Monthly Archives: May 2015

UBC Farm – CFE Week 3 Reflection

It’s the final week of the CFE and to be quite honest it wasn’t the most exciting week. Much of the week was spent working on the final deliverable which included 3 complementary lessons and then a few additions to the existing farm tour specifically for secondary schools with a Home Economics focus.

Tuesday was the Blessing of Land, a part of the Indigenous Initiatives at the farm. I wasn’t present at the actual ceremony, however I did get to join in on the delicious food and festivities afterward. Because I know so little about the Indigenous peoples and how diverse they are, I’m always learning something new. I was able to watch a traditional dance and singing and drumming, though of what Peoples’ I cannot tell you. I don’t think I have ever seen a performance like this, so I am very glad I got the opportunity to. I also noticed that this was a very family-centered event. Some of the performers were father and son and many families attended the feast. I guess this is a way of passing on traditions and values and helping their youth understand where they come from and their own importance. At the end of the feast I was able to participate in blessing the land. The formal ceremony was already had earlier, but everyone was then invited to say a prayer, and offer tobacco into the fire.

My plate from the feast

The dancer in his traditional regalia.

Thursday was my second and last day part of the Intergenerational Landed Learning Project, and it was all about pollination! This week was really fun because the kids were able to get up close to a bee hive and see what was inside. I was so amazed by this group of grade 3 and 4s! They already knew so much about bees, such as how to tell them apart from wasps and what the role of each sex of the bee is. And almost all of them weren’t afraid of walking right up to the bee hive. I am scared of all insects, including ants sadly, and this really pushed me to get comfortable with the bees. Being around kids almost forced me to remain calm because if I start to freak out so would they, not to mention disturbing the bees. It’s interesting how different it is to work with a younger age group. They seem to always be so excited and ready to learn new things whereas the older groups lost interest or become more closed off to new experiences.

Tasting some Hives of Humanity honey. Honey is produced in the city of Vancouver.

Snack time! Kale sushi

I was able to have a conversation yesterday with another CFE student and the manager of the Landed Learning Project summing up our experience at the farm. We both found it very enriching, and it was a great place to spend some time outside in the beautiful weather rather than inside the classroom. The manager then commented how it was almost a shame that only two secondary students chose to do their CFE at the farm, after which I thought Yeah! Why is that? I know that I will not be the only CFE student here as four are coming in June, but the next group are all elementary teachers. This ratio seems to almost reflect the groups that are at the farm right now. So many more elementary groups come through the farm than secondary groups, and I wonder if it’s the teacher and how they teach or structure their classrooms that have the biggest influence on the interest of the student. I also wonder if it’s the structure of secondary schools that limit teachers from bringing their classes outside. There are so many benefits to learning outside: hands on learning, the ability to make real-life connections, feeling more connected to their own surroundings. This really is something that should be done more in secondary school curriculum. This age group tends to get stuck in their immersion in technology; I think bringing this age group outside and helping them regain some kind of curiosity will help them become healthier and active citizens in the future.

I am so glad that I got the opportunity to be at UBC Farm for my CFE. I have learned so much and I hope to bring some of what I learned back into the classroom. Thank you!

UBC Farm – CFE Week 2 Reflection

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I found myself struggling this week. Not so much because I had to do any labour on the farm, but more so because I couldn’t get out of my way of thinking, if that makes any sense. My part at the farm over the course of three weeks is to write a lesson or activity that high schools can do during the tour. I found it really hard to think of these activities; I kept thinking about the tour as something that is already set in stone and all of my ideas for lessons were those to complement the tour as is. Changing my mindset from “this is what the tour offers, how can I incorporate it?” to “this is what I want the tour to have” has been a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. I’ve tried to overcome it by first writing the complementary lessons and then focusing on the tour, and it’s made me feel more at ease because I’m actually doing something, but I feel like the issue is going to pop up again. One of the staff said that it wouldn’t be out of the question to create a small plot just for the high school tours, so with that offer I may try to do a quick tasting activity during the tour.

The big question I want to focus on is: Where does our food come from? This question was brought up by one of the students in the lone high school tour I’ve seen so far, and I think it’s a great question. Where does it come from? I think it’s important to realize that the food found in the grocery store has traveled great distances to be accessible to us, and with that the huge consumption of resources (often fossil fuels). It also takes a lot of energy to produce food in general, especially meat products. I find this topic super interesting, but high school youth won’t be as much. I chose to study food after high school; most teens just want to get through high school.

It’s kind of interesting how that particular age group, between the ages of 13 and 18, children seem to lose their curiosity. The farm seems to do pretty well with tours; this past week alone there were about 5 or 6 tours (that I know of), however they are all from elementary schools. I wonder if it’s because of lack of interest or even competing interests; field trips are much harder to plan in high school, and students may choose not to go to focus on their more academic courses. I say this coming from a Home Economics perspective, and I believe it could very well be the conflict of interest. During my practicum at Moscrop we held a field trip for Home Economics students to tour a culinary school within Vancouver. Some students opted out of the field trip because the particular day it was held on was a heavy academic day. Of course these tours would also be good for Science or even Social Studies courses, but I guess the lack of a direct relationship between the subject and the farm means the idea is often missed.

This past week I was able to do a volunteer shift in the IHREG, where i actually got to do hands on work and work in the garden. I loved it, and it is definitely harder than I originally thought. It also gave me a greater understanding of how much work actually goes into producing my food. Granted a lot of my food is probably produced with machinery, it shows how much work it takes for people before machinery was invented. Also the plots of land we worked on were relatively small – I can’t imagine working a large scale farm by hand!

This week was also the first week I partook in the Landed Learning program on the farm. Landed Learning is done in partnership with 4 elementary schools in the Lower Mainland. One class from the school comes to the farm every 2 weeks for a total of 11 sessions, and they spend the whole day learning at the farm. This past week was about water, so the kids made compost tea for their own garden bed, planted and transplanted some seeds/seedlings, and did a little activity on the irrigation system. The group that I got to work with was a 3-4 class, and it was so much fun to work with them! They had so much energy and were curious about everything. They knew so much of what different plants were just by looking at them (which I can’t even do!). During the check out period, someone mentioned how as the groups get older, they become less interested in the farm and growing their own food and they wondered out loud, why is that? What happens in these few short years that makes them disinterested in growing their own food? Something to contemplate.

Now I begin my final week at the farm, and it’s surreal how quick this experience has been. I am hopeful that I can complete what I came here to do, and look forward to making the most of my week here.

Again, photos to come soon!

UBC Farm – CFE Week 1 Reflection

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CFE Reflection – Week 1

What a week.

To be honest, I was quite hesitant going into the CFE. What am I going to do? Is any of this going to be relevant to teaching in the classroom? Before coming to the farm, I have had several people tell me that I will just be a workhand, leaving me little opportunity to bring much into my own practice.

Thankfully, that is not the case.

I was extremely delighted to find on my arrival that I will be writing a lesson for one of the high school tours. That’s not to say I don’t want to do any gardening work (part of the reason why I signed up to be at the farm was so I could learn a few things and start a garden at home), but I was not looking forward to 3 weeks of hard manual labour. Before I write a lesson however, of course I had to learn a lot more about some of the programs at the farm, so I spent the first few days reading and being involved in some of the programs.

Tuesday was a project work day. I was provided with an extensive list of online sites and books to look at so that I may have some sort of idea of what this lesson will be about. I thought I would be able to tackle all of the web sites; there were only 5 on the list! But embedded in those websites is a plethora of resources, to lesson plans, to just general information, and going through all of it was extremely overwhelming. However I did decide on what the lesson will be about: Food miles. Looking at all the energy put into food from production to transport, and comparing the miles in conventionally grown foods to the food grown at the UBC Farm.

On Wednesday I was able to participate in the Feast Bowl. The Feast Bowl is an event that is held once a month and is an Indigenous Research Partnership with the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC. Almost all of the food comes from the Indigenous Health Education and Research Garden (IHERG) and everyone is welcome to join. The concept of “food as medicine” is very prominent; everything is organic and locally grown or caught. In the winter, food that has been processed in the summer and autumn are used.

It was a fantastic experience. My part of the Feast was helping to prepare the food, and the not-so-fun clean up afterwards. I had my first bannock! Bannock is traditionally deep fried, but this version was healthy in that all organic ingredients were used and it was baked in the oven. It was absolutely delicious, and I think I may like to include the recipe into my own lessons. Through this experience I learned that I am not very well versed in identifying fresh herbs, but more importantly, I realized that I know very little about the traditions of the First Nations people. For instance, before we ate a prayer was held by one of the volunteers. Being of First Nations descent, he held a small bowl with little amounts of all the food we were about to eat while saying the prayer. I later learned that it was an offering to the spirits and to invite them to join us in our meal.

I’m really glad I got to partake in the Bowl. Everyone involved is so extremely welcoming and are happy to have help. I know my experience was unique; normally the Feast Bowl coordinator, Hannah Lewis, and some volunteers would meet earlier in the day and head down to the IHREG to harvest the crops while some stayed in the kitchen to do prep. The produce was already picked for us on this particular day, though I would have loved to help harvest some of the crop! I’m already thinking about participating in the future and will look into my schedule in the upcoming months. If you want to participate, the Feast Bowl is held on the last Wednesday of every month at the UBC Longhouse. I will provide a link here.

Thursday was a great day in that I was finally able to observe a few tours. Luckily there was a high school tour and it got me thinking about how I can get this age group interested and engaged in the tour. In this particular group, some were really into the tour and asked a lot of great questions, but the majority of the group looked like this was the last place they wanted to be. It was such a contrast to the second group later in the day. The second group only had about 6 students between the ages of 6-12, whereas the high school group consisted of 35 15-16 year olds. The younger group also had a more hands-on activity than a walk-around tour (they made seed tapes to be used in their own garden!). I think the biggest challenge for me right now is thinking of a hands-on activity that secondary students will actually be interested in and enjoy.

Today, Friday, is a work day. I planned to finish a quick outline of a lesson, but it seems to be working out into 3 lessons; 1 sort of pre-lesson to be done a day before the visit to the farm, the lesson actually done at the farm, and a follow up lesson done after their visit. I still want to do something about food miles, but with limited access to materials this is turning out to be quite a challenge. Maybe a skit can be done to demonstrate where food comes from? A cost analysis? Or maybe they can take a favourite dish and recreate it with food items found on the farm? There’s so much to explore, but being creative is more difficult than anticipated. Something to definitely mull over the weekend.

Photos to come!