About Me

In A Nutshell…

I am Krystle, Krystle Darla Doreen Valliere.  I grew up in the fresh and fierce Northern Saskatchewan CITY of Meadow Lake.  It is important to note the fact that Meadow Lake is a city, because although it may feel like a quaint and friendly, slow paced lifestyle, come rush hour, the one set of traffic lights can indeed cause a ruckus.  By ruckus, of course I mean a three or four car pile up throwing off people's five minute (maximum) commute to or from their places of work.

Anyways, more about me!  I am Metis, which is awesome, although I do not know much about my Aboriginal roots, I am beginning to dig deeper and find out more about this side of m heritage.  I suppose I should have said that I am a Scottish, Welsh, Metis; however, I do not like to sound pretentious.  I am a very social person.  Boy oh boy can I talk, especially if you get me on the topic of travel, culture or language.  All three topics provide the opportunity for riveting conversation.  In my spare time you will find me coaching or playing volleyball, getting my hair wet and swimming a couple laps at the pool or making new friends at the nearest coffee shop.

As of right now, I have to be honest and say that I really do not like technology.  To me, it hinders conversation, causes constant misunderstandings, and only works on a good day.  To sum it up, technology frustrates me.  Of course I am open minded about it.  I can see the good side of technology as well and how it can be implemented into a classroom.  Living in a country such as Canada, this is not such a hard picture to visualize: rooms full of computers, students using iPads or iPhones to conduct research etc.  However, having travelled and taught in different parts of our world, I feel that people are putting so much emphasis on technology that they are forgetting about the basic ways of passing on knowledge.  It does not all have to be about inquiry, and research.  Storytelling and face to face conversation are tools that we should also be concentrating on improving and hopefully we will experience less technical difficulties.

I have been fortunate enough to travel a fair bit before the dark shadow of student loans began looming over every penny I earn.  Thus far, I have ventured to Mexico, Italy, France, Scotland, and Kenya.  All journeys were amazing in unique ways and taught me lessons that could not be learned from a book, website or online journal.  I am a firm believer in the fact that experience is the greatest educator of all and in saying so, it is my goal to see and do as much as possible before, during and after my teaching career.  Technology helps me to stay in touch with the many people I encountered throughout my travels; however, nothing will ever surpass the first hand experience of actually being there.  Had I taken a cell phone or even a camera, I feel that some or most authenticity would have been lost.  I am not interested in "capturing" a moment.  I am more so interested in the feeling, and realness of amazing experiences.  I feel that by actually living in the moment instead of trying to preserve it, I will be better equipped to pass on the knowledge and experience.