Watching Rebecca Teach

... morning sun at Arbutus Cove,
a short walk from the University of Victoria ...

I should preface this by saying, warning long post.

I am not sure how long it will be, for it is late.

But I wanted to say something about going to listen to Rebecca teach her Business Associations class for the past month.

There are two classes a week: one for 3 hours and one for 2 hours.

This is the class where students have a choice in their final project.

They can write an essay.

Or they can do a creative project in response to one of their text books called Take Back the Economy.

Yesterday she brought in some examples of student work from the past.

Most of the examples include both an object of some form, and the process that the student went through.

For example, one group of four students formed a band.

The singer’s lyrics were a response to the book. 

... meeting the geese as they feed early in the morning ....

Another project was a fashion blog last semester. 

... imprints of geese feet near the kale brought up by the tide ...

The student tried to purchase nothing new, but to wear what they owned, re-accessorizing basic clothing for the period of the experiment and then commenting on it.

That idea has rubbed off on my personally. 

Instead of buying jewellery I go into Rebecca’s bracelets and rings and try to wear something new each day.

Part of the time I focused on only wearing Indigenous pieces, either made by Indigenous people or pieces of jewellery which mirror Indigenous art.

That experiment is still going on for me.

I collected all of Rebecca’s silver and thought I would get some of it into circulation by wearing it again.

What I have learned from that is how long it takes to shine silver when it hasn’t been polished for a long time.

... feathers lost by the geese in their feeding frenzy ...

When I looked at other pieces of student work, I saw a chapbook of poetry, the poems responses to each chapter.

The book was one that deserves to go in a Special Collections in some library.  Incredibly beautiful.  Poems and pictures.

Not to belabour this point, some people have done oil paintings; there is a 9-set of matrushka’s repainted to represent the ideas in Take Back the Economy.

One woman did a quilt.

Another knitted an expensive scarf, incorporating the ideas of taking back the economy into the pattern.

It is not the scarf that lifted the weight of the final mark on the project, but the piece of prose that went along with the scarf, detailing the process of making it.

More to come ... because I haven't even started on the story I wanted to tell ... about watching Rebecca teach.

Arta