Strategies for a Graceful Dismount

“A moment of significant change is when a critical event adjusts people’s beliefs and attitudes”

– Group 16


Hello again and happy Movember November! We hope you have enjoyed following along on our journey so far! Last week we visited Gordon Neighbourhood House (GNH) for the third time, and served our second community lunch. We prepared a vegetarian chilli and a house green salad for this second session. From our observations and interviews, the community members seemed to enjoy the meal. Furthermore, they provided positive feedback to the new meal. Excited to receive feedback, we collected ratings and comments for our new meal. The data collected will be shared in our final project and infographic in early December.

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Photo credit: Ula Zhu


Weekly Objectives & Achievements

  • What?

So far, our goals have been achieved and we are able to meet our deadlines. Fortunately, we have been able to utilize our flexible learning periods, by visiting GNH and working on our community based experiential learning (CBEL) project. Additionally, the timing of the Wednesday lunches aligned perfectly with class time so that we did not have to find days outside of our class schedule in order to do the project. During the second Wednesday lunch, some challenges arose and we easily resolved them through discussion among group members and communication with the community partner. For example, we felt uncertain when participants asked for extra food. After consulting the chef’s opinions, we decided not to give out extra servings as it would not be fair for other participants since we do not have sufficient amounts for everyone to receive a second helping. According to Shuman (2005), an educational psychologist, uncertainty in learning encourge students to spend more time in figuring out rules of management and focus on increasingly complex subject matter. Since we have finished all of our data collection in a timely manner, we have the next flexible learning period to work on data analysis, putting the information together and start working on the project report together. Yay!

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Photo credit: Ula Zhu

  • So What?

Presently, we have compiled data from comment cards and observations, as well as analyzed some of the feedback. So far, we have been brainstorming ideas to properly display data. Charts, bar graphs and photos are most likely the most effective way to show our results. Since our project is mainly observation and conversation based and set in a lunch program, our data analysis will be simpler than other projects in our class. We will compare feedback from our two visits. In addition, we would like to evaluate the forms qualitatively to see if there is a difference in ratings of our meals between the two weeks.

  • Now What?

This week our objective is to uncover current literature and historic archives relevant to our community project. We are hoping to find more information on GNH, community lunch programs and their association with food justice in a procedural justice framework. According to Gibb & Wittman (2013), justice in the food system can ensure equal distributed benefits and burdens; procedure justice framework helps us recoginze and respect diverse pespectives of the food system. GNH plays a critical role in food justice by sharing and distributing locally grown food and make them accessible for the community. Moving forward, there is still a lot of uncertainty in our project. Although all the data collection and community work is done, we still need to write our report and finish up our final presentation and infographic. There is a lot of work to be done! With end of semester projects and papers in other courses in addition to LFS 350, we will definitely have our hands full. Despite a lot of course work, our group is supportive and everyone is a good team player. We know that together we can finish the semester strong!

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Photo credit: Ula Zhu


Moment of Significant Change Workshop

  • What?

What does a moment of significant change mean to us? A moment of significant change is when a critical event adjusts people’s attitudes and beliefs (Group 16, 2016). In our tutorial this week we reflected on moments of significant change within our project and discussed the progression of our project thus far. We also talked about successful project completion in terms of knowledge, skills and emotions. By the end of the course we all hope to have greater knowledge and skill sets of our community partner centre as well as a positive final experience working together as a group and with GNH.

First, we started off by reflecting individually on moments of significant change in our knowledge of GNH, skills of the overall project, and finally, our emotions towards the project. We each constructed a line graph for each of these three areas. We then shared our graphs among the group and realized that we had many of the same moments of significance, as well as similar attitudes towards them. After discussing our thoughts and feelings with one another, we chose 7 moments of critical significance that we all agreed upon for our knowledge and skills and 5 for our emotions. Then, we constructed two larger line graphs: one with knowledge and skills, and the other with emotions. Our seven moments of significance for knowledge and skills were: meeting each other, our first visit to GNH to meet our community partner, our first blog posting,  our proposal report,  our 2nd visit to GNH to make the first meal, our second blog posting and our 3rd visit to GNH to make the second meal. As for the moments of significance for emotions we excluded our two blog postings. After plotting our individual points, we were able to visualize our concurrent feelings with our progress so far and that we all have high (and attainable) expectations for the end of the project and course.

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  • So What?

From plotting the Skill & Knowledge graph, all of our group members agreed to have more knowledge about the GNH, communities and food security, and enhance our communication and meal prepartion skills through this project.

Our most positive feelings were felt when we visited GNH and when we were interacting with the community members. We felt the most frustrated when we were writing assignments. We tried our best to follow rubrics, but we felt as though our marks did not reflect our effort. We also felt that the assignment outlines were very unclear, making it difficult to decipher the writing requirements.

The first time that we met our group members left a strong impression and we all felt that we would be a compatible group. It was a significant moment in all of our minds because we knew that we would be working very closely together for the next three months.

The first visit to GNH stood out as a moment of significance because we increased our knowledge of the community centre and its members, as well as developed our interpersonal skills. As we mentioned in a previous blog posting, there existed some uncertainty prior to our visit to GNH especially the way that the Wednesday lunches were run. After communicating with our community partners, we gained a better understanding of the mission and values of GNH as well as some details about our project. It was a valuable experience touring around the whole community house, learning about the operations of different programs, familiarizing oursevles in the kitchen area where we would be working in the future. Getting to know the staff would also be an asset.

The first blog posting was significant for our group members because once we recieved our mark, we had a better understanding of the marking scheme. Most of us have never completed blog postings for other classes in the past so it is a completely new experience.

Our proposal report brought out a few negative emotions. As stated in our previous blogs, we felt lost on how to approach the proposal. On the other hand, with a few hardships came learning. We learned how to create an effective proposal. The skills that we have learned from writing the proposal will become useful in the future should we ever need them.

The second visit to GNH, similarly to the first one, brought happy emotions. After every visit with our community partner, we gained significant insight into GNH, the staff, the volunteers and importantly, the community members.

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Photo credit: Ula Zhu

Our second blog posting allowed us to review on the things that we completed so far. This blog posting allows us to reflect as a group of the progress of our project and see whether we are doing things at the right pace. The weekly objectives and achievements allow us to check for things to improve our group’s teamwork abilities which enable us improve our group’s productivity for the future assignments.

Our third visit to GNH showed us the complexity of the community centre. We got to interview staff and volunteers and gained understanding of the issues that community members faced in their daily lives. Food insecurity, mobility issues and low income were a few of the resonating issues that we learned along the way. We also realized that GNH, being a non-profit organization, needs to allocate their funds very carefully. We also felt a little bit helpless as we wanted to help in the best way that we could, but with low funds we were restricted. Nonetheless, our relationship with our community partner stayed strong.

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Photo credit: Ula Zhu

Positive attitudes and emotions were associated with each other and GNH. We found that having hands on experience created a constructive learning environment for us. We feel that we finally understand how LFS 350 will aid us in the future. Negative emotions were felt towards assignments. Our perceptions of the world, especially GNH and the community members, is now different. We realize that there are several right ways of accomplisihing things. We believe that it is truly important to put the needs of the community first by listening and integration into the community.

  • Now What?

By the end of the course we will have greater knowledge and skills in relation to GNH. We will look back on this experience as a positive one. Looking forward, we hope to have a complete appreciation of GNH and everyone in it. Having reviewed the positives and the negatives in the course, during the moment of significant change workshop, we now feel that we are on the final leg of our journey. We can work together to make the best experience for all and stay positive to the end. Our future plans include: meeting with group members at least once a week, clearly defining roles, using the strengths of our group members to our advantage and keeping a positive outlook. As a group, we will increase our group’s productivity and performance by approaching tasks and solving problems together. The completion of our Infographic, presentation and final report will help us spread our findings of the GNH Pay-What-You-Can lunch and the community members so that people can have a better understanding of food insecurity and strategies to combat food insecurity in the West End of Vancouver.

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Photo credit: Ula Zhu

 


Strategies for a Graceful Dismount

As of right now, we feel marvelous about the progress we have made. Between group members, we haven’t had any conflicts. We plan to continue our ways of communication and the distribution of work. By having a strong group dynamic, we are supportive of group members –  by replying to emails/questions timely and debriefing after each flexible learning session to discuss our progress and challenges. Also, setting deadlines will help improve our group’s time management and participation with the end of the year nearing and when multiple assignments/projects are due. Meanwhile, we will continuously to reflect on Pay-What-You-Can lunch project and maintain connection with our community partner if they would like to incoroporate the chili meal into the regular Wednesday lunch menu. We believe that we can successfully complete this project. Please don’t forget to come back soon for our last blog posting for faring well!


Reference

Gibb, N., & Wittman, H. (2013). Parallel alternatives: Chinese-canadian farmers and the metro vancouver local food movement. Local Environment, 18(1), 1-19. doi:10.1080/13549839.2012.714763

Shulman, L. S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18.

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