Sun Dew

When I was up at Cat Lake a few weeks back I was sitting on a log and noticed some tiny lime green plants with little purple tentacles. Upon closer inspection I recognized these as carnivorous plants. I later looked them up and found out they were Sundews. Pretty amazing little plants that use their sticky tentacles to attract and capture insects. These are actually an indicator specis for BC! A friend of mine recently got an ant infestation in her house and has reportedly used pitcher plants to capture the bugs, pretty nice little pets to have. I am going to try growing some in a terarium I have started.

Brian Nash Gill

Just heard about this artist Brian Nash Gill from some friends. Pretty neat stuff. Makes me want to try out some nature prints!

Special Needs.

I have been taking a class that deals with exceptionalities and teaching children with special needs. It has been really eye opening, and brings up a debate about the costs and benefits of prescription drugs (think ritalin) and labeling of kids. While labels can be helpful to validate the experience of students and to help them get the help they may need to be able to work within our system, the labels themselves can also be detrimental and seem to somtimes lead to apathy on the part of teachers, parents and/or students (eg, "I can't do that assignment, I'm ADHD"). This story by this american life called Mother of Invention brings it all home for me.

here is the syopsis

Karen Sosnoski's one-year-old son, Anton, was born with what's known as Mosaic Down Syndrome, a rare condition where some of his cells have the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome and other cells don't. So as he grows, he could end up having all the health risks and challenges of Downs syndrome...or just a few of them. Through a website, Karen found a kid with the same diagnosis, named Tim Colvin, who was doing really well...perhaps because his mother, Kristy, invented a surprising and unusual way to raise her son. When some people hear about what Kristy did, they're shocked. Karen went to talk to Kristy and Tim about how Tim was raised. (13 minutes)

here is the link.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1265
just click where it says full episode in orange.

James Chamberlain is a Hero

We had an amazing talk today given by James Chamberlain, the teacher involved in the book ban that happened in the Surrey school board in the 90's. He reccommended a really good resource called GALE (Gay and Lesbian Education)

Article by Samantha

A friend of mine just wrote an article in the online Georgia Straight about the healing powers of nature, as well as her work with the environmental youth alliance, or EYA, where I did an internship a year and a half ago. Nice work Sam!

Alaska blueberry aka blue huckleberry aka black huckleberry

Yesterday I got a great tip to go and find the "black huckleberries" at Camosun Bog. I had never been to Camosun bog but it wasn't too hard to find. it is just off 16th near crown. I biked there from UBC. It's beautiful and they are doing a remediation project there which you can help out with if you have time on Saturday mornings from 9am to noon.
I wasn't exaclty sure what I was looking for, my friend had said that the berries looked like the red huckle berries, but they were dark blue and grew above the leaves rather than hanging below them. Much to my delight, once I got onto the boardwalk they were hard to miss, and upon tasting them I was brought back to my childhood. I remember picking them in the summers when we would rent a cabin at Still Water near Powell River. My mum would get hours of time to herself by asking my brother and I to go and pick enough huckleberries for a pie. Huckleberries, for the unninitiated, are tiny, and I don't know if we ever actually managed to collect a pie's worth, but all the same everybody won.
It has been years since I have seen these and they are delicious! I was pleased to run into other people who were noticing the berries. One grandmother was encouraging her grandson to try the berries, another couple were noticing the berries and thought I was "brave" for trying them but were too skeptical to try them themselves. Made me a bit sad, as this is a trait I have noticed in a lot of people, a sort of poison phobia that seems to extend to all plants or mushrooms not wrapped in plastic and sold by the pound. Le sigh. At any rate the berries are there for the taking and I would encourage everyone to go and have a taste, there are plenty of red huckleberries as well and some salmon berries to boot. When I got home I looked them up and found a great website which had the botanical name and description, turns out they are actually called Alaska Blueberries, but both terms work fine as far as I'm concerned.

Vancouver Aquarium

Vancouver Aquarium job postings

https://www.cytiva.ca/vanaq/ext/detail.asp?vanaq299

4cats

franchise art school for kids?

TREK

here is a link to the TREK program run through Prince of Whales Secondary School. I tried out for this program which is selected by lottery, and I didn't get in, but my cousin did and I think it was an amazing experience for him.

Free School

Here
is a link to the Vancouver Free School, as I understand it it is a kind of anarchist shool, seems like most of their programs relate to social justice and gender issues.

Good work, green work

for all us greenies who need a job soon.
Check this out.

Outdoor School

I want to go here. May volunteer next year with the kids from my practicum.

Pacific Spirit School

Here is a link to the Pacific Spirit School website

Waldorf

Here is a link to Vancouver's Waldorf School located in North Vancouver. Here is a link to some infor about the Waldorf philosophy.
For information on applying as a TOC at the Vancouver Waldorf School
contact Ronaye Ireland at 604-985-7435 x0.

Green School

The Green School Bali,

Green Porno

Recently I helped teach "family life" a pseudonym for sex ed in the grade 5 class where I did my practicum. The students were pretty embarrased about the whole thing but were full of insightful anonymously asked questions like "does sex feel good?", "does it hurt to get my period?", "can animals be gay" and "when do men catch up to women in maturity". I found the last question particularly amusing. Unfortunately due to time constraints I was unable to answer all these questions. It is important to give students age appropriate family and sex education, it can be tricky though, for me I have sometimes thought using plants as a metaphor can be a safe gateway for talking about reproduction.

Fortunately the world has Isabella Rosellini who has managed to combine my newfound interest in quality sex ed with my obvious love for the environment. Not only that but she does it with videos which emply amazing art direction and humour. Check them out. They are hilarious, and deal quite well with the little know reproductive techniques of various insects and marine life. Enjoy!

http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno/

more Ted Talks

chchch check it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/john_francis_walks_the_earth.html

Hope this doesn't jinx me but.....

I had a good day. Whew. I owe it in large part to rad art, which, along with some smiles, some love and some time in the sun make it all worthwhile.

paving the way for life without cars.

A wonderful and inspiring article about life without cars specifically in a car free community in Germany. woot woot!

Let's find another way

Check out the video at this link all about where all the STUFF we consume goes, and why it's important. My aunt sent word of this from the new york times online.

Eureka!

For those of you who went to school in Canada you may remember these videos produced in Toronto, presumably in the 70's of 80's. They are rad! I have been having to brush up on my science terminology (and understanding) and along with Bill Nye these are my new coles notes.

Arbutus

Okay, I have been seriously slacking off with the whole plant of the week thing and I apologize. I will do my best to remedy the situation. I went to Saturna Island a couple of weekends ago and took some photos there. Here is one of my favorite trees, an Arbutus. It is native to BC and loves sunny out-croppings. There is a story that once there was a young woman whose lover went off to war in a ship. She waiting for him by the sea but he never returned. The story goes that this is why Arbutus trees are usually found growing near the sea, or at lookout points, eventually that woman turned into a tree. The skin of this tree is quite remarkable., it peels away in rusty brown strips but underneath is a vibrant green. Often times it will have large parts which are dead, while others prosper. It definitely does take on the air of a tortured soul.

Foodies unite for Micheal Pollan at the UBC Farm June 6th!

In case you haven't heard of Micheal Pollan, he is one of my favorite authors. He wrote "the botany of Desire", "The Ominvore's Dilemma" and "In defense of Food" which I am still in the middle of. He has also been a featured speaker on "Deconstructing Dinner" and the CBC Ideas program entitles "Organics goes Mainstream. He is amazing and will be visiting UBC farm on June 6th. The cost to attend is $45 which includes a signed copy of his book in defense of Food, which gives a refreshingly healthy view of food: "Eat food (as opposed to processed garbage which resembles food), Not too much, mostly plants." He is such a huge inspiration in my life. I really want to go. You can buy tickets at Barbara Joe's books to cooks.

I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS!!!!!!!

I have been waiting way to long just for this preview. Wild wild wild.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--N9klJXbjQ&fmt=22

day brightener

Pomelo perfection

Today after school my teacher friends and I went to the corner store near the school and inside I met Helena and her plethora of perfect pomelo plants. Helena is the owner of the store and all around she has tiny pots which she has collected. Most are handmade. Sprouting out of the eclectic pots are shining round green leaves. When I asked her about it Helena told me that she saves the seeds from Pomelos (like a grapefruit but larger) and plants them in soil. She mists them every couple of days but does not water them much as the pots have no drainage holes and you don't want to drown them. If you run your hand over the leaves they smell nice, and Helena says it is especially nice to have one of these plants near your computer so if your eyes need a break you can just look at your happy little plant and feel better. I agree, my eyes like green. I was thinking about doing this with my kids. I brought in a terrarium the other day and they are all pretty keen on it. They want to water it and are constantly asking me questions. They could even make their own little pots and eat the Pomelo's. According to Helena, you can also cook the peel of the Pomelo and eat that too.

Stuntman!

I am going to be teaching gymnastics to my grade 5 class and have the good fortune of knowing a real life stunt man who has agreed to come and teach one day with me. Eli is a wonderful friend of mine who I went on an art history tour of Europe with. Together we got lost in cities from Zurich to Florence and all in between. I am both terrified and electrified by his stunt reel, check it out.

Hilarious Punctuation with Victor Borge

Lessons that change writers

I hear that the book "lessons that change writers" by Nancie twell is a good one check it out here. Maybe they have this as a resource at our schools?

What is a "Wiki"?

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