MACKENZIE BOUCHARD

On my first practicum at NVSS, I invited Elder + Healer, Minnie Thomas and her grand daughter, Jasmine Thomas, to share with my class about Indigenous uses of plants. A lot of the knowledge Minnie has about plants was taught to her by her mother, Sophie, and she had to work very hard to learn that knowledge.

Learning about balancing chemical equations is a very complex and difficult to learn concept. We learned this concept in many different ways over two weeks of time. This was a frustrating concept for some, and definitely required a lot of practice before students could move on from working with manipulatives, to working on a worksheet independently.

I referred to "Plants and Medicines of Sophie Thomas" several times for my first practicum. We also watched clips from her movie, "Seasons of Love". Both of these sources provided a direct use of indigenous knowledge that we otherwise weren't able to access directly from Sophie because she had already passed away. To support this indigenous knowledge, I had Minnie Thomas and Jasmine Thomas come to talk about the direct uses of indigenous knowledge of plants. 

Combining chemicals and different ingredients often results in a new product, or an altered product. We did many labs as a class and all of them were meant to have students predict what would happen when they combined different reactants. What type of reaction would occur and why? In this example, we explored oil spills to observe the consequences of oil when it sits on the ocean surface.

I tried to give a lot of autonomy to my students when they did research or inquiry projects. I felt that students learning about what they actually wanted to know/learn was the best way of having students own their learning. Students developed a lot of confidence and pride while working on their inquiry projects and their research projects. I was so pleased with the outcome and it was amazing to see very quiet and timid students stand in front of their classmates and confidently share what they knew about their topic.

On my second practicum, students learned about the different issues our province and country is currently debating. I had students explore their own identity and what was important to them to form their own opinion about pipelines. First Nations' perspectives on pipelines were discussed in depth.

We used a lot of cross-curricular learning when we talked about mining. I used memory to exercise students' prior learning and remind them about the story of Barkerville. I incorporated story into the lesson by talking about the Gold Rush going on from San Francisco, to Lillooet, to Barkerville, and to Alaska. This was a very exciting lesson and the kids had a lot to say about mining and their memories of Barkerville.

In this wonderful Maclean's YouTube video, the perspectives of many First Nations Elders and Chiefs regarding environmental respect, and how that relates to pipelines. The perspectives of these individuals are essential when considering whether pipelines are a good option for British Columbia or not. Political perspectives, and the perspectives of different First Nations representatives were discussed after playing this video with my class. I had the students generate their own opinion considering many different valuable outside perspectives.

I had students work towards a self assessment for their Parent Teacher Night. I included this as a way for students to voice their own opinion on how they were doing in Science 10. This was a very reflective process and I tried to include this throughout my practicum. I liked to ask students how they felt they were doing in the course, and whether they were ready to write a quiz or a test. I took their opinions into account and was very flexible with assignment deadlines.