Hi, my name is Karla Germaine.
I grew up in Saskatchewan, but currently work as an English and Social
Studies high school teacher in Fernie, BC, which is in the Southeast corner of
the province, about an hour from the boarders of both Alberta and Montana. Fernie is a mining and ski resort town of
about five thousand people. I arrived in
Fernie after having worked overseas with my husband (who is also a teacher) in
a number of private high schools around the world – Costa Rica, Turkey, Kuwait,
and Columbia, before settling in Fernie with our two young children. We’ve been working in Fernie for over ten
years, although our initial intention was to stay for two! We love the beauty of the town and the close
community. It’s a great place to raise
our two children, now ages 13 and 11. When I am not working, I like to garden, renovate, go for long walks,
and travel.
My education background includes two degrees from The University
of Saskatchewan (B.Ed. and B.A.), and a degree from McGill University (M.A. in
English). I’ve been teaching for almost twenty years and have been working at
Fernie Secondary School (230 students from grades 7-12) for the last six years.
Perhaps due to my involvement with our public library (I’m the chair of the
board of trustees) my school administration invited me to give up one class of
English to replace it with 0.25 time as a teacher-librarian (one of my
colleagues also works in the library 0.125 time).
Our school has not had a librarian in more than ten years. My
colleague and I were asked to step in 0.37 time to implement the language of
the 2002 collective agreement (we are replacing a woman who worked as an
administrative clerk at the desk of the library). I am hoping the course work for the diploma
will help me to meet some of challenges we are facing as we work to establish a
new library culture and manage outdated resources. I am looking forward to discussions with
other school librarians and I hope to be inspired by the work others are
doing. I love learning and am excited to
be back in a university course (this is my second diploma course and first time using twitter or using a blog to post assignments).
email:
karla.germaine@sd5.bc.ca
twitter: Karla Germaine@KarlaGermaine1blog: kargermaine.blogspot.com
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