Tomas Bonafine
I have worked with Children in one way or another since I was 11 years old. My family is a family of educators, my Paternal Grandparents were teachers, my parents were teachers, and I will become a teacher. I was always drawn to education because it has always come second nature to me. I was born in Argentina in 1998 and in 2001 my family immigrated to Canada. we landed in Calgary and then moved to Prince George in 2005. I attended UNBC in 2016 and Graduated in 2021 with a Bachelor in History and Minor in First Nations. During the Pandemic I worked for the red cross helping in the vaccination clinic here in Prince George. I met a large portion of the community, and it was the first time I felt like I had a positive impact on my community. As in any job there are good and bad days, the vaccine was so politicised that we had our fair share of difficult people. I learned that you will always find resistance when working with the public and the only thing you can do sometimes in breath through it and know that you are helping people. After the clinic closed I began my journey in education, first by volunteering in a Spanish class with one of my teachers in College Heights, then I worked as a TTUC at Scared Hearts Elementary School where I found my persona as a teacher and fell in love with teaching and then in January of 2022 I began working with an LOP in College Heights Secondary as a Social Studies nine teacher. It was a real crash course in the mechanical side of teaching and I am forever grateful to my old teachers that helped me. One of the negative things I learned that I have had to unlearn is that an LOP is very isolating and you are let loose in the classroom with no scaffolding, you create your own on the fly so taking a step back now is very difficult.