To begin our day today, we tried our hand at coding - though without any of the matrix-like technology one might expect. As someone who still feels lucky to have scraped by in highschool math, I have to admit the idea of doing anything even closely related had sweat beading down my forehead on what was already a very humid day. Shockingly, I made it through Erica’s exercise unscathed and actually came out with some new knowledge of my own! However, this elation only lasted so long as I dragged Leo and Evelyn down with me during our human robot exercise where I became our own Dr. Frankenstein of a very advanced robotic version of Loving Leo on his quest to find my water bottle.
Although we’re all adults, and Erica was surely right to trust in taking this exercise upon ourselves, my own silliness (and clear misunderstanding of the task at hand!) reminded me of the importance of scaffolding. Throughout practicum, I would think that I had everything totally thought out. I knew which exercise connected to which was coming next and why. I knew how they called back to competencies and how they slotted into my assessment. However, despite my desire to plan everything to the very last detail, there were still moments where students would misunderstand, have gaps in their knowledge, or find entirely new and brilliant ways of interpreting the task at hand. Even as an adult and a would-be teacher, I watched myself take a relatively straight-forward task and completely miss the mark. Today challenged not only my historical self (absolutely fearful of math) but also my current one.
Post-eco-coding, we were treated to an unbeelievably insightful presentation by one of our fellow Orchard Garden teacher candidates, Magali, about bees and beekeeping. Magali was our guide into the wild and beeautiful sociopolitics of our much-needed and much-maltreated apian friends: much was learned about the particular difficulties of maintaining hives in rainy Vancouver, the capitalistic horrors of global industrial apiculture, the complexities of bee swarms, and the structures of beehives.
Magali’s’ passion was clear from the get-go and she commanded our attention ‘till we broke for lunch. That bee populaces, in swarms, employed a rudimentary form of dance-based direct democracy to determine the best location for their new hive was almost beeyond beelief. Similarly fascinating to learn about was the phenomenon wherein a hive’s queen, failing to uphold her end of the bargain in providing for the community, would be ousted by her fellow breethren in a violent coup d’etat known as a supersedure. I truly could not beelieve how intricate these communities were!
And then Magali talked about the tragic struggles currently beefalling the earth’s bee populations - how industrial beekeeping is failing to protect these wonderful critters, manipulating nature and natural selection to suit humanity’s needs. We do not let the bees die, as they are sometimes meant to, and this prevents the natural flow of living things - we turn capital-N Nature inside-out and upside-down to serve our needs without caring of the consequences. I will consider this if I ever come to tender a school garden: am I manipulating Nature? What are the consequences of my gardening? What am I doing to the soil, the trees, the flowers, the crops, the worms and beetles and bees, all beeings big and small in every nook and cranny of this world? What does it look like to strike a balance beetween wildness and agriculture? How do we honour the natural world as we take from it?
After Magali’s presentation, we were Scarfe-bound to cut, de-branch, de-thorn, and de-bark the stems of blackberry bushes. It was prickly business, but the hard work was worth it to gather the bark to bee used as a natural weaving material. So - consider how we were taking from nature here: did we strike a balance?
No comments:
Post a Comment