My name is Ethan Greenwood, a teacher candidate with a background in English and Fine Arts. My passion for education stems from a lifelong love of storytelling, creativity, and community – skills I aim to foster in my future students. I believe that language and art are powerful mediums for self-expression, connection and change.
Beyond the classroom, I am an avid reader (despite what my Goodreads goal might suggest), a volleyball player, a disc golfer, an artist and a part-time outdoorsman. Literature, storytelling, sports and nature are integral to my personal ethos, which reflect my values of critical analysis, community, athleticism and ecological stewardship.
Sport, in particular, shapes my approach to education. Teamwork, collaboration and sportsmanship are essential – not just for sport to be enjoyable, but for it to be meaningful as well. These same principles apply in the classroom as well: strong teams create community and community creates environments where learning can thrive holistically.
Likewise, reading is something I am equally passionate about in regards to education. Reading is not only a privilege but a powerful medium that shapes whose stories are able to be told, and whose voices are heard. Without diving too deeply into Foucauldian concepts of power and privilege, I believe that story – and by extension, the reading of stories – is central to identity, representation and the truth of the individual and group. In a world of inequities, story matters.
“This experience led me to form a hypothesis: perhaps the wisdom of birds resides, not in the individual, but in the flock, the congregation.”
Susanna Clark, Piranesi
