Welcome back!

The past few weeks we’ve been putting our community project into action. We had to create a project proposal to put all of our plans down on paper. Here is our Project Proposal for your perusal. We’ve gotten a good start down the road of our project, but we’ve still got quite a journey ahead of us. 

The journey so far has been interesting – now that we are actually starting to tour the school gardens and do the actual work, things are not going quite as expected. Now you might be wondering, what exactly have we done so far? In this blog we’ll be outlining our achievements so far, what has been particularly challenging and what is up next for us.

Weekly Objectives and Achievements

WEEKS 3 & 4

• • • Attend the first F2S meeting at the VSB Education Centre

Achievements

• • • Introduced ourselves to Sam and Lori
    • Signed up for walking tours at Thunderbird Elementary and Grandview Elementary
    • Completed the first draft for Blog Post #1

WEEKS 5 & 6

• • • Attend the walking tour at Thunderbird Elementary on February 7th
    • Begin organizing data gathered during the tour at Thunderbird Elementary
    • Complete the project proposal report

Achievements

• • • • Attended the walking tour at Thunderbird Elementary and recorded qualitative and quantitative data through audio recording and photographs
      • Completed and revised our project proposal report 

WEEKS 7 & 8

• • • • Attend the walking tour at Grandview Elementary on March 1st
      • Begin organizing data gathered during the tour at Grandview Elementary
      • Begin compiling data from the two walking tours into separate multimedia reports

Achievements

• • • • • Coming up!

A Moment of Significance 

What?

Within our team, we all agreed the most significant moment that has occurred during the course so far was the first walk-through at Thunderbird Elementary. Going back to before the first meeting with the Farm to School team, we were all a bit confused about the project and didn’t know exactly how to approach it. However, by listening and asking questions during the meeting with our F2S coordinators, Sam and Lori, we were able to develop a clearer picture of the project. Through this initial meeting, we were able to gain a better understanding of what our project would be about and how we, as LFS 350 students, are able to contribute to the overall Indigenous Foodscapes project conducted by F2S. Connected to the lecture, constructing indigenous foodscape is critical to our local food system as it represents indigenous people and culture. We learned about F2S’s visions and goals and had a vision of how to approach it, but did not know exactly what would happen during the walk-through. 

 

When we were first told about our role in the project, we felt that the workload would be quite light. Having attended the first school tour, we realized that things weren’t exactly as expected.  Our tour was a unique one in that the students were a part of our tour. The tour was guided much more towards their learning than our project. So it made it hard to record everything we needed. In addition, the raining weather also increased the difficulties of data recording. Afterwards we did a brief walk-through in the area that they could plant in, plus a lunch time meeting with teachers, but the experience was overall very different than we expected. 

So what?

This project is going to be a challenge, especially when things don’t go as planned. However, the Indigenous Foodscapes project provides a chance for us to learn multiple skills including interpersonal communication, data collection, and the creation of multimedia reports. After learning about the ultimate goal of the project, we are delighted to be able to take part in such a small, but critical component of the project. Similar to tiny gears in an enormous and complicated machine, our contributions may seem small, but it plays a significant role in the overall project. Although we were taken by surprise by the experience we had during our first tour, we are able to learn from that opportunity and adequately prepare for our second walking tour. 

Now what?

Learning from the first tour, we can improve our experience at the next walking tour at Grandview Elementary by becoming more familiar with the key themes of the project. Additionally, we can prepare more questions in order to obtain more accurate and detailed information about the school’s assets and needs. Because of uncertain factors from the schools, such as gardening sites and compost stations, we can actively keep in touch with the teachers to receive updated data.

Upcoming Objectives

OBJECTIVE 1

• • • • • Complete multimedia reports for both Thunderbird Elementary and Grandview Elementary

Strategies

• • • • • • Organize data collected from the two walking tours and put them into an easy-to-read format
          • Compile a list of plants or structural needs for each of the two elementary schools

OBJECTIVE 2

• • • • • • Attend the second F2S meeting on March 5th and present our draft multimedia reports

Strategies

• • • • • • • Arrive early to the meeting and be prepared to present our reports to the F2S team

OBJECTIVE 3

• • • • • • • Begin drafting the final report and infographic

Strategies

• • • • • • • • Find and become familiar with an infographics program
              • Integrate feedback from Sam and Lori into our final reports