Day 1 (April 25):

As we finished the 75th kilometer on the gravel road we finally hit pavement.  I was excited to be there and so was my bladder.  I had been here before, but it is just as exciting as the first time.  I take note of the location of the pub as we follow the signs to the science center.  After driving though town (all of which takes about 45 seconds) we see the sign for the science center.  We have finally made it! It is a most welcome sight after 8 hours on the road.  We stop at the library to collect our welcome package.  The site map and post-it note that makes up our package indicates that we are in cabin 7.  We arrive at our cabin to find several others milling around.  We are excited to learn that this is “the” cabin when it comes to socializing, but less excited to learn that we will be sharing a room for the next 3 weeks.  First world problems, I know.   I dump by bags, say hi, and rush to the pub to watch the last 2 periods of what turns out to be the final periods of the Canuck’s season.  I am surprised to learn that of the 10 people in the bar, I had only 2 other Canuck fans as support.  Surrounded by Flames fans alone at a rural pub.  It’s alright, I forgive them because Calgary was the better team that night.  I mean, how can you expect to win if you blow a 3 goal lead?  I left with 30 seconds left, during which Calgary took the liberty of scoring… again.  Back at the cabin, we unpacked and chatted with our new roommates.  I love that terms such as nudibranchs and tunicates are common vernacular here.   I think it will be a good 3 weeks.

Day 2 (April 26):

In the morning we meet Phil.  Phil is our CFE “liason” and is very laid back.  It is indicative of the whole atmosphere at Bamfield really.  No one is in a hurry, no rushing, no pressure.  Very different to the whirlwind practicum we had finished the day before.  Phil shows us the schedule of school visits.  Each school has various labs and activities while they are in Bamfield.  Phil explains that while we are here, we can shadow labs, and if we shadow it a couple of times, then we can teach it.  A wave of panic sets in about how much content I remember from my university classes.  Phil then points out all of the lab notes and the panic dissipates.  I think this will be great.  Seheem and I spend the next 30 minutes pouring over the schedule searching for classes to shadow.  Everything seems so interesting it is difficult to choose.  Like fish out of water, we start by selecting the same trips so we can stay together.  Phil is quick to point out that we could, in fact, separate if we would like to.  We begin to separate ourselves and decide on our activities for the week.

First stop, Brady’s Beach in West Bamfield.  Activities on the west side of town require a boat to cross the inlet.  While collecting our life jackets, we see Hazel!  Another practicum survivor there with her class.  Small world, who knew?  Hazel and her class are the ones heading to Brady’s Beach.  We all pile in the boat exchanging practicum stories and head across the inlet.  With a 20 minute trek once we get off the boats, including a hill that is very grueling when you haven’t eaten a vegetable in 2 weeks, we arrive at the beach.  So beautiful.  You never realize how different the waves can be when then don’t have Vancouver Island to block their path.  The beach is filled with sea stacks and tide pools.  We spend the afternoon exploring the pools, observing anemones, hermit crabs and starfish, just to name a few.  Not a bad way to spend a Sunday.

Day 3 (April 27):

Monday started off pretty slow.  Got to sleep in as our first activity didn’t start until 10:30.  The bed is surprisingly comfortable and snugly and after practicum I felt like I could sleep for a week.  I woke up to coffee already made, which is always a welcome site.  After a bagel and cream cheese breakfast I got ready for our trip to Pachena Beach.  This beach is the north end of the West Coast Trail and incredibly beautiful. I am also told it is a good surfing beach in storm season.  After a couple of hours surveying the beach, we hiked a couple of kilometers of the west coast trail.  I have never experienced so many ladders as part of a hike before.  Some of them were very long and the “terrified of heights” person in me had to be pushed way down.  Because this trail went so far up, we had an amazing view of the beach below.  I know it sounds corny, but wow.. do we ever live in a beautiful place.

 

 

Day 4 (April 28):

Tuesday was a beautiful day.  Gorgeous and sunny, which is apparently a rarity around here.  I thought Vancouver rained a lot.  Bamfield gets about 3.5m of rain each year and it only needs 2m to qualify as a rainforest.  In the afternoon we went out on the Alta (a converted fishing boat) to dredge.  This was a great opportunity for me to see my favourite invertebrate, sea cucumbers!! Dredging is simply towing a basket type thing on the bottom of the seabed to see what you can collect.  We caught several sea cucumbers, a couple of fish and many other invertebrates.  We even had a bear sighting!  It is great to see the students so excited about animals.  Many people believe that one can get the same experience by viewing animals on film.  I think those people should come shadow one of these trips and see the reactions of the kids.  Getting this hands on experience is what will create the awe needed to save these species down the road.

After the Alta we went to Aguilar Point.  This is yet another beach to view some tide pools!  It may sound redundant, but each beach we have gone to does have a surprising amount of diversity.  It completely depends on the beach, sheltered or open, sandy or rocky.  I did succeed in my quest to find gooseneck barnacles.  Not very many… but they were there!

We also took a trip to the market in town today, a whole 2 minute drive away.  The don’t have a lot, but they have enough.  A much better selection then I was expecting for a town of 150.

 

Day 5 (April 29):

Also a great day.  I feel like that will be a regular occurrence though… Today’s activity was my first indoor lab.  It was on marine invertebrate diversity.  Several touch tanks with various specimens.   This was the first “classroom feel” lab.  The class in there was great and seemed to like learning.  After lunch was a walk through the rainforest.  We hiked around and identified several local plant species.  I definitely felt more in my element there as all my plant biology knowledge came rushing back.  I loved to see how interested the teachers were about identifying the plants.  I took a mental note, because this really caused a chain reaction with the students.  As the teachers kept their energy up, so did the students.  The academic day finished with a trip to Eagle Bay and a seaweed identification lab.  I do secretly really like seaweeds and thought it was a lot of fun IDing them.  They have such great names; turkish towel, oyster thief and dead man’s fingers to name a few.  The staff member running the lab had a great way of using the competitiveness of the group as a way to keep them interested in seaweeds.  Turn it into a game and everyone is now on the hunt for various types.

Pizza night at the cafe for dinner!  The market in town has a cafe attached to it.  Every Wednesday night is pizza night.  $9 for a large (and I mean large) pizza is pretty good.  And it is SUCH good pizza! I had pineapple, bacon (real cut up bacon!) feta and pepperoni.  I think pepperoni works better then the ham.  Adds a little bit of something extra.

After dinner was great as well.  Other roommate Chad took us to Pachena Beach for sunset.  Incredible.  Had a nice little fire on the beach and watched out for grey whales coming into the bay for night time.  We did not see any, but it was a great night anyways.  Great night to a great day 🙂

 

Day 6 (April 30):

Busy day today!  I started with an oceanography and plankton collection class.  We went out on the skiff and saw a pod of orcas!  It was nice for the class that was visiting as everyone was on one of the few boats in the inlet and all got to see the whales.  The skiff we were on however, could not leave the inlet and we couldn’t get too close.  Every couple of minutes we just saw a huge dorsal fin come out of the water.  One of the instructors on a closer boat said she saw them eating a porpoise.  During the oceanography class the students measured salinity levels and took depth measurements.   The also caught up some plankton to observe later under the microscopes.

Next I went on the Barkley Star (dubbed the bar star, which I thought was clever).  This was definitely my favourite so far.  This boat is the fastest of the fleet and is able to travel into open ocean.  We took it across the channel to the sea lion colony.  Crossing the large swells was SO much fun.  Nature’s rollercoaster.  As we zipped along we went flying over swells and crashing back down, it was great.  We headed into the Broken Group Islands and found the sea lion colony.  It is made up of both Steller’s and Californias.  They were so noisy.  Chatting and barking, it was amazing to see.  We got up so close and the sea lions didn’t seem to mind at all.

After a lunch of leftover pizza I tagged along on an orientation  tour.  It was nice to hear some of the history of the place.  Constructed in 1902, Bamfield M.S.C. used to be a cable station.  This telegraph cable left Bamfield, went to Fanning Island off the coast and then continued across the Pacific.   In the 50’s the cable station was shut down, as the invention of more modern technologies made it obsolete.  The station was then bought in the 60’s by the 5 universities that own it today and turned into a marine research station.

Following the history lesson I observed another marine invertebrates lab.  Woo hoo! That makes 2 and now I can teach it!.  It was nice being able to help more for this lab, as I know a bit of the procedure already.  I got to help set up and take down the lab this time :).  After this lab I had some laundry to do.  The laundry facilities in the cafeteria are broken, so I had to trek to Buchanan lodge (the student dorms).  Its only about a 10 minute walk, but I had put in my laundry, came back an hour later to change it over, then back to collect it in the rain.  Only on the way back from my last trip did I notice the short cut straight through the grounds, a 2 minute walk from the cabin.  Oh well.. lesson learned :p.

 

Day 7 (May 1):

Today was pretty laid back compared to yesterday.  Morning chats over coffee have become one of my favourite times of day.  Its like the morning equivalent of a drink after dinner.  Today was no exception.  My first class wasn’t until 10:30, so I was able to take my time at breakfast.  This first class was Marine Mammal Adaptations.   This was a great class filled with a lot of activities.  Some of these activities included a table full of animal skulls, a game of mammal twister and a matching memory game.  I thought the best adaptation example was a blubber test.  Students were able to compare the amount of time they could handle ice water with and without a “blubber” glove.  This comparison was to demonstrate how blubber helps marine mammals survive in the frigid waters.

After the adaptation lab was a lunch break, followed by a brief seaweed lab.  I like the seaweed labs.  I know I’ve said this before, but I think they are pretty cool.  Part of the lab is to think about the adaptations of different seaweeds.  This is something that not too many people ever really consider, but is cool once you do.  The is one seaweed called feather boa (I told you the names were cool) that is long and sturdy.  It just whips around and takes out every other seaweed that tries to grow near it.  Pretty interesting for a mere algae!

After dinner Jill and I found and old Trivial Pursuit game while hunting for tp (not as weird as it sounds, I swear).  So we decided that we were putting our trivia knowledge to the test that night.  We only played half of the game, because the questions were so hard!  This game was made before I was born, so all of the trivia is about things that happened in the 30’s-60’s.  I’d like to see you tell me who the leader was of a band called the “Band of Renown”.  Some guy called Les Brown apparently.  Josh was not too far off name wise with a guess of James Brown.  Anyways, the clock hit 12, so we paused the game at a tie.  This battle of wits was to be decided another day.

 

Day 8 (May 2):

Such an exciting day today! (Even though I feel like most of the days can be described as this) A small group from Naniamo arrived in the late morning and I stuck with them and Jill for the day.  They did a rainforest walk in the early afternoon.  I had seen this a couple of days before with Orla, so I felt a little more comfortable about my content knowledge on the walk.  The walk culminates at a little beach area called Strawberry Point.  After we were there for a few minutes I was talking to a parent and look at the opposite edge of the forest to see a black ball of fluff.  I turn back to talk to the parent again.  In those few seconds my brain had realized what I just saw and my heart jumped into my throat.  “Jill…Jill! It’s a bear!”  There was a slight level of panic in my voice because this bear was about 50 feet away and we had a class full of excited 16 year olds.  We got everyone to quickly move away and the bear just started to eat some grass.  He didn’t seem bothered by us, he looked pretty young, so we stood and watched him for a bit.  After about 10 minutes bear watching, we actually have to move on and finish our walk.  For the rest of our time in the forest I tried to convince the students to lick a banana slug.  None of them would go for it.

After this was a seaweed lab.  This was the unabridged version and therefore went into a lot more depth then the previous seaweed lab I had shadowed.  One of the activities in it was to make a dichotomous key.  I felt I could get some teaching practice in here since I had assigned one of these to my grade 11’s from my practicum.  I do feel a little bad though, because I was WAY better explaining it this time around then when I taught it previously.  There was also some seaweed IDing to be done.  I tried some feather boa, as I had heard it was very tasty.  I did not think so, like salty lettuce.   Jill informed me this is because it was not fresh.  Oh well, will have to try more went I go back to the beach.  After the lab we were able to see the hagfish.  These are awesome little creatures.  The are eel-like in shape, but are jawless and blind.  They eat decomposing and dead animals that they find.  The best part about them is the slime.  Jill explained that when they feel threatened, they will produce a slime that clogs the gills of the fish trying to eat it.  This will kill the fish and then the predator becomes the prey.  The hagfish will now get sweet, sweet revenge by eating that fish.

After dinner I was able to teach my own lesson!  Quite nerve-wracking for me because I prefer to know my content knowledge inside out before teaching something.  Invertebrate diversity is not something I know a great deal about.  But I feel it went decently well.  I was also able to pass questions off to Jill when I didn’t know the answer, so that was a nice little safety net.  This lab was the same as I had seen twice before, where students get into groups and answer questions about the different phyla of marine invertebrates.  We eventually made our way back to the cabin and finished our Trivial Pursuit game.  After a couple of hours Josh and I were not victorious.  Jill and Seheem won the game on a guess! I suppose I will be a good sport and say good for them, but there is still 2 weeks left and vengeance will be mine.

 

Day 9 (May 3):

It’s Sunday! I’m taking a day off. I was all set to drive to Pachena beach and have a relaxing day reading a book and having a picnic.  I got everything ready; food in the cooler, book and blanket.  Nope.  Car decides not to start.  What a great place for that to happen.  Well, no beach today.  Mechanic opens Tuesday.

 

Day 10 (May 4):

Happy Star Wars Day!

Today was an early start.  Off to Brady’s Beach in the morning.  It was the same group as Saturday, so I knew they would be energetic and a lot of fun.  We spent the walk to Brady’s listening to songs off of my phone.  These musical gems included Sweet Caroline, Dancing Queen and some choice Backstreet Boys.  I’m sure the 2 boys in the group did not appreciate it, but the rest of us knew every word.  When we got to the beach we went spelunking.  And by that I mean went into one small cave that is only accessible at low tide.   The rest of our time at the beach was spent searching through tide pools for various invertebrates and seaweeds.

I celebrated Star Wars day later that night by watching A New Hope long distance with Ryan (my husband).  Later in the night there was a hail storm like you would not believe.  It was so loud it sounded like there was a helicopter landing on the roof.  I heard that Vancouver shared the same fate later the next day.  Crazyness.

 

Day 11 (May 5):

Awesome day planned!  I have a full morning on the Barkley Star.  This could not be more wonderful because that trip is so much fun!  Went back out to the sea lion colony.  We were able to see some sweet  thermoregulation by said sea lions.  This is when they put their flippers out of the water to either cool down or warm up, depending on what they need.  I have also learned (hopefully) when to keep my mouth closed about my glaring lack of knowledge.  I kept asking John, the delightful captain of the Barkley Star, random questions about the ocean.  Did you know that sea foam is the oil that is released by diatoms when they get smashed on the rocks?

After the Barkley Star I was informed I could teach Oceanography and Plankton collection.  Thanks Tori 😉 It went well though, even though I had only shadowed it once.  I led the activity and Tori explained the history of the area.  So that worked out well.  In case I hadn’t explained earlier, this lab takes one of the small skiffs into the neighbouring inlet and discusses what oceanography is and the different facets of it.  The students then measure turbidity (clarity), salinity (salt levels) and tempurature of the water.  After that we tow for plankton.  The students will look at this under a microscope later.

 

Day 12 (May 6):

Fish printing! Also called gyotaku, fish printing is a Japanese art form.  It started as a way to record the size of the day’s catch.  Jill showed me this delightful video that explains it all.  http://ed.ted.com/lessons/gyotaku-the-ancient-japanese-art-of-printing-fish-k-erica-dodge .  The students now use rubber fish.  After practicing several times on scrap paper, they did it on white shirts they had brought with them.  The best part about this? They brought extras for us!! So now I have my own Bamfield fish print shirt.  It is pretty great if I say so myself.  When fish printing was done I had a little bit of a break so I went back to the cabin and did some work.

After a lunch of Scooby Doo zoodles I met Orla for a walk in the rainforest.  I taught half of this.  Depending on which instructor is running the lab, they include different points of interest.  So  I discussed the things that I knew and ran the “learning chain” (a student centered jigsaw type activity).  Orla took over when she wanted to teach a point that I did not know.  This walk went a little bit over time, so I had to book it to the docks to make it in time to get on the Barkley Star.  I taught most of this trip as well! It was a beautiful day and warm as well!  Instead of going through the Broken Island Group we headed down the coast.  We first stopped at Folger Island to see the sea lion colony then we jetted down the coast.  We stopped at another sea lion colony down the coast as well.  No whales though :(.  I am determined to see a grey whale before I leave!  We went past Execution Rock on the way back as well.  Perhaps another day I will recount the story behind that name.  I have to keep something for next week!

Pizza night in town again!  I was a little smarter and got some veggies on it this time.  Spinach, tomatoes, peppers, pineapple, pepperoni and bacon.  Jealous? Cause you should be.  It was so good.  On the drive back from dinner Chad stopped at the playground of the one small school in town.  No swings! But they did have a see saw and a tether ball, with which I hit myself in the face and therefore stopped playing.  The rest of the playground was fun though!  And…. highlight of the night….Chad started my car!!  Woooooo!!

 

Day 13 (May 7):

Off to Brady’s Beach this morning!  There must have been some turbulent waters last night, because there was a great selection of seaweed washed up on the beach this morning.  I was able to convince a bunch of the students to try feather boa.  It tastes like salty, crunchy lettuce.  Not the best, but far from the worst.  We also were able to time it right so that we were there for a pretty low tide.  I found a fat blood star and sea squirts hiding under a rock.  Fun fact: Sea squirts (tunicates) are our closest relative of all the marine invertebrates that we look at in the lab.  They are the only ones that have a small notochord and blood system.  I guess that makes them not invertebrates? But they are soft and squishy and don’t really look like much.  I left Brady’s a little early to stop at the westside market before taking the boats back across the inlet.  Love Brady’s Beach, hate the hill you have to climb after it.  Holy cow, you just have to power through it.  Playing 80’s and 90’s pop certainly does help though.  Spent a solid 30 minutes looking around the little market deciding what to get, I was never very good at meal planning.  $105 later (sorry Ryan) I hopefully have enough groceries to last me the rest of the week.  When you are the only market in town and get your supplies by boat, you can pretty much charge what you want.  They do have a surprisingly good selection of some things though.  Lugging those groceries up the hill from the foreshore was sooo not fun though.

Leftover pizza for lunch! So excited about this.  Then was Experimental Biology with Sam.  She is fabulous and always great to shadow.  During this lab the students needed to work in groups, choose an animal (such as urchins, craps, anemones, etc) and they create an experiment around the animal.  One group timed how long it will take a hermit crab to come out of its shell in light versus dark.  Another wondered which type of sea star (bat or leather) flips over the fastest when turned upside down.  Pretty cool experiments.  The kids then did presentations on their findings.  This we did outside because it was such a fabulous day!

For dinner tonight I made tacos.  Boo-ya.  (mic drop)

 

Day 14 (May 8):

So the morning started off early.  7am and out the door for some dogfish wrangling.  Also called bone dogs apparently and what they will henceforth be called at all times.  The bone dogs were being brought in on an early morning fishing boat and needed to be unloaded and taken to their holding tank.  Right after that we got set to leave on our 20km hike.  The hike is to Pachena Bay lighthouse and back and is part of the west coast trail.  We had to register with the Parks Canada office before we went on the trail which made it feel very official.  Tori led the hike and kept a very fast pace.  I was all proud of myself that I was able to keep up.  We were at the front with 3 students and put quite a large gap between us and the rest of the group.  The light house was 10.5 km into the trail.  It was such an amazing view.  The couple that maintains the lighthouse lives there full time and has supplies boated in.  The supplies then have to be zip lined up to the house.  It was a gorgeous day and most of the students, as well as myself, took a short nap on the lawn.  After hanging out for an hour we started to make the trek back.  A short while in we made a detour to Flat Top Rock, which is another sea lion colony.  The part of me that is not the biggest fan of heights did not appreciate the edge of the cliff, but the view was incredible.  After watching the “sea lion fight club” as Tori put it, she spotted some gray whales!  It was my goal to see gray whales on this trip, so I was so happy when we did.  The hike down I stayed at the back with Sam.  It was nice and relaxing, a bit of a slower pace.  The way down definitely felt faster and it was oh so satisfying to finish that hike.

As soon as we got back it was happy hour.  Every Friday during the university programs the director of the station holds a happy hour from 5-6.  When the party was finished over there, it migrated to our cabin and didn’t stop til about 1am.  Justin and I busted it out to Bohemian Rhapsody, which was definitely a highlight.

 

Day 15 (May 9):

Lots of teaching today!  I started out the day teaching Oceanography and Plankton collection with Jill.  It was quite a small group, only 5 girls, and three of the students were on exchange from Germany.  I am definitely starting to feel more comfortable with the content knowledge, which puts my more at ease when I am teaching.  There is nothing worse then thinking “I have no idea if what I am saying is true”.  This time around I was even able to discuss more about the surrounding ecosystem instead of just the activity.  Did you know that Grappler Inlet (where we take the students) has several abandoned boats within it?  There was a collapse of the fishing industry at one point and it cost more to keep the boats then they were making from fishing.  Thus they were abandoned.   Along our travels we also saw a black bear.  One of several I had seen here, but this was the students’ first sighting since arriving so they were very excited.  In fact they were so excited, they completely tuned me out for the next 5 minutes.  Once they regained focus, the lesson went very well.

After lunch I taught a brief seaweeds lab with Sam.  I do think seaweeds are pretty cool and was excited to teach this one.  I was told the students had really low background knowledge so I started with the basics.  After the lesson the class tried to identify some seaweeds.  It is difficult to get some students interested in algae, but I then bust out some cool facts such as “Bull kelp has enough carbon monoxide in its float to kill a chicken” and that always hooks some of them.

Then came the plankton lab.  This is where the students look at all the plankton they collected from their tow in the morning.  They all were using dissecting microscopes, but I was able to use the one compound microscope.  I must say, plankton is SO FREAKING COOL.  Seems weird, but it is like a whole little alien nation living in a drop of seawater.  In fact the alien from Alien (the movie.. ) is based off of the plankton phronima.  Its no use telling you about them, so I will show pictures!

 

 

Day 16 (May 10):

Happy Mother’s Day!

I did call my Mom in the morning, Hi Mom! 🙂

Day off today!! (Sort of) I ended up getting kind of bored, so I taught a rainforest walk with Jill.  I like that one too.  Plants are also super cool.

 

Day 17 (May 11):

Schools were leaving/arriving today, so there was nothing going on in the morning.  I spent most of the morning binge watching Rupaul’s Drag Race.  Thanks Jill, way to get me addicted to a show when the internet can be a little testy.  No! Buffering! I need to know who won for best 90’s hip hop lip sync battle!

Into the afternoon: We all schlepped to Eagle Bay for seaweed IDing.  I spent the first part of time collecting various samples to use in my seaweed game.  Neither Chad nor Hilary had seen the game, but I learned it from Orla, so I was able to run it.  The class was divided into teams with each student getting their own number on their team.  I had all of the seaweeds laid out and would give a description of a seaweed then call a number.  Whichever person chose the correct seaweed first gained a point for their team.  I thought it was quite fun and some of the students got really competitive.  We even had to do a tie breaker.

After this was “sports and games” and the school field.  This had nothing to do with marine sciences, but the school requested it.  We ended up just walking to the school playing on the playground or playing soccer for a couple of hours.  There was a group of girls making a daisy chain and I told them they needed one big enough to go around the equator.  They set to work immediately.  After I lost twice at “Captain’s Orders” (a Simon Says type game) I talked to one of the teachers for awhile.  It is always nice to get advice and hear teacher stories.

Roasted veggies and chicken for dinner! It is nice to get some vegetables, they aren’t very common around here.  I, once again, binge watched Rupaul.  Its not my fault, it’s so dramatic and over the top.  Fabulous.

As a disclaimer.. I know there isn’t as many photos.  It is because I teach more now, and therefore don’t think about taking pictures.  I will try to remember!  In lieu, here is a picture of Rupaul.

 

 

Day 18 (May 12):

My internet has been down. 🙁 Only mine apparently, no one else in the cabin, just mine. Anyways, in the library now.

This week has been and will be a little slow.  Only a couple of schools are here at a time, and many of them arrive and leave on the same day.  Because of this, there isn’t a lot going on until after lunch today.  The first activity I participated in was a trip to Aguilar Point with a group of young students.  The school they are from is a small community school  so there are only 12 students from grades 4 through 7.  I found it difficult to differentiate the learning because there seems like such a large foundation knowledge gap between them.  The older students, however, were very good at helping out the younger ones.  We asked them to do a scavenger hunt and had the grades split between the groups.   I also collected seaweeds for the lab I would be doing next.

Seaweed Lab!!! I taught the seaweeds lab today, which is always exciting.  I know putting seaweeds and exciting together in the same sentence is weird, but I stand by my statement.  It was only an hour, but these grade 6’s of an all girls school are very bright.  They even knew that seaweeds are from the Protista kingdom.  They were also very creative in coming up with their own seaweed product and presenting it as a commercial to the class.  They also had to identify seaweeds with the picture guide.  I  didn’t make them use a dichotomous key.  The keys they have here are complicated and even go over the heads of the grade 11’s.

Bratwurst and home-made pomme frites for dinner! So good. Early-ish night.  I’m tired today.

 

Day 19 (May 13):

First on the block today, Marine Mammal Adaptations with Chad.  I taught this one.  Even having only shadowed it once, Chad hadn’t done it in quite awhile, and it was still fresh in my mind.  We were in a different location for this one so we had to bring all of the materials (which is apparently a lot) to a different hall for the lab.  The girls that were attending this lab were the same from seaweeds the day before, so they had quite a good background knowledge.  There were also several activities to keep them occupied for 2 hours.  They especially liked the sea otter pelt.  While other marine mammals use blubber to insulate them from the cold water, sea otters have very thick fur, 1,000,000 hairs per square inch, that they supplement with tiny air bubbles to keep warm.

I had to leave the Adaptations lecture a little bit early so that I could go teach the rainforest walk with Tori.  This group had limited time, so we did not end up doing the learning chain.  With grades 4-7 it would have added too much time.  We did find however, a giant bear poop at Strawberry Point.  So that was oddly cool, but unnerving at the same time.  At the point there is also a little hut that many students think belongs to the First Nations, despite the large number of screws, nails and shingles used.  This hut was actually built in the 1940’s to house hay.  The hay was used in an oil spill,  to soak up excess oil before too much damage could be done.  This community relied on the ocean for their welfare, therefore maintained several of these damage control huts at many points around the inlet.

After lunch came the most exciting point of the day!  I was invited to attend buddy reading at the local community school.  I had met Ms. Russell (the teacher in the school) at the happy hour last Friday.  I say “the” teacher, because she is the only one.  She is teacher, librarian, principal, gym teacher and music teacher all in one fabulous package.  She has a class of 15 students, ranging from kindergarten to grade 5.  The school may go up until grade 9, but after that the students must go to high school in another catchment.  Many end up heading into Port Alberni or staying with relatives elsewhere in Canada.

Although I was told it was not a standard day for them (they were rehearsing for a festival they were taking part in the next day) I was still welcome to stay and observe. The difference between a 1500 student high school and a 15 student elementary school is unreal.   The art and colour coded everything made me want to be in an elementary classroom all the time!  It is so welcoming!  For buddy reading I read with two of the grade 5 girls and I was able to stay afterwards for their dress rehearsal.  They were practicing for a First Nations festival in Port Alberni and they were the first on stage.  They were performing two songs and were incredibly adorable doing so.  This partly made me want to teach elementary, but then I think about teaching the senior students.  Yup, I definitely belong in high school, however, my students will have to deal with an excessive amount of colour and crafts all over the walls.

When school finished at 3pm I headed back to BMSC.  Time for more Gyotaku fish printing with Hilary.  I was able to teach this one as well!  Lots of teaching today!  It was another lab that was in an unconventional location.  More supplies being trekked up and down a big hill.  I’ll have thighs of steel when I leave here.  Although I think the fish printing is quite fun and creative, the group of mostly 10-12 year old boys begged to differ.   They seemed to get bored of it pretty quickly.  Oh well.  At least I got to make a print!

Pizza night again, so happy!!! Then I remembered it was the last pizza night, and I became sad. 🙁

 

Day 20 (May 14):

First on the docket today was another seaweeds lab.  My last seaweeds lab in fact.  Things are starting to wind down.  Only one school is here, so there isn’t a lot a labs to go around.  This seaweeds lab is only one hour, which is a bit short to go into the fascinating world of seaweeds! (Not a hint of sarcasm,  I swear!) This is a different group of the same class of grade 6 girls that I taught last time.  They were given the same activities, such as identifying seaweeds and creating their own seaweeds product.  I didn’t have my timing down as well this time around.  I guess I got a little too excited about the lesson and went a bit long with the lecture portion then I should have.  I was worried that the girls would not have time to present their products, but they were very efficient and everyone was able to finish.

After a nice lunch break of leftover pizza, it was on to my last trip to Brady’s Beach.  The hill afterwards may be a deterrent, but the beauty of the beach is worth it.  As the students did tide pool studies, I went around the beach with my  “Official Plankton Receptacle”,  or OPR for short, and used to it collect seaweeds.  The seaweeds lab was low on fresh samples, so I made it my mission to find as many different types as possible.  I also wanted to take some time and just enjoy being on the beach.  It is so amazing there and the diversity of life is so incredible.  When the students had finished their tide pool studies, they held a sandcastle competition.  Some were pretty great!

When we got back from Brady’s, I decided to catch the sunset at Pachena Beach.  This cannot be described, sorry, you’ll just have to go see it for yourself.  The pictures will not do it justice, I assure you.  When I was heading back to my car, I met Chad and a couple of the university students heading to the beach for a bonfire.  I did an about face and joined them.  I didn’t stay for too long, but it was very nice and relaxing.  What isn’t relaxing about a beach, a beverage and a bonfire?

 

Day 21 (May 15):

How I spent my last day in Bamfield.

8:30 am – I taught (with information gaps filled in by Orla) an Invertebrate Diversity lab.  Also not my best teaching hour.  I was not completely sure about my content knowledge because I had not taught this one in a couple of weeks.  The students also seemed very uninterested and their talking was distracting at times.  It was difficult to insist students stop talking with this class, as the teachers were talking as well.  Ah well, c’est la vie, there will be better days in the future (hopefully) but it would have been nice to end on a high note.

11 am – Packed up and made lunch…

1 pm – I decided to go to Pachena Beach for the afternoon.  I brought my book and a blanket and set off for the beach.  It was an amazing afternoon.  The sun was out and the water was beautiful.  It was a nice afternoon of thought and reflection (I can’t believe I just used that word of my own accord!).

4:30 pm – Back from the beach and off to the library.  The only place where I could get internet, so I went to write my blog.

5:30 pm – Happy hour at the directors house.  What a great view.  Could you imagine waking up to that every day?

6:30 pm – After party at cabin 7.  Kelly made us some delicious chocolate cupcakes, so good.  A very nice way to end a very nice trip.  Great people.

 

Day 22 (May 16):

Time for the long trip home.

 

Random Fun Facts!

This is a Velella vellella jellyfish.  There are millions, if not billions, of these stranded on the beaches around Bamfield.  This is a frequent occurrence around springtime on the west coast.  These jellyfishes’ only mode of transport is it’s sail and are at the mercy of the winds.  This can leave them stranded in the thousands  at the high tide mark on beaches around the west coast.

The Bamfield Cat Houses were set up by the community to house the large number of feral cats around Bamfield.  There was a woman in the town that had a large number of cats and would take in any that needed a home.  When she passed away, the cats became feral and started to breed like crazy.  The town rallied together and built these houses for the cats.  They caught up as many cats as they could and had them spayed or neutered.  Eventually all were caught and the population stabilized.  Members of the community still take it in turns to feed the cats every day.  There are only 3 cats left, as this was quite a few years ago and most have died of old age.  The 3 cats left are about 15 years old.