About me
Greetings,
I am a fourth year student in the Bachelors of Education program at the University of Victoria. I grew up in Nanaimo where I attended Mcgirr Elementary and Dover Bay secondary before graduating in 2012. I took my first year of University level classes at Uvic. After which, I choose to take the opportunity to work and travel. I started by taking a job as a Nanny for a newly immigrated Chinese family. My main task was to work with the nine year old with her homework and it became more of a tutoring job than a caregiver job. It was honestly one of the best experience to date. The mother spook no English and we had to do all our communication through wild gestures, Google Translator and points to the objects near by. It was a great learning experience. At one point, the mother had a business trip Philadelphia and offered for me to come along so that her daughter could come and have someone to look after her. We ended up going to New York for a few days before going to Philadelphia for a week. It was different to travel with a group that doesn't speak the same language and we definitely had to get creative to get our point across. I would have loved to work for that family for the rest of the year, but I had other things to consider, so I moved to Calgary to work two jobs for a few months. At the end of the summer I had the chance to travel to Portugal to walk the Camino De Santiago starting from the border of Spain and Portugal. I spent five days backpacking through Spain with my Father. Neither of us speak any Spanish, so again I had to rely on my gesturing skills to get my point across. I'm back to school now, and loving the chance to continue to learn and grow. The opportunities I had during my year off has definitely stirred a passion in me for working with ESL students. I would really like to be able to pursue that line of work when I am done my Degree. Preferably, I'd like to spend at least a few years working oversees.
- First name: Emma
- Last name: Denhoff
- Country: Canada
Interests
Writing is a huge interest of mine. I love to write and read. I can get lost for hours in literature. My favorite author is Tamora Pierce. She is a teen fiction writer that has written over 22 publish books over her career. I've fallen in love with several books over the years. Book Thief was my one true love in grade 9, the Summer of Grade 10 I read Les Miserable for the first time. I property watched the play twice once I was finished the book. Like all things, the book was better than the play but still I loved the story. Salinger, a biography on the author J.D Salinger, was my book of choice this August. I've just picked up Prince by Machiavelli and I've found it to be very interesting to read. I didn't start reading regularly until I was in grade 7, but since then I've always had a book on the go.
Gardening is another interest of mine. Living in a small apartment hasn't left me with a lot of opportunists to garden, but I take what I can get and happily spend spring and summer days weeding and watering planters. My favorite plan is Basil, specifically Sweat Basil. An odd choice I know, but it is the plant that seems to do the best on my deck and I use it regularly in my cooking. I'm an amateur in gardening, but I look forward to reading and learning more as time goes. Hopefully one day soon I'll have the space to have my own garden that I can fill with herbs and flowers.
Traveling is another passion of mine. I've been to a few countries: England, France, Hungry, Spain, Portugal, Costra Rica, and several states in the United States. I'd love to see more of the world. To backpack across Europe or work in Taiwan. After working for a Chinese family for several months as a nanny I have an urge to see all of China as well. I've also had several co-works from the Philippines who have told me about the many great things to see and visit, I'd like to get the chance to one day.
About the Kid President Video
The video bellow is a message from a child to teachers and it is one of those videos that puts a smile on my face. It is the little moments that motivate most teachers to keep teaching even when faced with particularly hard times. The video bellow is a reminder of some of those little moments.