Week 2: Day 5 - UBC Botanical Garden

Hello wonderful people! Jessie and Greg is back for another post this week on our morning stroll at the UBC Botanical Garden. 

Jessie

This week was one of the most inspiring weeks I've had in a while! All of the content and knowledge I've learned and retained has been deeply connected to my teaching pedagogy. I feel very educated and motivated. :) Outdoor education has been something I've sort of (-ish) thought about before, but not seriously until now--the concept of it is just so smart and relevant. It's able to be utilized in just about any subject area, and I find that it's quite centred on relational and multidisciplinary learning (which is what I'm all about!). I really enjoyed the school visits in Steveston yesterday because we saw outdoor education in 2 different ways: elementary and secondary levels. Though they are of all age groups, outdoor education is outdoor education and like any other subject, it continues to grow students and foster a more holistic and centred approach to things year by year. I can definitely see myself utilizing outdoor spaces as much as I can in the future! I think it'd also be pretty cool to have a couple classes outside together at the same time and do an interdisciplinary project; something I'm thinking about is language arts and visual arts, or biology and visual arts. Why not math and visual arts too?! This could open up so many doors and create some interesting opportunities for classes and teachers to collaborate more.

In terms of today, it was also an inspiring journey in the UBC Botanical Garden. It was delightful and it was a pleasure to walk through the landscape. While walking, I wasn’t trying to think a lot because I know that my mind would distract me from the information my eyes and ears were receiving, but I couldn't help but let my mind wander with me. I took trips down memory lane while being educated in the medicinal garden (as explained in a bit). At first when we walked around the garden, I mainly focused on the aesthetics and the looks of the plants--I tried to see if I could recognize any but I really couldn't! I read the plaques and admired the poetic English it was written with, but I resisted from touching the plants as the sign had warned us about the effects of some plants. Though we couldn't touch them, some scents were fragrant and it was difficult not to soak it in. Many of my senses were stimulated and I just let my mind focus on them because I think it’s a great way to feel connected to what's around me and to feel grounded. I think we should all take advantage of any opportunity to do that! Connecting it back to the holistic learning, I feel that outdoor education is able to allow stimulation of more senses as opposed to a classroom, therefore making the education more memorable and impactful. In terms of the relational learning, when we regrouped at the garden and Susan gave us the handouts of the different plants and their medicinal uses, I began to realize that I have existing knowledge of some of these plants already! I didn't realize, but I’ve used many before without knowing. Coming from a Chinese background, my grandparents had an abundance of ancestral knowledge of Chinese herbal medicine and had actually introduced many of these to my life when I was younger… but in Chinese! There are benefits from certain plants that I know of, but am unaware of how the plant looks, or I know the name of the plant in Chinese, but am unable to name it in English. Thinking about it now, that’s actually something that I should work on, but it was at this moment, I was reminded on how important relational learning can be. I felt so much more engaged and connected to the material we were learning about. Now I won't ever forget a lot of the things we talked about in the garden, like the importance of sage thanks to Susan's story! Something also worth mentioning is how we had conversations and discussions, rather than lectures to learn. Conversing is honestly an effective method of sharing knowledge and it's definitely story telling at this point.

Anyways, I could ramble on about these things, but the main takeaway is that through this week, I've reinforced so various methods and concepts within my teaching pedagogy and have even expanded it as well! Yay to interdisciplinary, collaborative, and relational learning! 

 

 Greg

Today, we visited the UBC Botanical Garden. A botanical garden is a collection of plants from around the world brought from their native soils to a new setting. Much like a zoo, it is a colonial idea to bring back exotic species and share them with patrons of a home locality, usually Europeans.

The areas of the Garden that we visited today included the Food, Asian, Alpine and Herbal Medicine Gardens. In the Food Garden, we saw a number of edible plants that would eventually be donated to homeless shelters in Vancouver. It is great to see the space being put to a worthy cause. There was garlic, lettuces, and fruit trees as well and many more varieties to boot.

At the Herbal Medicine Garden, it felt as if we where being transported back in time. The descriptions of the plants written in Early Modern English from old medicinal guides from the 16th and 17th centuries spoke of forgotten names for diseases modern medicine has made largely obsolete.  

Birthwort.
“Not only provoketh vomiting but purgeth downward. Profitable for the dropsy and jaundice.”  

Although the use of many of these herbs for ailments have long since been replaced, there are still many household herbs that we still use today for common ailments. Garlic and oregano for the common cold, ginger for stomach aches, or chamomile for falling asleep are all common herbal remedies alive and well today. What other cures and treatments await us in the natural world?

Photos