Haida Gwaii Brain

One of the best parts about being able to work from home is the ability to decide that I can take a break and go for a walk without worrying that someone will accuse me of abusing my prep time, I know I will come back and work later and in the end be more productive. Not to mention that often it is during such breaks that I am able to come up with good ideas and lessons start to take shape. It was on such a break last week that I realized how much I have come to view the world around me from a Haida Gwaii perspective.

One of the things we appreciate about Ringsted (where we live now) are the trails nearby that run along the creek and through wooded areas and farmers fields, it was through one of these wooded areas I was walking when I had my encounter. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement, a large black form beneath a tree to my right, my brain said ‘bear’. Not until I had identified the animal as a cow did I remember where I was.

I have spent a lot of time in recent years thinking about place based education, this year I am getting a really good idea of how place has educated me. A couple of days ago a storm they are calling the St. Jude storm came through town, our reaction, ‘we get a few of these each year back home’. But this one killed about 15 people (two or three in Denmark) so maybe it was worse, but it didn’t sound worse and the house didn’t shake nearly as much as our house back home.

The other day in class we talked about the commercial seal hunt, a topic I have covered before, last time few seemed to understand why people would care about people killing seals because everyone knows that seals eat fish and are a nuisance to people who are trying to fish. This time we had a different discussion with me playing the ‘what about the local people’ role, partly to fuel discussion, partly because I remembered a students words from a classroom in Masset.