Jessica: End of Summer Blog Post

I had such a wonderful time working at TRACKS this summer, again. One of the aspects I enjoyed most this summer was learning from youth sharing their thoughts and experiences with Mother Nature and listening to their beautiful conversations with each other. I feel like I have grown this summer. From spring until now my ability to share with others the value of Indigenous knowledge, environmental consciousness and the interdependence of science with traditional ecological knowledge has become more inclusive, broadened and niche at the same time.

Something I really enjoyed was observing campers open up throughout the weeks, start sharing their passions and then having ‘awe’ moments as they got to have personal interactions with beings they were passionate about, such as butterflies, plants, frogs and turtles.I had a lot of fun facilitating STEM activities, specifically coding with the campers. We got to learn about how coding happens in the world all around us and within us. In the activity, campers created their own codes and watched Ozobots listen to the instructions the campers made with codes. It was a joy to watch them be so excited and connect this to the natural world