Theory to Practice

 An eye opening visit to Fraser Heights secondary

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Fraser Heights Secondary for some insight filled observations on teachers, lesson delivery methods, and new curriculum integration. I have to say, these people are really on the cutting edge as far as I’ve seen.

Joe, one of the Home Ec. teachers, who was also involved in writing the new curriculum assessment drafts, gave us a full day guided tour of the Home Ec. labs, Maker space, Robotics class, and wood and metal shops. I met some excellent and insightful teachers there, and had what I feel is my first real practical experience with the theories I’ve been studying at UBC so far.

Joe tells me they have been utilizing inquiry based learning for several years already, and some of the activities I saw in the classes/labs were quite impressive. Students design their own dishes, attach a personal and/or cultural significance to them, back up their choices with personal or cultural context, and requisition the raw ingredients which are purchased by the department. Then, of course, they make it. One of the students was even working on an entire semester curriculum style design for foods 11 – impressive indeed!

I was curious to hear where the assessment criteria was going in the new curriculum, and Joe gave myself and Akina (from my Home Ec. cohort) a very detailed description of how they were assessing the inquiry based units. I have to admit, a lot of it was over my head as we have not investigated this quadrant of teaching yet, but I did garner the fact that the evolution of the students progress within their process was the guiding parameter.

Joe opened up his lesson plans, unit plans, and classrooms, giving us a chance to interact with students from grade 8 to 11, talk to them about their aspirations and experiences, and field a lot of questions about life in UBC!

As I mentioned, I also poked my head into the VEX robotics class, spent some time with the metals teacher, and got ta chance to speak with a 10 year career TOC (who is also an opera singer). A whole different take on teaching from her as you can imagine.

Sooooo, a big shout out to that school and the above mentioned departments for making my visit a memorable one, passing us some business cards for networking, and generally making the day enjoyable and educational. Hope I cross paths with them again in the near future.