me on my toes as a learner.  I’m excited to take this course to see what I can further learn and integrate into teaching and advising; I also hope to refine my use of platforms like LinkedIn, etc….   This work has led me to share my students’ blogging work and learning at conferences in Boston and Costa Rica, and I really hope that in the future I’ll have more opportunities to share the work and collaborate internationally with other instructors and classes.

I have enrolled in the program for Career and Academic Advising because it is an area that has always been of interest to me.  At school, our beloved academic counsellor announced that retirement is on her horizon in the next few years, and it is my hope to attempt to wear her very large shoes (a crazy and impossible aspiration – we call her the “moulder of dreams” for a reason).  I am a student-centred teacher, a mom to many, and we spend many lessons helping students understand where they’ve been, who they are,  and what they’d like to be in their future.  I believe that honing my skills in Social Media will help me develop a blog/website resource for students in Career and Academic Advising.  I look forward to learning all there is so I can best serve, support and guide our students into their future.

Sincerely,

Pamela Hunnisett