Author Archives: Sydney's Inquiries

Welcome to my blog! Here you will find expression, opinions, my learning voyage, and my personal journey to becoming an elementary educator. I hope you enjoy your visit and allow for inspiration to be the reason for your stay. I am currently living in Regina, Saskatchewan which is situated on the territories of the nêhiyawak, Anihšināpēk, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakoda, and the homeland of the Métis/Michif Nation. Regina is located on Treaty 4 lands with a presence in Treaty 6.

Twitterpated?

Hello everyone and welcome back to another blog post, this week my post will be focusing on the popular social media networking app called Twitter. Twitter is well known for its celebrity usage and even connecting/replying to some of your favourite celebrities. However, that is not the focus of todays post, rather we will be exploring the ideas and ways that Twitter as a platform can be beneficial to education students/teachers/and used as a professional tool!

At the beginning of January 2021 I began an Educational Technologies course through my university as part of my journey to becoming an elementary school teacher. Before taking this course I did not have a Twitter account, I knew about the app and how it worked but I did not find myself in need to create an account myself. Ed Tech however had us create our own accounts to help us stay connected and see the importance of surrounding ourselves with others in class, especially in a time where the closest we get to having a real conversation is through zoom once a week. Through my account I have learned how to connect with fellow peers, participated in a #SaskEdChat, posted my own tweets/links, responded to others within my class, and post links to each of my blog posts!

One of my absolute favourite parts about using Twitter is posting articles that I find. I find educational articles based on elementary education, mental health, ways to use technology in the classroom, and other education tips and tricks that I would be happy to incorporate into my own classroom in the future. Most of the resources that I share I wish my teachers would have used in the classroom to benefit us as students. Once I tweet the links to the articles with the hashtag #EDTC300 other students in the same class, along with the professors, are able to not only read the articles but also reply to my tweets with their personal opinions on the topics and how they feel towards using the shared strategies as well. In about a year (hopefully) I will be working in an elementary school and I am looking forward to using my Twitter account to connect with other teachers both in Saskatchewan and Canada as it will be beneficial to see their classroom adventures and preferred techniques.

Last week I took part in a #SaskEdChat on Twitter, viewing the participation in a professional developmental experience I feel as though it benefitted me widely. After being able to reflect on the experience I found myself thinking hard about the answers to my questions, while also having fun and putting honesty behind my answers as well. Not only students from my course took part, but teachers and students from other classes took part. This was useful to me as I was able to see answers from all walks of life and all levels of professionalism. Each tweet sent into the #SaskEdChat was eye opening and allowed me to expand my own answers and even “heart” tweets that I wanted to look back on later. I highly enjoyed it and plan on joining again next week as a new topic is introduced and explored in depth.

I hope that you all enjoyed today blog post, and I hope to see you all back again to read my next one! Stay warm out there, spring is coming!

My own Twitter feed, my handle is @Sydney_kawa and is always linked in my posts!
Twitter logo. Widget taken from: https://picsart.com/i/338254365028201?_branch_match_id=888895452882028954

Welcome to Cloud 9

Hello everyone and welcome back (or to) my weekly learning project. This week is very exciting as I decided to try something new when it comes to decorating sugar cookies, which is double layering! This means thats I used the usual flooding method when it comes to frosting each cookie, but after it hardened I added a second layer that appears three dimensional compared to the first layer of flooding. The disappointment of the week is that my meringue powder has not arrived in the mail yet, but that set back has just allowed me to use both the same cookie recipe and royal icing recipe as usual. Without the introduction of any new recipes I was able to incorporate my own ideas to further my designs when it comes to presentation. The presentation I find it the most important aspect to myself personally, and is the most rewarding part.

This week I decided to use the cloud cookie cutter since it has more curves that move inward and outward than either of previous cutters (circle and cacti). This week rather than mixing, rolling, and putting the dough into the fridge for one to two hours, I left in the dough in the fridge for forty eight hours to see if it would help the shape of the cookie as well as the flavour from sitting and becoming harder/chilled thoroughly. With that being said, after the dough chilled for an extended period of time I cut the cookies and they were more fragile than usual. It is safe to say that you live and you learn, but as soon as my fingers hit the dough it began to warm resulting in it becoming soft and easier to remove from the cutter.

Using my cloud cookie cutter for the first time. I love the Toy Story vibes they give off!
Blue icing! One drop of teal food colouring goes a long way.

While the cookies were baking in the oven I whipped up my royal icing (same recipe as my first two attempts) and coloured the icing blue! I was originally going to go with white and add edible glitter but edible glitter is harder to find than one may think! Safe to say another order has been placed on Amazon. So, I went with a beautiful blue colour and the idea to double layer my cookies came into my mind (so not finding glitter worked in my favour). I added the first layer of royal icing to my clouds using the flooding technique and allowed the icing to dry. With the left over icing in the bowl I added an extra cup and a half of powered sugar making it extra thick and controllable and put it into the piping bag and hoped for the best!

Dried, flooded clouds.

My first two cookies were not coming out well for me. I did not cut the hole in the piping bag big enough resulting in the icing coming out stringy and not in the pattern that I was leading the bag in. I decided to cut the bag slightly bigger, but it was the same story. However, third time was the charm and success was mine! At least I had hoped so since my wrists were getting sore from squeezing the piping bag and keeping it steady at the same time. Once I completed my second layer of icing to create dynamic on the clouds, I was happy with five of the designs.

Week three was a creative and fun experience for me and I highly enjoyed the creative process it allowed. Even though there were no new recipes or ingredients, I felt confident within the finalized design and would love to add texture and edible glitter in one of my remaining six weeks! Not only are the cookies delicious but a little bit cute too!

Week three cloud sugar cookie, final product.
Cloud close up! Yum!

Next week I have a goal to try to do a two toned cookie along with trying to section off different portions on the cookie. If this does not make sense to you, make sure to come back next week to get the full run down! If you want to see sneak peaks of my weekly learning project be sure to follow me on Twitter! If you have not read week one or week two yet I highly suggest you do so, and I would appreciate it very much! I will see you all next week with another new blog post! Thank you for reading, stay warm and take care of your car batteries (hehe)!

Feedly and Blog Appreciation

I have had this blog since my first semester of University back in September of 2018, so if you take a look around my site you will be able to see how I have grown both as a student and future educator. However, I never truly realized how many blogs were being contributed to every week with followers who were invested in the information and resources that the creator had to share. Not only are blog creators sharing useful resources, models, ideas, integrations, etc., but they are also sharing the positives and negatives that go along with each one. For example, if a blog is sharing a link with you based on a professional site that speaks about classroom management, the creator of the blog can recommend that specific website to you and then educate the reader on how it personally worked for them and their classroom. I find this intriguing and informative as the reader is able to benefit from both a resource and personal experience.

Over the past several days I have been exploring Feedly and finding educational blogs that would best support me in my future classroom while also benefiting me as a student. It took me some pondering and google searches to truly understand how to find blogs that would pertain to me, as a simple search of ‘Elementary Education’ and ‘Educational Technologies’ was not going to cut it. Once I began to become successful with my search and appropriate topics arose I found myself reading off of several blogs a day, officially narrowing it down to my preferred topics and creators. I chose this content based on which blogs would personally benefit me in the long run, allow me to grow and learn with each post, and incorporate strategies that I want to add into my own classroom. I also found it important to focus on not only the blogs information but also its relevancy, followers, the number of posts per month, and just how active they are with updating resources and answering comments under their posts. Within Feedly I have created two categories.

A screenshot of my two separate categories along with the blogs I have followed in their proper places!

First I have the Elementary Education category that has three blogs listed beneath it: Ashleighs Education Journey (teaching resources, active account, multiple posts a month, a good following, math/social distancing resources), Elementary Matters (research based models, ideas, resources, active account, classroom management, focuses on grades 1-3), and The Inclusive Class (strategies, teaching students with disabilities, inclusion, active account). Each of these accounts carry knowledge and instruction that can be implemented into both my present and future. The other category I found most suitable to create is the Ed Tech category which also displays three enriching blogs: iLearn Technology (integrating technology into the classroom, benefits of using technology/online resources, active account with a very high following, all grade levels included), Edutopia (resources for teachers, students, administrators, parents, etc., project based learning, successful practices, enables connection between educators), and Cult of Pedagogy (theory and thinking as educators, classroom management, teaching practices, multiple resources: videos, podcast, store, blog, etc).

Focusing on iLearn Technology in particular, I have decided to follow this blog for a series of reasons. Like I mentioned previously iLearn Technology has many benefits such as incorporating and support information/resources for all grade levels from elementary education all the way to secondary education. So, not only is this blog supporting me at this particular moment in time as a student, but it also supports me once I have achieved my goal to become an elementary educator. How notable is iLearn Technology that I am able use it as a student and then pass it on to my own very young students within only a matter of a year and a half! The sources that iLearn Technology holds is relevant (especially during the global pandemic) as it supports educators with proper resources to allow for suitable and beneficial interactions with students both inside and out of the classroom. Which is very important both now and in ten years, as connection benefits our ability to learn and grow at a high rate.

Uncovering the Recipe for Success

Hello everybody and welcome back to my second week of learning how to bake delicious sugar cookies and decorate with royal icing! Earlier this week before I began the mixing, cutting, baking, and decorating process for this weeks project, I ran a poll on Twitter and asked all of you which design you would like to see for this week. For week one I used a simple circle cookie cutter, this week I still wanted to keep it simple but add a cookie cutter with a more diverse pattern. The cookie cutter options that I incorporated in the poll were of the following shapes: a cloud, cacti, and a mermaids tail. With sixty four percent of the vote, cacti won!

If you read my post from week one, Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing, you may remember that the recipe I used ended in failure. The cookies did have one positive as they kept their assigned shape, but when tasting the cookies the positive outlook went out the window and I was left with forty unpleasant baked dough disks. The cookies reminded me of an old baking soda flavour, almost as though the dough was stale even after using all fresh ingredients. This week my main objective was to find a recipe that not only tasted amazing but also kept its shape, was easy to roll out, and had a smooth consistency. After a quick text conversation with my mom about the sugar cookie recipe failure, she sent me a link to a sugar cookie recipe titled The Best Sugar Cookies that one of her coworkers had previously used, and I am happy to announce that it was a victory!

Throughout this weeks process I had a helper in the kitchen.

I began the process with setting out all of my ingredients and then in two separate bowls I combined the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients. I followed the recipe as precisely as possible as I wanted the finished product to not only look pretty but also be edible this time around. Once the ingredients were combined into one large bowl, I kneaded the dough into a smooth ball and then divided the dough into two halves.

All the dry ingredients whisked together (flour, baking soda, salt, sugar).
All of the wet ingredients mixed on high for two minutes to be light and fluffy (butter, vanilla, egg whites)!

Once the dough was halved I placed each portion onto a piece of parchment paper, rolled it out to be around a quarter inch thick, moved the dough onto two baking sheets, and placed both trays into the fridge for two hours. I am also happy to report that this week I purchased a real rolling pin so I no longer needed to roll my dough with an empty bath and body works candle. During the time frame that the cookies were chilling in the fridge I reread the recipe over six times just to ensure that I had not made a mistake (and I also went to the gym hoping that the cookies would turn out and I could eat several of them that evening).

Both halves before going into the fridge for two hours to be chilled. Rolled and prepped to be cut!

Once the dough was completely chilled I took out the trays and began to cut the dough sheets into cacti shapes. Once complete I moved each individual cookie onto another baking sheet and placed them into the oven at 425 degrees for eleven minutes. As they baked I used the same recipe as last week for the royal icing as I know that it works well. I have ordered meringue powder off of amazon (so that I am able to try another royal icing recipe and method in the upcoming weeks) since Bulk Barn, Walmart, and the Co-op grocery store do not carry it due to Covid-19 and the products manufacturer. I added in a couple drops of lime green food colouring and one drop of teal food colouring to the icing mixture to make a smooth and vibrant green. The eleven minute timer came to an end, I pulled the baking sheet out of the oven, and transferred them onto a cooling rack for twenty minutes.

To end off my second week of my sugar cookie and royal icing learning project, I got to finally complete my favourite part of the whole process which is decorating each cookie. I decided to decorate nine cookies again this week, scooping the icing into piping bags and dispersing the mixture onto the cactus cookies. Once the base portion of the icing was dried I went in with another layer of icing to add lines for texture, or on other cookies I applied some magenta coloured icing to create flowers. Once again I allowed them to dry and am happy to annouce that I was thrilled with the taste and texture of both the cookie itself and the icing, as well as the way the icing dried on top of the cookie.

Week two final product!

Next week I will be using the same sugar cookie recipe, but a new cookie cutter will be introduced as well as a new royal icing recipe! If you would like to participate in the choosing of next weeks cookie cutter you can follow me on Twitter! I will see you all back here next week with another learning project update! Thank you for reading!

EDTC 300 Self Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome to, or back to my blog! My name is Sydney Kawa and on this platform you can expect to see weekly updates on my weekly learning project alongside professional posts I have created during my journey to becoming an elementary school teacher. I am currently in my third year second semester of the elementary education program, and am taking many classes including EDTC 300 (Introduction to Educational Technologies and Media).

When it comes to educational technology I can honestly say that I do not have a diverse understanding or great knowledge on the subject. In fact, this is my first time creating a Twitter account that allows me to be surrounded by other educators and education students and see in real time what is happening in the education world within Saskatchewan and Canada as a whole. I have never followed news sources that automatically connect me to new information in Saskatchewan’s education system and was not able to see what others, who are enrolled in the same program as myself, have been encountering/encouraging. I feel like EDTC 300, as a class, is bringing me closer to my peers as well as real life events that take place within a very important field of my own life.

This is my third year blogging, if you dig deep (or simply click on the menus I have created at the top of my blog) you will be able to see posts that I made back in my first year, first semester of University! I truly enjoy the process and am working on making my blog space more enjoyable to look at aesthetically and am still learning new ways to create an organized space where others can come and learn about who I am and the projects I am currently working on. Along with enjoying the blog process itself I also find it very intriguing to read about my peers who are also taking EDTC 300 at the moment as well. Since we are not all sitting in a class together at this moment in time, due to the global pandemic, I find reading others blog posts bring me closer to knowing them and learning about who they are along with their interests and skills. Along with research I have completed on my own to further enrich myself I have found many sources including 20 Tools for Online Teaching which I personally found interesting and of appropriate use during this time.

An online source that I came across upon further research.

I hope that you all enjoy my weekly blog posts and are able to learn about me, as well as come along on my journey of learning how to perfect both sugar cookies and decorating with royal icing! It is so nice to meet you all and be part of our own blog community, I cannot wait to read about you all as well!

A photo of me so you can put a face to the blog! Hello everyone!

Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing

Hello everyone and welcome to my weekly learning project based on learning how to perfect sugar cookies and flood royal icing.

Ever since last year when I was scrolling through Pinterest and discovered the world of decorating sugar cookies with royal icing, I have been interested in learning (and becoming pretty successful) in decorating each individual cutout. Not only is the end result fascinating but one can also become the ‘cool friend’ that shows up to Christmas dinners and birthday parties with themed, smooth, and creative cookies! However, I had never made a sugar cookie before alongside the fact that I knew absolutely nothing about royal icing and how it works. Upon further research (Google, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok) I had come across do’s and don’ts, successful and unsuccessful recipes, dozens of ways to make ‘The best cut-out sugar cookies‘ and ‘perfect royal icing‘, and watching endless videos of others decorating their own creations.

Ultimately a few hours later I found myself in Bulk Barn purchasing icing bags, food coloring, and nine different cookie cutters. Once I returned home I began with a recipe I found on YouTube titled Best Sugar Cookie Recipe for Cut Out Cookies, which (spoiler alert) ended up in the garbage due to the fact that it ended in crumbs rather than a smooth ball of dough. So, I moved onto the next recipe that I found on Pinterest called The Best Cut Out Sugar Cookies which officially landed me a victory (at least for the moment). I mixed, kneaded, rolled (with an old bath and body works candle that had been emptied since I forgot to purchase a rolling pin), cut, and placed my dough onto the baking sheet and into the oven, they went for ten minutes. The dough did not spread resulting in the circles I had previously cut in the dough to still be in their perfect shape.

Sugar Cookie Ingredients from First Attempt
Sugar Cookie Dough from Second Attempt

While the cookies were cooling I made my royal icing mixture (by following a YouTube video called How to Make Cookie Icing Three Ways) and decided upon using the first option displayed in the video that called for cream of tartar since I was unsuccessful in finding meringue powder anywhere in my city. After the icing was complete I added in a drop of red food colouring to create a light pink colour, put the mixture into the piping bag, and began to ice my cookies! Icing the completely cooled cookies was the highlight of the entire experience for me as it was fun, worked on my first attempt, and was satisfying as it flooded the top layer of the cookie. Although, I would like to try different royal icing recipes since it took about half an hour to completely harden which I know is longer than it should take.

Cookies Are Officially in the Oven!

Now that the cookie and icing process was complete it was time for a taste test which can be described in the kindest of words, was horrible, and tasted like dry baking soda. The icing was sweet and enjoyable but the flavour of the cookies themselves was not victorious.

Moving forward my plan is to find the perfect sugar cookie recipe with trial and error in mind, try a new royal icing recipe that hardens almost automatically, and each week a new cookie cutter will be introduced keeping the updates fun and the designs interesting!

Next week we will move onto yet another sugar cookie recipe (recipe number three) and I will update you all on both the taste and the experience! I hope you all enjoy this journey as much as I and if you have a sugar cookie recipe or suggestion please leave it down below! Thank you for reading!

Week One Finished Product!

Curriculum as Literacy

Growing up I always struggled with mathematics. I always sought extra guidance from both my teachers and peers when it came to math, as succeeding was very important to me. Being able to both understand and perform the actions expected of me kept me driven when it came to making the right decisions. As middle school turned into high school the struggle continued and it was harder for me to get the help I needed as staying after school became less likely as I took on extracurriculars and a job. There are many ways to teach math, the hardest part is the educator will teach it in the way they believe is the best, but may not have been the best way for all of us. I always wonder if maybe the lesson was taken from a different approach, if I would have understood a lot easier.

Inuit mathematics takes a different approach, they are taught to understand and learn in base 20 (I did not know about this way of learning until Math 101), learning to stories/ different ways of understanding from their elders, a freedom to create and understand in a different approach than solving assigned questions out of a textbook. This opens educators up to understanding that different ways of teaching and learning should be available within the classroom to help students become more successful and understood within their learning experience.

My Upbringing

I was born and raised in Saskatchewan, Canada making this land and my community all I seemed to know. My school was located in a small town with a population of a little less than five hundred.  We had one school that held students from preschool to grade 12, and most of the time we were in split classes never in a classroom of our own. There were six students in my grade and we were all stuck together like glue, until we weren’t. Growing up both the boys and girls had the same stories, dad was a farmer, we lived on an acreage, mom was either a nurse or a banker, and after school we would all attend the exact same job at the same gas station. We were always together and believed that this is how almost everyone across Canada lived. Except if you lived in the city, then we thought they were the exact opposite of us and we swore to not ever become city people. How the times have change.

Not only do I shake my head at how small my perception was on the people around me, but of how uninviting the small town was to people that were different than us. If you didn’t wear a farmer jacket, get in your vehicle to spin donuts in the school parking lot, and hide the teachers vehicles behind the skating rink, then you were not the type of person we wanted to be around. At this time I was sure you would not have wanted to be around us and our bad attitudes either. We learned all the same subjects as the rest of Saskatchewan and learned about European and Indigenous history and the affects it had on us and our country, however we learned more about Indigenous history than anything. The school wanted us to understand what had taken place in the past and how we could create change.

We were however very invested in taking part with the Indigenous peoples who lived around the area. We would often have someone smudge the classroom, tell a story, and we held a day every year where the whole school would stay in the gym from morning to afternoon and watch them dance, sing, present songs, and tell their stories and experiences they had within residential schools. We also took part in sweat lodges and spiritual hikes with Indigenous peoples, especially during the spring. This was a huge part of the way I grew up and the topics experienced within my classroom.

 

Curriculum Policy & Politics

Politics and policies together create and apply all aspects of education. This includes resources, ideas, topics, how/whom/what education may be provided to the student. Curriculum is public policy and is shaped by many as a group. This group includes educators, politicians, parental ideas (community), government authority, etc. Politics has a high role of power within the education system that educators seem to view negatively, as this means their thoughts and opinions based around their own work are not taken as highly as a politicians views are. This, however, does not mean that educators voices are not heard, as they are after all part of the curriculum process. Educators are deserving of having more say and seats within the room when the curriculum is being discussed and applied to learning. They apply themselves to everyday life within the schools, are involved in their classrooms, students, and other members of the board, this gives teachers a great sense of what needs to be changed or needs to stay the same. Politicians are not the ones within the classroom during the day. The community plays a role within curriculum by addressing both their issues and opinions on areas that the education system provides questioning on. For example the question being asked within this article is based on the time school runs for and the community feeling negatively against the change. Personally I remember when school ran from 9:00am to 3:00pm, but while I was in middle school it became extended to 8:55am to 3:25pm for all kids in the school (kindergarten to grade 12).

All subjects should be taken with the same amount of dedication and interest, however people seem to see some subjects within school as more important than others. This leaves a negative impact against certain subjects and interests towards them by students that stays with them even throughout their time at university. The “most important” subjects are seen as: english language arts, mathematics, and science. Subjects seen as “lesser” are physical education, arts education, creative writing, and indigenous studies. This is not the case however, each subject is applied for a reason and should demand a certain amount of time for students to spend within this topics in order to learn and grow to understand that each plays an important role within balanced education.

Treaty education should be applied with the same dedication and interest by both students and educators as the “most important” subjects are. However, Treaty education is seen as confusing and even in todays day and age, some educators will not take what they are given and teach the subject. This is problematic and needs to be changed. As Canadians we live on treaty land and need to be educated on the topic of Indigenous and treaty education in a deeper sense. This will help us connect with who we are as Canadians and finding a connection with the soil we live and grow upon.