Welcome!

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog!

For all my new readers, my name is Ella Wiernikowski, and I am currently a teacher candidate doing a Bachelor of Education at Brock University. Before this, I did my undergraduate at the University of Toronto.  I graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Arts having done a Specialist in French Linguistics.  I love French, and really just languages in general.  I speak three languages at the moment, English, French, and Polish (not fluently).  I've also started the exciting journey into learning ASL, but that's going to be a long work in progress.

If you couldn't tell, my hope is to be a Primary/Junior teacher in a French Immersion school.  I knew I wanted to teach French when I was about 13 years old, and have modelled my life around that goal ever since.  When I was in the 12th grade, I applied to be an Au Pair for the Wells family in Paris, and thankfully got the job! In very quick succession, I graduated high school, turned 18, and by the end of August I packed up and re-settled in Paris for the year! It was incredible. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about my Parisian journey! Since getting back I did my undergraduate degree in French, and have worked at summer camps and with Polish Scouting to get more work with children under my belt.

I do enjoy things other than languages my friends, so don't think I have a one-track mind! In my free time I love reading, doing yoga, watercolour painting, and bullet-journaling (if you don't know what that is, I highly recommend looking it up).

This blog is going to be centered around my life as a teacher, and my Genius Hour project. What is a Genius Hour project you might ask? Well, in my spare moments for the next six weeks, I am doing a personal project to help improve my fluency in Polish.  I am half Polish (in case my last name didn't give it away), but my other half is Irish/Canadian.  We speak next to no Polish at home, and aside from talking with my Babcia (grandmother), I don't get in a lot of practice. I'm hoping that by the end of my project, I feel more confident speaking, can read Polish with a bit more fluency, and am able to have a small conversation with a family member/loved one without using any English fillers!  A lot of these goals (aside from fluency while reading) will be hard to measure in scientific terms per-say, since I don't really have a way to measure my prior knowledge. I will be measuring my success mostly by how I feel while speaking, and if I can achieve a lesser amount of English fillers while speaking (none at all would be preferable).

I hope you decide to come on this journey with me, and maybe, learn something new!