It’s one job at two incredible venues. The Botanic Garden is opposite Magdalene College, beside the River Cherwell in the heart of Oxford and Harcourt Arboretum lies a few miles outside the city. I have received a very warm welcome from my new colleagues (although the peafowl have regarded me with studied indifference so far) and I feel very privileged to have been given personal tours by Garden Curator Mark Brent and Harcourt Arboretum Curator Ben Jones. The spring bulbs are coming into flower and the trees look magnificently statuesque in the winter sunshine.
Winter sun filters between trees at the Arboretum
I’ll be working there Monday to Wednesday each week, sharing the scientific wonder and importance of plants, nature and green spaces with school groups, families and other audiences. One of the many attractions of the role for me was the focus on the positive role of nature in health and well-being and I look forward to helping develop this area of work.
Hamamelis flowers at Harcourt Arboretum
This new role fits neatly with my other part-time job as Education Officer at the wonderful Bodleian Libraries on Thursdays and Fridays. I’m really pleased that I can continue to share the exhibitions and collections with schools and families visiting the Weston Library.
If you’re in Oxford over the half term week, you might enjoy our events for families. Amazing Adaptations is on at the Garden all week and there are Signs of Spring family walks on Thursday 16 February. I’ll be running Photo Family Fun at the Weston library on that Thursday. Please say ‘hello’ if you see me!
Back in 2020, I wrote the article Supporting Learning about the HOPE project at the Museum of Natural History in Oxford. That was a few months into the lottery-funded project which comes to an end this Spring. They say that time flies when you’re having fun and that must explain my disbelief that three years have passed so quickly.
HOPE Learning Officers with the trusty Museum van
I’d been part of the pilot project that had led to the award of the funding for the main project, so I was delighted to be recruited by the museum as a HOPE Learning Officer, alongside my new colleagues Susie Glover and Kate Jaeger. It didn’t get off to the smoothest of starts: we’d been appointed but then the country went into lockdown. Our main focus was schools outreach but we were all stuck at home. That’s why the article above was about supporting learning. We quickly produced resources that parents could use at home and teachers could set on line for their pupils. Our first summer school was entirely online!
We were glad to have been able to help out at a difficult time but what we had really signed up for was sharing the amazing world of insects with kids in schools. In autumn 2020, armed with a daily Covid testing regime, hand sanitiser, masks and visors, we were able to do just that. The response we got from teachers and children was wonderful and in November I wrote this post on Working for Hope (based on a series of tweets I wrote for the Museum’s account) about our aims, what we had done, and some of the questions we’d had from kids. It became clear to us that, after the restrictions of lockdown, they were eager to reconnect with nature.
Even humble nettles can be home to amazing insects.
With the drop in insect numbers that comes with the first frost, our programme shifted to activities that explored insects within the Museum collections and to other aspects of outreach, including digital. We started to build what was to become a very successful community of young entomologists, aged 10-14, through the creation of a weekly blog called ‘Crunchy on the Outside’ alongside school holiday events that allowed us to explore aspects of entomology in more depth than we could in our school discovery days. In this way, kids who we met in schools, at the museum, or who first encountered the project online, could pursue their interest in insects and meet like minded peers (“I’ve found my people”). The online blog provided continuity for this growing community, providing a link in between events.
In Spring 2021 I was ready to get stuck into a full programme of school visits that we had originally planned to start after Easter and running through to October. During the school Summer holiday we would run the in-person ‘Insect Investigators’ summer school. It felt really good to be back on track with the programme that we’d originally intended, but I was unexpectedly derailed from those tracks when I was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer. Thankfully, I was able to take part in the June and July school visits and the August summer school. We went behind the scenes at the Museum to learn about the main insect orders and their ecological importance, practiced identification in the University Parks, learned about macro photography amidst the flowering borders at Oxford Botanic Garden, and embarked on group science investigations at Harcourt Arboretum (“We’ve calculated there are 36,000 grasshoppers in the meadow!”) before sharing it all with family members and Museum Staff.
A buzz in the air at the Botanic Garden.
It was an excellent way to end the season because a course of chemotherapy in the Autumn meant I had to isolate from most people, especially school kids with their mix of coughs and sniffles.
The response to my situation from the team was wonderful. Our team leader, Sarah Lloyd took care of everything, so that work issues were not a concern, and Kate and Susie stepped into the breach to run ALL the school visits not to mention teacher CPD, after school clubs, and museum events. I focussed on the digital aspects, including the blog, tapping away on my laptop at home, communicating with researchers who were providing posts for the blog, and contributing to meetings remotely.
Hair today, gone tomorrow.
So many others in the wider team at the Museum were supportive and helpful in myriad ways. I must also add my thanks to Neil Stevenson, my line manager for my other role at The Bodleian Libraries, who was similarly helpful in my other role, at the Bodleian Libraries. I know that not everyone receives such a positive response from their workplace following a cancer diagnosis, so I was very relieved to have any work concerns lifted away, so I could focus on treatment.
January 2022 meant the start of radiotherapy. Although I can’t imagine this is a factor for most patients, I was pleased that the course of daily treatments would be completed in March, just before the insects started buzzing again as the weather began to warm up. At last I could get stuck into the outreach programme.
I found that summer truly joyous! Our visits were a mix of new schools and those who had rebooked and our ‘Crunchy’ community of young entomologists was going from strength to strength, with many familiar faces at each gathering and some we had first met in primary classes now at secondary school. It was also good to see how many schools were developing their site for nature and incorporating this into their work with children. The 2022 summer school was, once again, a delightful highlight with a new group of eager young people benefiting from our now-established model.
Drinking in the scent of summer.
All things must pass, however, and Autumn saw Kate return to a full-time teaching role and Susie embark on school-based teacher training. We were able to finish our time with one last ‘Crunchy’ event at the end of August; building pooters from recycled materials then using them to catch insects!
The last school visits of the project Took place during the autumn and I also hosted groups at the Museum. The focus moved to the final evaluation and the legacy of the project. This will include both physical and digital aspects. The resources and activities will continue to be used with children and other audiences who visit the Museum and the lessons learned from successfully engaging 10-14 year olds will be used to continue to support this group. Digital resources will be integrated within the Museum’s existing website and Learning Zone. A Peppered Moth game which Susie developed to teach natural selection will become an exciting online simulation and the insects from the popular ‘To Bee or not to Bee’ ID activity have been digitised for an online version. I have written and scheduled blog posts through February and the plan is to then integrate this into the Museum’s existing online activity.
A parting gift from colleagues, drawn by the talented Katherine Child.
The project culminated on 8 February with the official opening of the Ellen Hope Gallery at the Museum, a new public space for entomology. At the same time I move on to another exciting role (watch this space) into which I will carry all that I have learned, and the many happy memories, from my time with HOPE.
I wrote this post for the ‘Crunchy on the outside’ blog from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. It’s a Zooniverse citizen science project that might be of interest to anyone running a school science club from KS2 upwards.
Measure beautiful bees from around the world to help biologists understand why bee species are declining. The Big Bee Bonanza is a new citizen …
All about ants! I wrote this for the Crunchy on the outside blog in response to a question we received that really made us think about ants and what ‘success’ means in terms of a species.
Noah contacted us recently with an intriguing question: ‘What is the most successful species of ant?’. It really got us thinking! Insects are a very …
In case you need a microscope but only have… some honey!
Wrote this for crunchyontheoutside.com, initially so kids could take part in a fruit fly survey even if they didn’t have a hand lens or microscope. I produced two versions of the video, the more sedate version included in the blog post and this 45s one intended for social media platforms with a faster pace. Let me know what you think.
45s portrait version of video
What if you need to look at something really small but you don’t have a microscope? You can can try taking a close-up picture with a smartphone or …
Who writes the future? is a creative writing resource for schools from the Bodleian Libraries. Based on materials and activities used in a Summer School writing course, I developed this pack into a workshop for visiting schools. Drawing on lessons learned from these workshops, the pack is now available for free download from the Bodleian’s Resources for Teachers webpage.
Link to the resource from the Bodleian’s Resources for Teachers webpage
Background
The original course was the brainchild of researcher Jacob Ward and a project in public engagement with research. A group of fifteen young people explored speculative writing from the past and learned about current research in computing at the University of Oxford before developing their own stories under the guidance of author Jasmine Richards. They also worked with illustrator Nurbanu Asena who developed a striking image to accompany each story. Their work was published in an anthology, a PDF version of which is included in the pack. My role was to plan, facilitate and evaluate the project.
Developing a writing resource
The summer school achieved all its original aims successfully, but we wanted to ensure that the format and resources we had produced would help young writers beyond the original group. We first developed a workshop in which visiting school groups developed one aspect of the original five-day course. This was usually conceiving a story idea, world building, or developing a central character. The process of drafting and revision could then be continued back at school.
These workshops also helped me to develop the resources from a series of individual elements into a coherent pack. I used the feedback from visiting groups to refine some of the elements. These refinements included clearer definition of the elements in world building, redesigning the character template, and explaining other sections more clearly. I also produced a set of teacher notes to assist those using the pack in class or in a writing group.
Contents
The resource pack includes the following elements:
Teacher notes
Student Booklet, designed to be printed as an eight-page A4 booklet.
Historical examples of speculative fiction, written at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries and including predictions made about our present.
The Who Writes the Future? anthology produced by the young writers in the original summer school.
Student writing pack
The student booklet takes students through seven steps, culminating in a first draft of their short story:
Decide on a specific setting. Start to build a world for the story.
Select your story idea / concept. Students are asked to think about the particular impact of a technology, but taking this ‘hard sci-fi’ approach is not essential.
Select a theme. There is a list of suggestions but students may wish to choose another.
Decide on the point of view, i.e. first, second or third person narrative.
Develop your character. A template is included to help students think about the central character(s) in their story.
Outline your story. Students are encouraged to plan an outline before writing their first draft.
Write your story. We have included a few lined pages.
I hope the pack will prove as successful for school classes and writing groups as it has been in our workshops. I’d love to hear feedback from teachers who have used it. If you have enjoyed reading this, you may be interested in my other posts on Supporting Learning.
Increasingly museums and galleries are addressing the colonial nature of their collections with audiences. My work as an Education Officer involves producing resources to help school groups explore the themes of exhibitions and displays. Roots to Seeds is an exhibition exploring 400 years of plant science in Oxford, currently open at the Bodleian Libraries.
The curator, Professor Stephen Harris, and the team at the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford Botanic Garden who are behind the exhibition, have acknowledged the colonial nature of some of the material on display with statements at the centre of the exhibition space.
A Matter of Justice
A matter of justice acknowledges the marginalisation of people involved in the collection and exploitation of their knowledge.
Supporting Decolonization
Supporting decolonisation explains the current frameworks under which botanists operate and the work to address centuries of inequality.
I wanted to address the issue in an exhibition trail I created for Roots to Seeds. The aim of the trail is to help children and young people explore themes of the exhibition. The content touches on themes within the exhibition, rather than providing comprehensive coverage. Open questions encourage exploration of the texts and objects on display.
Trails can be used by visiting school groups making a self-led visit and the Education Team may also use them as a starting point for a taught session; we also make them available for use by visiting families.
A trail is usually two A4 sides and includes text, questions, illustrations and, in the case of Roots to Seeds, some space for responses.
I decided to include a version of the A Matter of Justice statement in the section about plant collecting called ‘A World of Plants’:
As European botanists began to explore the world, they found many plants they had not seen before. Local people explained which plants were useful as foods or medicines. We often don’t know the names of these people because the explorers didn’t record them.
I was aiming the language level at Key Stage 3. In a later Art Trail, I changed ‘local people’ to ‘local experts’ because I thought this phrase better emphasised indigenous understanding of local flora rather than simply the knowledge of where to find particular plants.
I’m interested to know readers’ views on the approach I took. Is this enough? Should I have included something about current practice? Could I have taken a different approach? I’m interested to hear your views.
Roots to Seeds is open at the Weston Library, Broad Street, Oxford, until 24 October 2021.Admission is free.
An interview for the University of Oxford Environmental Sustainability Group about my schools outreach work with the HOPE for the Future project at the Museum of Natural History in Oxford:
Caseby's Casebook 