It has been a very busy week so far, filled with quite a lot of new information, new ideas, and a whole lot of new positions to consider when working in the educational field.  But so far the biggest change has been working outside of the classroom in a more office-space sort of position.

Most mornings during my practicum I was up a 6:20 in order to catch the 7AM bus up to my practicum school in time for 8AM.  I would often be up till 10 or 11 the night before as I usually didn’t leave my school till about 5 or 6, and would still have lots of prep work and lesson planning to do for the next day.  At times this would feel pretty overwhelming, but I would manage to get through it simply by planning as far ahead as possible and coming up with several lesson plans during the weekend so I wouldn’t be overburdened during the week.  Being part of the Ultimate Frisbee team (helping to coach) ate up a lot of hours after school, volunteering with other programs, and meeting with my SAs and FA made it so I would often be “on” from 8AM to 10PM every day working with the school in some fashion or another.  This isn’t to say it was hard work, or not enjoyable, just that in comparison to my position at the gallery for the last week it was probably the hardest two and bit months of my life.

Here at the gallery I get to wake up around 8AM and still have an hour to myself to make breakfast, enjoy my coffee, and prepare for the day in a much more enjoyable manner.  I get to sleep at a normal hour, and rarely take more than an hour of work home with me.  I even got to enjoy my weekend!  I didn’t have marking, unit planning, lesson planning, or reflections to send to my FA and SAs.  All I had to do was some reading, enjoyed on my balcony in the sun, and a few notes to help me figure out some of the work I had to finish with the gallery.  I met up with friends for the first time in two months, I enjoyed the sunshine in the afternoon, and even got around to visiting the Capilano Suspension Bridge Sunday afternoon.

Working in an office is a strange feeling however, as my job choices and experiences up until this point have been either customer service oriented, or factory work, or in front of a classroom facilitating learning.  I’ve mentioned before this strange transition, but I should reiterate how it is a benefit to myself and my practice as well.  So far I’ve been to several meetings, walked around interacting with the material at the gallery (sometimes in the classroom its hard to interact with the material because you have so little time), and even enjoyed a couple of tours to gain further insight into my contribution for the gallery.  Collaboration really seems to be the major theme at this gallery.  Working together, discussion what is going on in each department (marketing, accounting, curating, fundraising, etc.), and having face to face time with each other seems to help make the gallery run incredibly smoothly.  We’ve had artists come in, fundraising people, even two prominent foundations based in Vancouver.  Seeing this other side of education (relatively speaking) has helped me better understand how I might encourage field trips or field experience in my classrooms by utilizing spaces like the gallery for educative purposes.  It has also helped me better understand the idea of collaboration.  In my practicum I usually only worked with my SAs to better my skills and work on my content, and rarely interacted with other teachers even in the same department (social studies).  Although this didn’t harm my practicum, I feel as though if I had made a better effort to really share resources and information with other teachers I could have bettered myself in a stronger and faster way.  Here at the gallery it seems like that’s what helps everyone work so well together.  So hopefully taking this lesson forward with me will result in better work habits such as collaboration, meetings, and face to face interactions with colleagues and friends.

Other than that, so far the CFE placement has helped me in my own education by providing me with ample content and information toward indigenous history, culture, and social justice.  My own research I’ve been undertaking to develop programs for the gallery has helped me gain even more knowledge than I had before on indigenous issues ranging from spirituality, cultural practices, historical influence, and even sustainability and environmental issues.  So far it has been an incredible pleasure to work here, not only for my own benefit, but for the benefit of my future practice to help students understand better the issues surrounding indigenous people, and environmental issues.

Been working hard today focusing on something tangible that I can have to show I’ve been doing work this week, and I’ve come up with a few rough things I feel like posting here.  In particular a lesson plan I’ve come up with about Oral History to help teach students either at the gallery or in classes about the importance of stories to all cultures, and not just indigenous ones.  Still a work in progress as it hasn’t been reviewed by gallery staff, or my high school student adviser who has enlisted his help with these sorts of things if I need it.  More in depth post to follow.

Importance of Oral History LP

My work so far with UBC and the High School practicum have been mainly either hands on, tossed in the deep end, face to face class work with students, or isolated lonely time in the Neville Scarf library finding sources for papers and essays.  So starting this new position at the gallery has been a dramatic shift toward something different.  For one, I’m in contact with a lot of people all the time, talking, and working together to get things done.  There’s still a lot of personal work to be done, but I’ve never collaborated the way they seem to do at the gallery in my own work.  What is specifically new to my experience is the amount of meetings they have.

At my secondary practicum school I think I went to two very small, and very short meetings with the department in the 10 weeks that I was there.  Since being at the gallery for 3 days I have been to 4 meetings, two of which occurred today.  I even had to speak about what I had been doing so far with the gallery to people from a very prominent foundation.  So not only am I sharing my ideas, my work, and my specific skill set (education) with my direct supervisor at the gallery, I’m also sharing it with the directors, the marketing team, the volunteers, and several other staff as well.  So far I really like it, seeing the ideas that people have, seeing how events and planning are done behind the scenes, it all feels very administrative but also very engaging with the audience the meetings are meant to benefit.  Just been a new day every day so far with the experience and I feel a lot of it will help me be more vocal if I ever end up at a school as a teacher.

Today has been another day of reading, writing, and note taking.  Which to me is just fine, I really enjoy learning new information, especially about something I’m interested in but don’t know a whole lot about.  Today’s focus has been all about the Cedar tree, and indigenous uses of wood for tools, cultural practices, and other forms of daily life that were facilitated with the use of cedar trees.  I have a neat book by Hilary Stewart entitled “Cedar”, that outlines and details the importance of trees for the Haida people to develop their culture.

I also had the big meeting with my Faculty Adviser and two members of the Gallery Staff to solidify my understandings of what I was doing in the gallery for my CFE.  Turns out, they’re incredibly interested in developing a hands-on lab of some sort that will focus on the importance of wood, trees, and forests in relation to indigenous cultures, specifically in Haida Gwaii (though it could easily transfer to other West Coast indigenous groups).  So my job it would seem is to compile and create all the needed resources (education ones) that would be needed to have an hour or two long lab within the gallery.  To me this is an excellent opportunity to use some of the activity making skills I learned during my practicum, as labs are often more about touching, seeing, and interacting with material rather than simply learning content from a power point or a book.  Students often learn much better when they fully integrate themselves with the material they’re studying, so if the gallery wants students to learn more about wood and its importance to indigenous cultures then the best way to do that is to have a lab like the one I hope to create.

Now that I have my focus I feel like I can really create a more concrete timeline of “due dates” for the information I gather, and for the project I create as a whole.  So here goes nothing.

P.S. I realize this post is a day late.  Everyday from now on!

Here are some of the cool photos from the book Cedar

Stewart, Hilary. Cedar: Tree of Life to the Northwest Coast Indians. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 1995.  (Making a citation just in case I need to)

So today was my first real day in the gallery, and there is just non-stop information I need to look into and research.  For now it’s all about figuring out the focus that the gallery wants me to work on, then finding the content, activities, and resources I need to execute a good lesson / program for the gallery.

Thankfully today I got the low down on the necessary criteria they want me to work on, and for the particular grades the focus will center around (Grades 9 and 12)

From what I’ve experienced so far the content I’m to be working with ties directly into much of the IRP material for socials curriculum.  Everything I’ve read so far today has reaffirmed things I’ve learned in my classes not only during the Bachelor of Education program, but also in my own interests in history and first nations issues.  Main ideas I’m throwing around in my head are: the importance of the cedar tree, the potlatch and ceremonial masks, repatriation of cultural artifacts, protection of the forest and it’s impact on future generations, indigenous people’s connection to land, oral history, and maybe woodcarving.

Hopefully tomorrow solidifies the ideas I’ve got because right now it feels kind of directionless, but informed.

Here is just some of my notes so far.

Starting this experience I have been racked with apprehension and anxiety.  I feel like it’s normal reasons behind this: starting a new position, leaving an old one, having almost no idea what I would be doing at the gallery.  Thankfully meeting up with my supervisor allowed a lot of those issues to go away.  We met up and had lunch, went over the expectations, and shared resources to help me start moving forward with the community field experience.

Today’s experience was actually pretty fun too.  The Bill Reid Gallery folks were going to a couple of schools to put on short presentations for the Pro-D days going on in several of the districts, and it really resonated with what is expected of me.  Essentially they presented teachers with the opportunity to take their classes, their expectations with education, and their knowledge of pedagogical theories, and apply it within the context of the gallery.  What they were looking for is to use the facilities, the artifacts, and the space of the Bill Reid Gallery to help the gallery develop better programs to help students who come to their gallery to better engage with the material.  Teaching indigenous issues can often be very challenging for teachers who generally come from a non-indigenous background.  Many find it uncomfortable to teach about things they don’t know enough about.  What the gallery was proposing is to make dialogue with teachers in order to empower them to take on the challenge of educating their students about things that may be uncomfortable, like indigenous issues, by interacting with the materials the gallery has.  Very cool stuff, and I’m looking forward to adding my own perspective to helping the gallery achieve their goals.