May 8-10 2011
From the moment we arrived at the tiny airport just outside the small community of Moosonee, we realized that this was going to be a week full of surprises and new experiences. Our accommodations were in an area where teachers at the local catholic elementary school mainly lived, about a 5 minute walk from “downtown” and communities only grocery store. We arrived early in the afternoon on Sunday, therefore we had a good amount of time to prepare for our first set of presentations the next day. The next morning we arrived at the docks to catch a water taxi over to Moose Factory. This town is located on an island accessible by boat in the summer, ice bridge in the winter, and helicopter during the ice freeze-up and thaw outs in the spring and fall. This means that if a student from Moosonee attends school on the island they take a helicopter to class for around 4 weeks every year!
The first school we visited was Ministik School, an elementary public school. We started off with a chemistry magic show for the kindergarten class, and performed 3 more Chem magic shows before the end of the day. The younger grades all loved these shows, and for most kids the highlight of the presentation was making colorful slime which they could keep. We quickly learned to do this activity at the end of all magic shows, since once they had slime we fought a losing battle for their attention.
Fu, my partner, also gave an electrochemistry presentation to a Gr.6 class. The main interactive component of this presentation is to make a battery out of lemons! I also led a DNA/forensics activity with Gr.7’s and 8’s, where they had to solve a “crime” based on evidence left behind (such as a ransom note, fingerprints, and a DNA sample). They also got to make candy DNA, which even the teachers participated in J
Tuesday we visited Moosonee Public school. We had 7 activities scheduled for this school, and while all three chemistry magic shows were performed in the school gym (which was shared with 2 other schools), we moved from classroom to classroom to present the other activities. The activities scheduled with this school included: DNA/forensics with a Gr. 7 class and a Gr. 6 class, Neuroscience with a Gr. 7/8 class, and Flight with a Gr. 5/6 class. We noticed that the higher the grade, the less students there were, and this was a trend we soon noticed at all the schools we visited. The students seemed to enjoy the DNA/forensics activities since there is very little “lecturing” involved, and it is a very interactive activity which encourages group work and conversation. The candy DNA was, of course, a good bonus as well. All the teachers and staff were also very cheerful and supportive, getting involved with the activity and encouraging participation from all their students.
Wednesday May 11, 2011
Wednesday was scheduled to be our longest day. We started off at Northern Lights Secondary school, which is located in the north end of Moosonee. The class sizes were surprisingly small; the first class we met had 5 students! The teachers explained that the school did not offer University level classes, only college and locally developed classes in Gr. 11 and 12. Students who wanted to take U level courses had to move to another town, usually Timmons or Sudbury. The students we presented to were great, they participated, asked great questions and were very respectful. The chemistry magic show for the Gr.10’s did not impress as many as it had in the elementary grades, but this was mainly because they had seen the show in previous years by other LTS volunteers. The exception, as always, was slime which almost everyone loved. Yet again the teachers were very supportive, especially the Gr.11 biology teacher, and seemed to have a great dynamic with their students.
Wednesday evening we went to the Moosonee Native Friendship center. This is multi-functional drop in center: youth can drop in to play sports or relax in a supportive atmosphere, new young mothers can drop by for help and advice, and people can rent out rooms to hold social events. We had a chance to speak with John, the coordinator of social events for teens, and he explained how important youth programs were to the town, and shared his concerns that too few youth were attending such programs. Perhaps because it was the first week of warm weather, only two people showed up at the center for our presentation, but we presented to them and they seemed to enjoy the robotics equipment.
Thursday-Saturday May 12-14th, 2011
On Thursday we spend the day at Bishop Belleau Catholic Elementary school. This school was smaller than Moosonee Public school, which it backed on to and shared a gym with. The first class we presented to was a kindergarten class and a Gr. 1 class. They were so excited they had visitors, and absolutely loved the chem magic show.
Next, we presented the chem magic show to a Gr. 2/3 split class. Some of the students had seen most of the activities before during previous presentations, but they enjoyed the presentation anyway. Since they had seen some of our experiments before, we tried to go a little more into detail on the science which drove each trick. While slime was the usual favorite, they also enjoyed the film canister rockets. Following this Fu presented the robotics kits to the Gr. 7/8 class. Since there were only 6-7 students in this class, we were able to keep the presentation very hands-on and even made some impromptu obstacle courses with chairs and paper for the students to try and navigate their robots through. We ended the day with a neuroscience presentation to a Gr. 4/5 class who seemed very interested and asked some thoughtful questions on the brain and neurons.
Friday was our last day of school visits, and just like our first day, we took the boat to Moose Factory. This time we visited Delores D. Echum Composite school, a Gr. 7-12 school located within the reserve on the island. The school was new, having built several years ago to prevent older students living on the island from having to take a boat or helicopter over to high school every day. The first activity was earthquakes, which we presented to a Gr.8 and Gr. 1o class. While the students were very shy to volunteer to participate in this activity, they all seemed to have a good time when we did the walk-run activity to demonstrate how the epicenters of earthquakes are calculated. Towards the end of the next presentation, neuroscience, the power went out throughout the island. The teachers were only mildly flustered with this, since it was a regular occurrence. When the power did not return after 10 minutes, school was let out for the day. We were invited to a teacher’s house for lunch, and we sat mostly listening for 2 hours as the teachers we were eating cold lunches with traded stories about life on Moose Factory island. They told us that temperatures dipped below -40°C in the winter without the wind chill, how students would sometimes miss full semesters of school, and how tightly knit the community was. When the power had still not returned after lunch, we called a taxi and headed back to Moosonee to pack up. Luckily, Moosonee had not been affected by the power outage. The next morning we ate a quick breakfast and were on our way to the airport to catch our 8:40am flight home.
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