Journey to Teaching
What inspires me to teach is an insatiable curiosity and the joy of sharing in community. I enjoy being with people and contributing to wellness in a community. For most of my life I have been involved in community initiatives that worked toward improving relationships between people. As well, a great inspiration to me has been a love for nature that led me to pursue ethnobiology, which studies the interrelationships between people and life. For over ten years I have been working as a biologist with a special interest in community food gardening, environmental education, and BC ethnobotany. All these experiences have led me to a career in teaching that I look foward to pursuing whole-heartedly.
Delivering school bags to impoverished and orphaned children who Global Peace Network Canada supported to attend school and gain access to food, housing and healthcare. I was in Mwanza, Tanzania in 2009 helping with the street children's initiative, as well as the building of the rural health and education facility.
Planting food and medicinal crops with former street children.
Experiential learning at North Vancouver Outdoor School, Cheakamus Centre, in Skwxwu7mesh Territory.
Delivering school bags to impoverished and orphaned children who Global Peace Network Canada supported to attend school and gain access to food, housing and healthcare. I was in Mwanza, Tanzania in 2009 helping with the street children's initiative, as well as the building of the rural health and education facility.
Community
I enjoy being with people and strongly feel the importance of community. As a child I grew up in a multi-generational family, in the house that was home to at least six generations of my family. Caring for others was a natural task, especially as I was the eldest sibling. In high-school I joined the leadership team, and soon was involved in leadership and social-justice groups at the local and provincial level, including the North Okanagan Youth Reaching Across Differences Club, BC Student Voice, and Amnesty International. At the University of British Columbia I was an executive member of the Social Justice Club and Amnesty International, as well as a student represenative on the Graduate Student Council and the UBC Senate. For four years I was also a director of Global Peace Network and actively engaged in helping impoverished children surviving in the streets access education and building rural health capacity in Tanzania. As a teacher I look forward to facilitating community as a way to empower students and foster belonging.
Huckleberry with members of the Boston Bar First Nation, maintaining connections with their territory and traditions.
A local doctor shares his knowledge of Indigenous plant uses in rural Tanzania.
Food growing initiatives at Windermere Secondary.
Huckleberry with members of the Boston Bar First Nation, maintaining connections with their territory and traditions.
Nature
I am endlessly curious and fascinated of nature. For this reason I pursued a Bachelor in plant sciences, and a Master of Science in integrated studies of land and food systems as this learning journey allowed me to study nature in-depth. I have also worked for nearly a decade as an environmental scientists. I am passionate about ethnobotany, or the interrelationships between plants and people. For six years I worked with the Boston Bar First Nation doing community-based participatory action research on revitalizing their Indigenous plant knowledge and use for greater health and education capacity. This project included supporting multigenerational traditional harvesting, developing an Indigenous youth experiential learning program, and supporting local food security initiatives. I look forward to sharing my passion for biology, sciences and Indigenous ways of knowing with students.