Sunday, Feb 9th – Lambrick Park

teacherpriya5

Images taken by me: a park sign, a historical site board (and my boyfriend), and a piece of trash.

  • Location: Lambrick Park/Gordon Head Recreation Centre
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Intensity: Easy!
  • Mood (before): Stressed – Mood (after): Peaceful

Summary & Findings

I had to force myself out of my house for this Sunday’s walk. I finally got a day off work after working 2 weeks in a row, and my first day off was meant for rest and household chores. I spent my day doing laundry, meal-prepping and cleaning… but when 4:30 PM hit, I felt myself feeling sad, like I needed to get outside of my dark basement suite. So, after much contemplation, I got ready and got my boyfriend to tag along. Although I have lived right down the block from Lambrick Park for almost 7 months, I had never walked through it. I was pleasantly surprised by the serene feel and the community that I could feel throughout the park. There was a preschool, middle school, and high school all in the same area of land. Large baseball fields, tennis courts, a community centre, and even a little log building where an Indigenous drumming lesson was going on. I loved the pathway, the beauty of the sun during sunset, and the fresh, wet grass from the previous day’s rain. This walk was one of the best yet, and reminded me that beauty and nature can basically be found in your backyard!

Educational Connection

My educational connection is a mix of my personal elementary school experiences and a project I learned about in my math class this term. In elementary school, each March, we celebrated Earth Day, and for the week leading up to it, each classroom at the school took a different route in the neighbourhood to pick up trash.

In art class in early January, our professor introduced us to a small project her sister made during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her art was collecting images of masks dumped and misplaced all around nature and in the outdoors. Her final piece was a video collage of all the masks and a bone-chilling, loud audio of the talking and whispering of instructions to take on and off a mask. Her takeaway from her sister was that it made her hyperaware of masks dumped on the land.

At Lambrick Park, I began to notice the trash along the path, in the bushes, and tucked into places people probably thought no one would find. I took my first photo of the trash, a 7-Eleven box dumped into a bush, which was ironically next to a trash can. From there, I noticed my eyes wandering the ground with each step, and I thought aloud how great it would be if I had brought gloves or tongs to pick each piece up. This experience, mixed with my past learnings, formed my idea to incorporate outdoor learning and walks with stewardship for the planet. Rather than travelling far for an outdoor walk in a forest or isolating care for the planet to one week in March, care and nature time can start right in the school community, and more frequently than once a year. My goal now is to implement a bi-weekly community cleanup for my future class.

BCHydro actually made a great lesson plan/teaching guide for K-3 classes to include a little clean-up… Here is the link: https://schools.bchydro.com/activities/sustainability/its-the-only-home-we-have