Nhy Phan

My name is Nhy Phan who is a recent graduate and worked part-time as Graduate Research Assistant for peer-mentoring program partnership with TRU which supports ECEs across BC. I really enjoy the work that I’m doing and I’d love the chance to dig much deeper into the education field. That can explain why I’m so excited about this opportunity with River City Early Learning Centre.

I took a bit of a winding road to get to where I am today. In college, I studied finance and accounting. I found early on that working with numbers wasn’t for me and at some point I realized I looked forward to interacting and supporting people with services or any information they need through my customer service representative position in Lite-on Incorporation in California and APAC Martech Intern in Coca-Cola company in Singapore. I went back to Vietnam during the pandemic and became an English teacher. That was when for the first time I had the chance to interact with students who are children and young teenagers. They are different individually and require different approaches to communicate with. Here I have defined my leadership and communication skills.

Working in the education field inspired me to explore and I am eager to learn more about fundamental knowledge which brought me to Canada. While studying at TRU, I am fortunate to work as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Graduate Success Centre. I was responsible for supporting graduate students with academic writing for both high-order concerns (essay structure, thesis statement) and lower order concerns (grammar or sentence structure). I was also organizing, delivering and hosting workshops and events and working closely with instructors on assignments guidelines and rubrics in order to best support students. In addition, I was in charge of tracking student visits and collecting other relevant data to improve on tutoring sessions and other projects.

Another part-time position I was with is the peer-mentoring program in which I was mainly working on data analysis collected from focus groups, educator reflections and facilitator monthly reports in order to conduct reports for program management at TRU and ECEBC. During my master’s degree, not only am I able to read, analyze, and interpret information from professional journals and technical procedures, but I also participate in the ECEBC conference in which I am interacting and enriching my professional knowledge in terms of pedagogical theories and practices in the field. I transcribed interviews and focus group data to later carrying out preliminary data analysis coded in NVIVO software. After recently graduating from my master’s degree, I am looking to apply my skills and knowledge into the real world.

When I was working in Vietnam as an English teacher and coordinator, I realized my passion for education field which brought me to Canada. I just finished my Master in Education, and currently, I am enrolled to take my ECEA certificate and anticipating to complete by the end of June as the latest.