Patrick S. T. Blois

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I grew up in the town of Enfield, Nova Scotia. I played ice hockey in the winter and soccer in the summer. I spent weekends at the family dairy farm, and the rest was spent running around outside my home in the subdivision. My childhood was exciting and full of the adventures and discoveries that come with living in a rural community, just outside the city of Halifax.

 

I did well at school -- achieving honours for achievements in junior-high and senior-high, while playing competitive hockey and soccer. But there were also many other personal interests growing up, like creative writing and art. 

 

Summer jobs shaped my work ethic. Manual labour can teach valuable life skills and I believe that a significant part of my determination comes from these years of hard work.

 

I also spent a summer as a hockey coach at a sports camp in the United States. This was to be my first experience coaching and working with kids. It was this experience that led me to consider a career in education after university.

 

After graduating from St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, I spent time travelling and working in different parts of Canada. I was a labourer for home foundation crews, a line-cook, a roughneck and motor hand on oil-well drilling rigs, and finally as a both a door-to-door and commercial sales representative.

 

It was time for a change, and so we completed a sixty hour TESOL course with Oxford seminars in Calgary, Alberta and my partner and I made arrangements to move to Beijing, China.
 

In China, I discovered my passion for teaching. During these two years, I worked with kindergarteners as an English specialist at a Montessori school, helping students develop their language through story-telling and play. 

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In 2011, I registered and enrolled in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Over the course of my B. Ed. program, I was determined to become a certified teacher,  travelling and teaching internationally.  

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My first three years of certified teaching began in Seoul, South Korea -- at a British Columbia Offshore school. The past five years of teaching have been spent at an American international school in Cairo, Egypt.

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Due to the onset of the pandemic in 2020, I have since returned to Canada. I am now a TTOC and temporary teacher in a school district on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. 

 

Life-long learning is an ideal that an educator adheres to -- both in professional practice and in personal life. Recognizing that there is a learning opportunity in every experience has helped me to overcome many obstacles and has been essential to my own growth and development as a person.