Tag Archives: PSC

My experiences learning French: Part 3 – Return to Asticou

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
December 7 2015

I had been back at Asticou about five weeks when I realized that the passive receiver of language learning was not working for me, and I spent a weekend thinking about some of the challenges I had gone through in the previous year. I kept coming back to the tutor’s analysis — I wasn’t letting go. Except I had, at least to the extent I could i.e. the extent that was within my personality and my learning style, and it hadn’t worked. I needed a different option. Since letting go wasn’t working, what if I took full control?

Lots of people might read that sentence and think, “Oh, of course, the student has to drive their own learning, be responsible, be engaged, etc.”. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something much more dramatic.

I went into my first interview on the Monday morning and it was with a teacher I knew well.  » Read the rest

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My experiences learning French: Part 2 – My first tutor

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
December 6 2015

Even though all of us said that we weren’t ready (My experiences learning French – Part 1), the school sent us for the oral test.

And all of us except one failed. The one who passed? The weakest one among us. Partly as her “stories” for telling what she did for a living were pretty simple in comparisons — she was a clerk who did very basic admin work. No one asked her how she answered the phone or sorted the mail. No follow-up questions, ever.

One of the other people in the group was a policy analyst, like me, and during their test, they were asked to explain “How do you go about analysing a policy?”. Umm, what? That question makes no sense. It’s like asking a car mechanic what steps they do to “mechanize” a car. Asking how to do research or do data analysis might be real questions, but an analyst couldn’t answer it well in english, let alone french.  » Read the rest

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My experiences learning French: Part 1 – Intro to Asticou

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
December 5 2015

I am a not a linguist by anyone’s definition. I’m not very eloquent in speaking English, let alone any other language. I can write pretty well in English, and I edit even better, but other languages were never my strength. I grew up in Peterborough, which was not exactly the hub of linguistic diversity. Or any other kind of diversity, for that matter, at the time, although it’s changed a lot since I was a kid.

Early learning

We started French in grade 4 or 5 as I recall. I was okay, mostly because I was a good student, not because I had an aptitude for it. One year we did “French Xmas” i.e. we made yule log cakes, basically made lunch for the other teachers and one or two parents. I don’t even remember if we got to have any ourselves, other than the cake. I do remember that we got to go into the teacher’s lounge, and for the era, being shocked to see teachers acting normal instead of like their classroom personas.  » Read the rest

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Priority referrals from PSC: A new pilot project…

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
January 23 2012

It’s not that often that you see the Public Services Commission doing something innovative, but a new pilot project that starts today may qualify. And with all things HR-related, the impact may turn out to be either good or bad for employees on a referral list, depending on how the theory translates into practice.

So here’s the quick background you need to know first. When someone is declared surplus for whatever reason (relocation, program was cut, etc.), they can be put on a priority list for future jobs. Then, when any jobs come up in their region that match their skill sets, they’ll get referred to the hiring manager as a highly-possible hire. Unlike a regular applicant though where a hiring manager decides if a candidate meets the essential experience requirements and then invites them into a selection process (i.e. “screens” them in), a priority referral really IS a priority — if they meet the requirements, then the hiring manager MUST hire them.  » Read the rest

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