Month: November 2023

Binary Beads

One of the big concerns when teaching Indigenous culture and experiences is historicizing it. To lock indigeneity in history is to forget that Indigenous cultures and people exist, with the capacity of change and connection that any person or community has. Binary Beading with Noel Pippin connects Indigenous art and pedagogy to technology, math, ADST, and language. Oh the things a bead can do! 

One of the big continuous goals for an educator is engagement. SD57 now uses the language engagement instead of management, the idea being that behaviorual problems largely stem from a lack of engagement. Pippin told stories of incredible engagement and despite my frustration I was hooked. We were melting strings, creating tools out of random objects, it became more than just interactive learning, it was inventive learning.

 

The other cool part of project centered lessons, they scale really successfully. The lesson is scalable for ability, age, available materials, and even time constraints. Pippin runs this lesson with everyone from kindergarten to adults and educators. You can modify beading technique, word length, or even degree of binary coding to adjust a lesson to students, really extending universal design for learning. Also, there’s no need for class access to the often limited resource that is computers. 

 

My three big takeaways are that it’s great to practice FPPL in modern contexts, creating is fun and also easy to tie to curriculum and competencies, and you can teach technology in ways that don’t necessarily rely on consistent access.

Two Rivers Art Gallery

I visited Two Rivers Art Gallery on the first Monday after Barry McKinnon died. If you read poetry, or study English in Prince George, you will likely learn who Barry McKinnon is. I’ve read Barry McKinnon. I have a copy of The Circle which I read for a class, but the real reason I’m connecting McKinnon and Two Rivers despite the fact that I’ve had limited interaction, is that I’d like to believe art is alive here. So I’ll try prose, bare with me, it’s been a minute.

Cynicism

Art is dead, art is dying.

Not really, not anymore than the rest of us.

We are dying, the world is dying

Well yes but no more or less than our art, our selves.

Young people today don’t believe in the future

Do we, do we really?

Young people have climate anxiety.

Amidst ecological collapse? I’d be more worried if they didn’t.

This town sucks!

In a bunch of ways absolutely, what now?

There are no artists here, no scene!

There is, but if you don’t like them you can always become one, or import.

Art has changed, it’s worsened. 

Did you know film photography has been the same process since humans figured out chlorophyll, and it still works essentially the same today? Here’s a stunning example:

The last time I did art “professionally” I went to Nelson, Art hippy capital of BC, or so they claim, despite their lack of housing, hostile architecture, and multiple police forces. But hey, they have Shambala. The week before my birthday, a couple days before I was completely out of money and had to return north, a few months before the first lockdown, I went to a poetry Jam, and I won. The kid from the north had the best poetry in a room of a dozen people and they gave me $20 to read for them again. An old poet woman in a funny hat told me it was modern, original, and striking, and she gave me a hug; I haven’t read since. 

Two River’s current exhibit, like everything living and aware of its situation, is a stunning look at waste, loss, and our ongoing ecological collapse. None of the pieces really suggested the damage was stopped, or ending in time. No piece, at least for me, suggested that we’ll stop climate change at the last second. But how do we make pedagogy at the end of the world? Looking at Jude Griebel’s work I think it might be whimsy. When we become enveloped in wildfire smoke and dirty air, can we giggle under our gas masks? When buildings crumble can we smile at the greenery growing through the streets? When the rising oceans swallow our cities, can we visit the fish who make submerged luxury apartments home? When lights go out, will we be able to see the stars? I think that’s what this lil’ green fruit was telling me.

Lesson planning is a skill I can’t wait to get good at. After years of snowboard instructing and a stint as a TTUC it’s the one thing I’m more or less a complete beginner at. Slowed down by bad crutches and a sprained ankle I got to hobble my way into the Library with a couple big takeaways. The first big reminder is that I love libraries. An entire institution devoted solely to best serving as much of their community as possible and giving people a real chance with everything from free printing to bicycle repair kits, to places to charge your phone. While schools and libraries are different in many ways, they overlap in the deep seated focus of serving a community through opportunities to learn and find information. I believe this is a big part of why they work so well when they collaborate. Libraries are a great resource for beginner lesson planners like myself and educators in general.

Being a momentarily crutch based beginner lesson plan gave me the chance to experience PG Public Library Resources, and the art of lesson planning, in a unique way that I’m grateful for. Without the ability to comfortably browse shelves I took a chance to think about the Library as a space. It’s a space with windows, levels, variation, unique architecture, books, computers, and plants. It has plenty of chances to be part of lessons simply because of its space. The kind of lesson that uses a new space to incorporate curriculum of something like mathematics is cool and exciting to think about, but also something I need to be willing to work towards. Being honest about where I’m at is part of moving beyond. Luckily the online browsing of resources and the online resources available through the PGPL are wonderful and a great place to start centring lessons as I hone my lesson planning skills.