06/15/16

Royal BC Museum

Hello All!

Day three at the museum! Thus far things have been fairly fast paced and varied. Day one we helped out with a volunteer information/training session. The museum has a new exhibit on mammoths, which is a travelling exhibit from the Field Museum in Chicago. The prize element is Lyuba (pronounced yew-bah) which is an excellently preserved baby mammoth that was found a few years ago in Siberia.  The exhibit is very exciting and seems to have the public excited as well.

Day two involved two visiting school groups to the museum, wanting to see the “Our Living Languages” exhibit and the First People Gallery. The first group was a class from a local school, grades 1-2.  They had lots of fun and we talked to them about how the museum uses objects to tell stories.  The second class to come through was from Burnaby! They were a grade 4-5 French Immersion class, and after they visited us they went across the street to visit the legislature.  We did a similar activity with these kids, but it worked equally well, and the students enjoyed discussing their thoughts and writing them down in their journals.

Day 3 so far has mostly been research. We are working on creating some resources for the volunteers working with the mammoth exhibit. I am currently gathering some information on how Mammoths and Mastodons are different, creating a timeline of their existence and hopefully putting togeather a migration distribution map.  Hopefully I have the technological skills to accomplish such a feat!

06/14/16

Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art- Week 1

It is my privilege to have the opportunity to experience pedagogy from another perspective in creating curriculum for the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art in the heart of Downtown Vancouver, BC. I’m hoping these three weeks will provide me with the chance to create a meaningful and relevant Education Program for students visiting the Gallery.

It is my intention to plan and write a Program integrating Aboriginal Education in the daily curriculum, as well as to provide pre- and post-visit activities to activate knowledge and reflect on the visit. Being a Teacher Candidate in the French Elementary cohort, I will be able to provide a valuable resource for French Immersion field trips. I will create the Program and English and in French in order to help the Gallery provide French resources with the Programs they provide.

My activities this week

This week I have familiarized myself with the Gallery, the collection, and the expectations of the Program to be written. I have carte blanche for the theme to be explored in the Program, which is both a blessing and a curse: the possibilities are endless. I often go down to the Gallery to explore the collection and make mind maps of themes/ concepts I would like to explore in writing my school program.

In order to prepare myself for the creation of the Program, I have read the existing content created by the Gallery staff and previous CFE students. (I included research on the new B.C. curriculum and integrating Aboriginal Education in our daily practice). I have selected the Big Ideas, Curricular Competencies, and Content to focus on in the creation of the Program for intermediate students visiting the Gallery.

I feel a bit overwhelmed with the task ahead as the possibilities seem endless and it easy to fall into the trap to want to do too much in these few weeks. I should also keep in mind that the Program students will follow while visiting the Gallery is only about an hour. I have to limit my scope and start writing the Program so I can add worksheets and relevant material only.

My plan(s) for next week

Next week, I will be leading a school tour (Storytelling in the Gallery) and I hope that will allow me to see the Gallery and the collection from a new perspective and use that to fine-tune my program during the last week. My goal is to provide teachers with pre-activities that will activate prior knowledge and curiosity before the visit, a relevant, meaningful and engaging Program during the visit, and post-visit activities which will allow students to reflect on the visit and their learning once they’re back in the classroom. There are also some other activities coming up during the last week that sound very exciting, but also a bit intimidating. Since June 21st is National Aboriginal Day, there will be a Citizenship Ceremony held at the Gallery on that day.

My practicum experience and the pro-D series I have attended during my extended practicum will allow me to design a relevant and engaging unit for the Gallery using the new B.C. curriculum. While organizing a field trip for my practicum class, I kept running into the lack of French resources at the sites, and having to translate them myself. I think having the documents in French might open up possibilities for French Immersion classes to attend the Gallery in larger numbers.

I feel very privileged to have the opportunity not only to write a unit in a period of three weeks rather than in a shorter time as was the case during practicum. I’m looking forward to approaching learning from another perspective and utilizing my skills as a teacher to create an Education Program. It is an immense pleasure to work in such an inspiring environment as the Gallery. However, copyright and respect for the artist may limit my possibilities to post pictures and videos of my experience on my blog.

06/14/16

The Royal BC Museum as a Generator of Knowledge

            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.

06/14/16

Gulf Islands- Classifying Clams and Building Banana Boats

Similar to the classroom, during my CFE I have come to expect that no two days will be alike.  I started off my experience on Monday heading to Saltspring Island to help with bivalve sampling.  Our job was to dig 25cm x 25cm quadrants and then identify, measure and weigh the clams.  I learned about the power of team work and community, as we raced against the tide to complete 40 quadrants before the water could wash away our hard work.  As teachers, we always ask our students to participate in group work activities.  It was refreshing and a good reminder to have to work with people towards a common goal.

On Wednesday I was able to take part in the cultural clam garden workshop put on by Parks Canada Gulf Island National Reserves and Royal Roads.  The Brentwood Bay WSANEC school came over to Fulford Harbour and we had a Coast Salish pit cook.  This is where a big hole is dug into the ground.  Hot rocks are pushed in first, followed by wet skunk cabbage leaves, burlap sacks full of cut vegetables are tossed in, and then salmon berry bushes are piled on top.  Fresh water is poured over the mixture, and then a blanket is used to make sure the sand (which is put on the top) doesn’t enter the sacks.  We also cooked oysters over the fire, and smoke salmon.  Before lunch, an elder told us three stories.  This was one of the best parts of the day, as not only did he tell us traditional stories, but he also broke down the components of each story, enabling us to truly understand the cultural aspect and power of the stories.

The Sidney night market took place on Thursday, and as part of our outreach program, I helped make Banana boats and talked to the public about the Gulf Islands.  This was also a wonderful experience dealing with the public’s questions, as well as learning about the interest in the Parks.  I am looking forward to what new exciting things I will be able to learn this week!

 

06/14/16

Week one at PALS!

Week one at the PALS Autism School adult program has been great. It has been an adjustment going from long practicum where we were teaching everything, to CFE where I have taken on a more observational role for the first week. Now that I have spent a week observing I am exciting to begin teaching lessons in week two.

The adult program is fantastic! It is made up of a variety of life skills lessons that include things such as practicing with money, grocery shopping, social thinking and preparing for work in the community.

What I have found the most interesting so far is the token reward system used by almost all of the students. We have learned a lot about various types of motivation and what has the best long term results vs. short term results. During long practicum I was in a classroom where it was not in the classroom culture to use extrinsic motivation and thus there were no reward systems in place. Seeing how a reward system where students are collecting tokens to work towards a prize, works, has been a new experience. It is clear that this population of students thrives off of this system and requires the extrinsic motivation to focus on expected behaviours for everyday adult life. It is very clear how they respond and react to gaining or for some students losing tokens. I have a lot of questions already about this type of token system and the research that is out there regarding a token system and adults or children who have autism.

 

Overall, it has been a big change from teaching children to teaching adults. I look forward to the following two weeks when I begin to lead more of the lessons and learn more about managing a group of 4-5 students all with varying needs and abilities.