Development

Fresh Roots Urban Farm

This was a great professional development opportunity where I visited a school garden where the school incorporated the outdoors and gardening into the classroom. This highlighted the importance of knowing where the things we take for granted in our life such as our food come from. In addition, it is a great chance to take the class outside and change the perceived image of the traditional classroom of desks and chairs. A school garden is great for fostering a sense of community and working together to create something that can be shared with everyone, as well as making connections in learning to the garden/outdoors.

Musqueam Cultural Centre Workshop

I participated in the district professional development day at the Musqueam Cultural Centre for the Richmond School District. We were split up into sections and taken around the area outside with a guide that gave us information about the history and traditions of some of the things we saw during our walk. The latter half was a workshop that involved residential schools and the effects they had/still have on Aboriginal people. For myself, it is imperative that this history is told and understood because it has been a part of Canadian history that has been silenced for so long. The effects of this silencing are continuing and many perceptions and stereotypes stem from a misguided understanding of what has happened.

   

Art Galleries (VAG, Wing Sang)

The great thing about Vancouver is the connection that it has to art and these resources can be used in our classrooms as well. Oftentimes, it is easy to only see academics as something involving pen and paper but there are many ways to adapt materials or look at something from a different perspective

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There have been great exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, including Edward Burtynsky’s “A Terrible Beauty” that discusses man-made landscapes and what this does to our environment. This would fit into a unit about sustainability, perceptions of beauty, or futures. The current exhibit is by Douglas Coupland, who focuses on the idea of Canadian identity and culture and what makes up this ambiguous and multicultural idea. This would further supplement the Canadian novel that a class is working on.

The Rennie Collection at the Wing Sang Building is one where the building itself has an extensive history. It is the oldest building in Vancouver’s Chinatown and has been retained to keep aspects of the former interior. This building was built by Yip Sang during a time when discrimination was very high for Chinese Canadians. Buildings themselves have their own stories and architectural history can reveal much about the time period.