I can’t believe this three week practicum is already over! It has truly flown by. This last week also provided numerous rich learning opportunities and experiences. I spend Monday in a grade 4/5 class observing and assisting a Helping Teacher who was finishing a unit on the TRC and Indian Residential Schools. We watched a short video, read 3 survivor stories and listened to the apology from the Prime Minister. The culminating activity was making a necklace as part of Project of Heart. I thought this was a really beautiful way to end the learning on something positive and expressive. Some students came up with designs full of metaphor and meaning. Others struggled to come up with an idea. It was wonderful to sit with students and try and guide their thinking without giving them all the answers. In the end everyone had made something unique to them and that represented their understanding of this Canadian history.

Tuesday was National Aboriginal Day and Prince Rupert really celebrates with enthusiasm! It was wonderful to be part of this celebration and experience it with the beautiful people of this territory. Although, we were mostly manning the coffee and tea station in another room, we were able to pop into the big auditorium a few times to watch the amazing dancers, artists and musicians perform throughout the day. It was also very interesting to see the community come through and have some free coffee, tea and donated food at our station. We were able to speak with numerous community members!

We also participated in a book launch at Lax K’xeen Elementary this week, which was really cool to see! The librarian published three books from three different classes, with the help of the classroom teacher. Each book was made up of student writing accompanied by a beautiful photograph that surrounded a common theme. They turned out lovely and the celebration was exciting for the students. It was wonderful to see how proud they were of their work and seeing themselves published in such a sophisticated way. It gave me lots of ideas for future projects with students!

Finally, I finished this week off with a field trip to Butze Rapids with the grade sixes of Prince Rupert Middle School. It was a lovely way to finish off my time in Prince Rupert. The students had a blast looking for crabs, wading out into the low tide, fishing, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows, and making forts. They were all very well behaved and although the day felt chaotic it was also relaxing to be out in such beautiful nature. It’s fantastic to see how schools here seem to take every opportunity they can to take kids outside. I can see how great it is for them!

Another week in Rupert has flown by. I was fortunate enough to spend some more time with Marlene Clifton this week and take part in some of her drumming circles, as well as in a drum-making day at Port Edward Community School. On Tuesday I was able to join in to a couple of her drumming lessons at Lax K’Xeen while I was spending the day shadowing the Sm’algyax language teacher. It was really interesting to be able to see those language lessons from Kindergarten to grade 5. The teacher had between 30 and 40 minutes for each class and I was able to see how she tailored the lesson to each grade level. She included more visuals and game-type activities for the younger grades and expected more oral participation and writing from the older grades. We were able to chat a little bit about report cards, as well, so I was able to hear about her holistic approach to assessment. I was happy to hear that she makes every effort to meet the children where they are at and think about their overall learning, as opposed to whether or not they completed x, y, and z assignments. Some students don’t get time to do homework at home. There are many reasons this approach is more equitable. She explained that if the student could speak some of the language she had taught and understood what it meant she graded them appropriately based on that. I was also very grateful to be able to meet the fluent Sm’algyax language speaker on Friday when I participated in the drum-making at Port Edward Community School. He shared some of his perspective with me about the importance of the language being taught in school and how he became a teacher without ever thinking he would. It was difficult to hear how few people there are left alive who are fluent in Sm’algyax. However, this district is one of the few in the country who are leading the way in revitalizing the language through the school system. I was honoured to speak with Mr. Spencer about the language as he shared his wisdom about drum-making with the children of the Port Ed school.

On Wednesday we helped supervise the middle school students doing  band tour to all the elementary schools. We helped them load and unload their gear, set up and “shhhhh”ed them while they got antsy during the performances. It was a fun day! It was lovely to see how vibrant the band is here in Prince Rupert and how many talented young musicians there are sharing their love of music.

I also shadowed Sue Neilson, the occupational therapist, this week. That was a really incredible experience. I’m not sure when I would have ever had the opportunity to see that side of the field if not for this CFE, so I was really grateful to be able to spend the day with her. She was very knowledgable and shared a lot of her insights with me over the course of the day. I was able to see what a diverse range of needs she is attending to each day and how far and wide those needs take her. We drove from here and there all day and it was really amazing. I helped set up their table at the Health Fair with books and games. My favourite part of the day was spending time in the sensory room with Sue and a student. What an amazing experience! What an incredible difference it’s making for children’s lives to have time in that room to play and move and explore.

We finished off our second week with a boat tour with the teachers in the district. It was a blast! And incredibly beautiful! They stop at a certain point and feed the eagles, so we were able to see an enormous amount of eagles swooping down to the  water right in front of the boat. It felt like we could reach out and touch them. They were enormous and unbelievably gorgeous. It was a moving experience and a regular occurrence for the locals here in Rupert.

Another regular occurrence in Rupert. A lawn friend!

Some happy CFE teacher candidates

A circle of eagles

This first week has flown by. They have given us a lot of freedom and choice around how we decide to spend our time here. It has been really interesting making it up as I go along. There was definitely a part of me (an exhausted part of me) that wanted someone to just tell me what to do and where to be each day, but I’m grateful for the ability to explore what is interesting to me and experience things I find meaning in.

One of the very first things we did was help paint a rainbow on the sidewalk with the Gay-Straight-Alliance, some teachers, community members and the mayor. It was a wonderful experience and I was honoured to part of it. I spoke briefly with some of the students and many encouraging car horns were heard as people drove by us while we painted together. I was encouraged by how supportive the community seemed to be of this venture and I was inspired by ways educators can act as a bridge between students and the community. It was wonderful to see the way members of the school community spear headed and facilitated this important project.

I also spent a beautiful day helping a grade 1 teacher from Conrad Elementary with her field trip to the waterfront. She organized for her students to pick up litter along the beach and then sing an ocean song at the docks where they would be recorded for the radio for World Oceans Day. I learned so much from this teacher in such a short amount of time. I observed her management style as she dealt with shepherding her boisterous grade ones all over the place, keeping them on task and with the group. She was warm and firm. I also saw how she had created a unit around World Oceans Day that integrated so many subject areas and was deeply rooted in the First Nations territory they are in. They sang the song for the ocean and then she also pulled out her drum and they sang a chant about the Spirit Bear, which used the local language. When we arrived back at the classroom she welcomed me in and began to share her resources with me. I was able to take pictures of all her bulletin boards and ask her questions about her pedagogy. I walked away with lots of ideas about integrating subjects with younger students, as well as with some dandelion syrup that her class had made in a previous unit on dandelions!

I was also fortunate enough to accompany a grade 6 teacher on his field trip to Diana Lake this past week. It was a beautiful place and the students were all very well behaved, surprisingly. I thought a lot about the value of outdoor education. Its very common place here, but something we are sorely lacking most of the time in the city. The students here grow up playing in nature on a regular basis and I felt I could see the difference. So much important learning occurs when kids take risks outdoors and play games together outdoors. It was a fairly self-directed day. The kids were given some options and sent off to entertain themselves. I didn’t hear one single child come up and say they were bored. I saw kids collaborating and coming up with things to do, grouping and regrouping as they needed to. It was quite amazing to see.

Here are the final projects from my quick and dirty print making unit!

June 3rd was my final day teaching at General Wolfe Elementary. I was so privileged to have been able to learn and grow as a teacher, and as a person, in such an incredible school. I will never forget my time there or all of the incredible people who guided, supported, challenged and encouraged me. Thank you!!

What 10 weeks of practicum looks like

I designed a unit for French around Francophone cultural communities around the world. Students worked in groups to research a French-speaking community or country outside of Canada (and not France). They were asked to make an “information packet” about their country, which could take any form of their choosing: a brochure, a scrapbook, a tourism ad, a poster… Whatever they wanted! Each section was written in English, but one sentence or caption had to be in French. Many groups chose to make a powerpoint but here is an example of a scrapbook made by students who learned about Madagascar and a poster by students who researched the Ivory Coast.

Madagascar Scrapbook

Ivory Coast poster

For HACE I taught a unit on substance abuse. I assigned the students a group research project where they had to learn about one drug, in-depth, and then present a poster-board to the class. They had to teach their peers what they had learned, while the students filled in a note-taking sheet. Groups had to cover: the history of the drug; the science behind how it effects the bodies of adults and of children; the present day use of the drug; and if there are any positive uses of the drug, explain what they are. I wanted to promote drug literacy and provide an education about drugs that included multiple perspectives.

I started the unit by having students tell me every word they had heard of that had to do with drugs. Once they were all on the board we talked about how most of them didn’t actually know what most of the words truly meant. I encouraged students, as I did with all my units, to think critically about what they see and what they hear. During research, I taught students to decipher which websites were reliable sources of information. As with any subject, I wanted students to be armed with knowledge about substance abuse, but also ways of decoding the ways in which perspective and bias affect the way knowledge is presented. What is true and what is not? How does what we hear about certain drugs affect how we think about people who are addicted to them? Is every drug addict living on the street? Although we had minimal time for this unit, I believe students got a lot out of the project, both in terms of knowledge about substance abuse and, also, thinking critically.

During the last week and a half of practicum, my students handed in all their final projects I had assigned. First, they completed a class-wide poetry zine that included 2 poems from each student. The theme of the poetry unit was social justice and each student chose a theme they wanted to write about for the zine. At the beginning of each poetry lesson I would share a video of a spoken-word poem relating to the social justice theme for that day. I would then use that poem to teach one or two poetic devices each lesson. The students really enjoyed the spoken word poetry and I was impressed with how engaged they were with such complex and difficult subject matters. We had many thought-provoking and meaningful class discussions about gender, sexual orientation, race, culture, environmental issues, bullying and mental health.

They especially liked listening to Macklemore’s two songs about facing drug addiction and finding sobriety, Otherside and Starting Over, as well as Shane Koyczan’s “To This Day” which is beautifully animated and evokes strong emotional responses.

On Monday, I taught a group of 6/7 students from other classes how to do print making. Here are there first run of prints!

For Tuesday’s Science lesson about what happens at the different plate boundaries I decided to let the kids get a little messy with a fun, hands-on activity. To begin, they finished a jigsaw activity they had started last class. After reading a section of their textbook, each group had to come up with an explanation of what happens at their assigned plate boundary and draw a diagram of it. Then, they formed new groups where each student taught their group about whichever boundary they had become an expert in. The students filled out a note-taking sheet on each boundary type, drew diagrams and learned from their peers.

Then the whipped cream came out. I’m not sure where I originally heard of this activity, but here is a link to a blog that I think describes it quite well.

http://www.playdoughtoplato.com/graham-cracker-plate-tectonics/

I gave each group a plate, sprayed some whipped cream on to it and then dropped a few drops of orange and red food colouring into it to make it look like the magma of the mantle. I gave each group 2 graham crackers and they were all set! First, we tried a divergent plate boundary by pressing down slightly and pulling the graham crackers apart. The students noticed the “magma” gushing up through the crack. I asked them “When this occurs on the ocean floor, what is it called?” Many hands shot up (and many rascals also called out) “sea-floor spreading!”

Overall, I think this activity helped the students visualize the plate boundaries and learn in a tactile way. And we only got whipped cream on 20% of the surfaces!