Stop Cuts To Home Learners by Sophia Pallister

This is the speech I made to the Vancouver School Board trustees on April 12, 2016.

Good evening, members of the School Board, thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight. My name is Sophia Pallister and I would like to speak to you addressing the proposed cuts to the Staffing of the Home Learners Program.

I am 11 years old. I am in Grade 6 of the Home Learners program and I have been in Home Learners since I was old enough to get an education. I started in kindergarten in Home Learners with Shannon Hobson, (the teacher who founded the HL program) as my teacher, the year after the program was founded. She has been my teacher now for 7 years. Ms. Juliana Lee has been my teacher for 6 years, so other than Ms. Hobson, I am the person who has been in the Vancouver Home Learners program the longest!

I like having close relations to my friends. In Home Learners we are more like a family than I think a regular class would be. My understanding is that the proposed budget cuts would allow for only one of our two teachers to continue. At this point I find that news very upsetting. It's really nice knowing your teachers and having the same teachers over, and over, and over.

Our two teachers are very different from each other and they collaborate together really well. Since we have a more flexible schedule we feel more flexible which means sometimes we get out of hand and I don't think that one teacher could manage all of us for an entire academic year!

At Home Learners you're not just learning what you're learning in school, you're also learning at home, so that means every single member of the class has an entirely personalized learning plan. In a regular classroom, the teacher prepares one single curriculum for the entire class, and that works because everyone's the same age and grade, however in our classroom alone, the teacher has to work on 5 different grade levels and curriculum.  If you ask a teacher how difficult it is to think of one big curriculum for a whole class, multiply that by 38! Our teachers also have to manage all the different allotment money requests for the 16 students in my class that meets on Tues & Thurs, plus the 22 students in the primary class that meets 2 other days a week, and I think that's too much work for only one person to handle.

I want to also tell you what a valuable program Home Learners is, and how special I think it is. I think it is one of the best programs the Vancouver School Board has, so I think you should be doing things to make it stronger, not make it weaker. Taking away one of our teachers would mean we might to have to shorten our school days, which means less learning opportunities. 

One of the best things about HL is that it is a mixed age class. Being in a mixed age class has been good because differences don't stand out as much, because everyone is different. That decreases the potential of bullying and members of the classroom start judging people less on their age and more by their abilities and potential, and more negative differences start to disappear.  When I was in kindergarten I was very tall and I was advanced for my age, but because I was in a mixed age class, I could do more advanced learning. Right now, there's one person in my class who struggles in certain subjects, and sometimes he goes around the class and gets inspiration or asks for help from other people. In a normal classroom situation that would be called cheating. In Home Learners, and to quote Sir Ken Robinson, in the rest of the world, it's called collaboration. 

In Home Learners, we also have the ability to choose what kinds of schooling and topics we do at home, within the given curriculum. It sort of teaches you the art of Creative Learning, and then you catch on and continue doing it all the time. You start to learn on your own. Creative Learning requires creative teaching and sometimes it's hard to think outside the lines that you were taught in, which is why it requires collaboration, which is why I strongly suggest you allocate the money to allow two teachers to continue to collaborate, as they have done so beautifully to foster this program to be the best it can be.

I strongly urge you to discontinue the cuts to this program. 

Thank you for your time. Good night.

You Can't Putt With Fire Balls

This is the fire that happened right by my house today.

There was a fire at the old abandoned golf course on Hastings St near my house today, right by the shops. There was a gas station right beside where the fire was and if you had looked out my living room window at the time of the fire, we could have seen the flames from our house.  CBC News reported that the flames were thirty meters high. That's about four of my houses stacked on top of each other.

When you look out our window you can see the nets from the golf course, and you could have probably seen the flames. This map shows you how close my house is to the fire. 

This shot below from Google earth shows some interesting and KIND OF SCARY things! The blue dot on the picture is my house. The red marker shows where the fire was. You can see that just north of where the fire is a bunch of round tanks and that is where oil is stored, and right on the bottom left corner by the golf ctr is a gas station. If that fire spread any more the fire could have gone to the gas station or to the oil and if it went to the gas station and the oil there would have been a big explosion (WHICH WOULD BE COOL ON A VIDEO BUT NOT IN REAL LIFE.)

This is a picture below we took this morning and you can see here there is a fire truck and if you look at the white van and just look up a little bit you can see a man on the ladder thingy of a fire truck spraying with a giant hose. We learned they had to keep doing that even after the flames were out to make sure all of the hot spots were not hot.

This is me climbing a cherry tree outside the golf course and winning the cutest person ever award, my 5,788,888,621st one.  

So far, I, Eleanor have been talking and now I will pass the beautiful talking sceptre to Sophia, which I am very sad about doing.

Thank you, Eleanor. After we got told off for climbing the cherry blossom tree, some police women came outside the gate to find out why the security guard at the oil storage place was yelling at us. After we explained that we are NT criminals, we interviewed the officers with some questions about the fire. *Please note that the Q&A below is based on my memory of the interview. This is not the actual conversation.

Q: What is your job as policewomen?

A: We work for the RCMP in a department that investigates frauds. Frauds are when someone lies or makes up something fake to get money that is not theirs. We also investigate arson. Arson is when someone sets a fire on purpose, probably to get money out of insurance.

Q:What do you look for in a scene like this?

A: In cases like this one, we might start by looking for where the fire started, like the origin of the fire. We might look to see if the fire started in the middle of the room, and if there were any accelerants, like gas. We might also look for a gas can. We also have a machine that could search for traces of gas.

Q: What do you know from the investigation so far?

A: Since the fire was so hot, it looks like a suspicious fire, possibly arson. Unfortunately, it's not safe for us to go inside the actual building yet.

Q: I noticed the gas station back there, I was wondering if someone could have bought a lighter from there to start the fire.

A: Yes, it's highly probable, they might has also filled a jerry can with gas there to act as an accelerant, so we'll be looking  at the closed circuit TV from the gas station to see if we can find any possible suspects.

Sophia's moral of the story: "Don't play with matches around abandoned, wood framed golf courses".

Eleanor's moral of the story (after meeting the RCMP fraud investigators): "Women can do anything!"

Eleanor Studies Ocean Plants by Eleanor

Hello, this is Eleanor Pallister again, in a new year. I am quite excited to be seeing you again. Right now, we are talking about the sea, and plants under there, and other great things in the water. 

Have you ever heard of algae? (Pronounced AL-gee.) Have you ever heard of baleen? Have you ever heard of krill? I can tell you all about them. But why don't you watch this video up here to give you a start?

Now that you've watched the video, you may have heard me talk about phytoplankton. Phytoplankton, means "plant drifter" Phytoplankton produce a large amount of oxygen, for creatures in the ocean AND creatures on land. But it's not like you could just walk up to some ocean water, scoop it up, take a whiff, and have unlimited amounts of air forever. The phytoplankton would eventually die.

Plankton are quite, quite tiny, and you can only see them with a very fine microscope. If you do have a very fine microscope on hand, take a dropper, drop some of the ocean water on to a the top of a microscope slide and then take a look. You will probably be able to see very small sort of creature thing eating each other. it's very interesting.

Now away from plankton. Let's talk about baleen. (Pronounced BAY-leen.) Now, first of before we get into what baleen is, whales don't have teeth, instead they have baleen, which is sort of like a strainer - you know, how when you strain macaroni? Baleen acts like a strainer for whales, they use baleen like teeth, they don't chomp down, like us, instead they strain the ocean water with their baleen and get tiny animals like krill, and things.

Now, time for krill. Krill are these little tiny animals which are very important to sea life. Without krill, a  lot of the food web would not be there, like whales and fish and many other things which I will not mention because there are too many. Krill are very tiny, I'm not quite of the size, but make an estimate in your head.

And now you know three things about tiny ocean life (except for the big whale part). Now you have a start off all about plants in the ocean. Please watch Bill Nye the Science Guy's video "Ocean Life" or visit your local aquarium to find out more. Thank you, I'll be here all week!

Touching sea cucumbers and starfish at the Aquarium

Helping animals