On October 23, 2020, I had an amazing opportunity to participate in an online professional development conference hosted by C2C Provincial Conference called, Lhtakoh; Where People Place and Practice Flow together. It was a great day, full of resources and thought-provoking information. At the beginning of the day, there was the “Koh-learning in the Nechako Watershed: Honouring Seasonal Voices among Youth, Communities and Waterways” talk. The Koh-Learning project is a partnership between UNBC and SD91. This program gets students to experience the environment first-hand by getting students out on the land and exploring and fishing. I found it interesting as there are so many things intertwined in this program and it runs beautifully.
Firstly, they talked a lot about co-teaching. I have heard this term several times in the education program, but it was so interesting to see it being practised and how the students enjoyed it. Co-teaching is creating a curriculum and deciding what content should be taught and what core competencies should be focused on with another teacher. In this co-teaching, they also worked together to decide how to do an assessment. I enjoyed listening to this as it shows assessment does not have to be done just within the wall of the classroom. Some of the ways these educators used assessment in their outdoor classrooms was asking questions such as; How are the no trace principles being practiced? How are they managing their roles? And assessing conflict resolution. I thought these assessment principles were so relevant as these are real-world principles that the students will take with them when they enter adulthood and the workforce.
Secondly, The program not only involved co-teaching but also involved cross-curricular and inter-school overlap. This means that not only were educators were working together, but educators from different backgrounds are working together and educators from different schools are working together. This is the best definition of collaboration. The collaborative goals for this program are students who have informed stewards of their local environment, students with extended influence and connections across a community sector, and students who are empowered change-makers within and beyond their own systems. You can see the results of the collaboration as the students are happy and engaged.