The first week of my CFE has been quite a pleasant surprise. I have witnessed firsthand the role of the Royal BC Museum as an institution that embraces the spirit and aim of the new curriculum. It does so by providing its visitors, staff and volunteers with the opportunity of being the ones who actively engage with knowledge and formulate their own inquiry questions, making them generators rather than passive receptors of their own learning. I have also been greatly impressed by how the Museum reaches out to the community and does not simply wait to be visited by it.

            On the very first day at the Museum we took part in one of the “Interpretive Sessions” done with the Museum volunteers. The purpose of this session was to have us, the UBC students, and the volunteers look critically at the Mammoth exhibition and select the facts that were most interesting to each one of us so the Learning Department could reflect on how to improve the experience of all the people who visit the exhibition. Emphasis was placed on the fact that any suggestions should come from our own interest; in my case, I was very much surprised by the fact that mammoths originated in Africa and later spread to those regions where one commonly associates them with, such as Siberia.

            The next day we helped in facilitating two field trips. The first was of a Grade 1-2 group from Victoria, and the second a Grade 4-5 group from Burnaby. It may seem obvious, but the fact that a school is coming to Victoria all the way from Burnaby showed me how the Museum is a focal point, a magnet if you wish, of the greater learning community that is the whole of BC. I say this because for the last ten weeks I was very much aware of mostly one learning community- the one of the school in which I was doing my practicum. It took only two days to notice how the Museum goes beyond its nearest sphere of influence, Victoria, to schools in the mainland and even further beyond if one considers the many foreign tourists who visit it.

            The school sessions were also centered on the students as the generators of the knowledge, of the inquiry questions. The children were divided into groups, and each group was given a First Nations artifact without being told what it was. The students were encouraged to infer the use of the object, but first they had to describe it. They could also ask “wonder questions”, that is, question the artifact as if it could give them an answer. I chose a mat creaser for the two groups I worked with. This approach was very interesting, particularly with the grade 4-5 group, because the students were able to pose questions that came from their analysis of the weight, shape and features of the object. The students thought it could be a food grinder, a toy or decorating object, and were genuinely surprised by its actual use when they found the creaser in the First Nations Gallery.

            But the event that definitely caught my attention the most was the screening of a live dive at the IMAX Theatre in the Museum. This is an initiative of the Fish Eye project, an environmental organization whose main goal is to innovate the way in which students learn about the oceans. In partnership with the Museum and as part of World Oceans Day, they held a live, interactive transmission of a dive from Ogden Point. I had the opportunity of witnessing this special event, together with 4,000 students in the province, who also got to ask questions to the naturalist “guiding” us through the underwater world that was being filmed. This live screening was part of a “World Oceans Day Expo” the Museum put together for this day, and in which several other institutions and organizations were present, such as UVIC, the David Suzuki Foundation, Ocean Networks Canada and the Shaw Centre for the Salish Sea, just to mention a few. This event and the live screening have given me a new understanding of the Museum as a generator and not a mere repository of knowledge, of the work that is being done here and, equally important, of how it is being done: in partnership with the visitors, the students and the greater BC community.