GAMETI/RAE LAKES
Students are learning new skills in traditional ways at Jean Wetrade Gameti School.

Steven Estemba-Sangris and Carter Wetrade cut wood for the fire for their class' birch syrup project in May. - photo courtesy of Cameron Gee

According to teacher Cameron Gee, last spring after receiving maple syrup as a gift, he decided he and his class would attempt to do something most Gameti residents hadn't done in years - make birch syrup. The activity would be incorporated into the class' Plants for Food and Fibre unit in science.

"I decided that was something I wanted to do with the class, that's just basically how I got started on it," Gee said. "It was something we could do that had a link to tradition and being outside for that unit."

The group began researching trees and performed experiments in the classroom to understand how trees and other plants function. They learned about transpiration - the process by which water moves through plants before evaporating, by putting red dye in a container with water and a piece of celery.

"It got them thinking of water moving through plants, how it moves from the root to the leaves," Gee said.

They also learned about tapping trees, including how the spot on the tree being tapped would first need to be cleaned with sterilized water, said Grade 8 student Jayanna Wedawin.

"I remember that we had to clean the tree first before we had to make a hole in it," she said.

In May, Gee and students went to an area just outside of town and selected their tree. Incorporating math into the activity, Gee had students measure the ideal diameter and circumference of the hole before drilling.

"We would talk about it, how we had to drill into the wood, but not too deep," he said. "You don't want to tap trees that are too small."

The group's choice of tree turned out to be a good one, Gee said.

"Once we drilled the holes we put our sap buckets on the trees," he said. "It was pretty crazy how much we got."

The class checked their buckets each day. When it came time to start boiling the sap into syrup, they built fires nearby.

"We talked about fire safety, we put rocks around it to prevent sparks from getting out," Gee said. "We chopped the wood and talked about axe safety."

While waiting for the sap to boil, the class also talked about the traditional uses for birch syrup, particularly as an important and nutritious food source.

"When spring starts coming, it's still hard to find things," Gee said. "But you can get this nourishing water that has sugar and electrolytes. It was really eye-opening for the kids."

It takes about 100 litres of birch sap to make one litre of birch syrup, said Gee. In comparison, to takes about 30 litres of maple sap to make the equivalent in maple syrup.

That meant the fires had to be tended almost constantly.

"We had to spend hours and hours outside boiling," Gee said. "While we were out there we would do science lessons outside."

Students examined birch bark and counted the rings on fallen birch trunks and learned about plants' life cycles.

To keep the fires going, Gee would get up before dawn and check on their project.

"It was quite the process, getting up every day at 4 a.m. in the morning," he said.

When the sap was ready, the class moved the operation inside and continued to boil the sap on stoves in the school's kitchen.

When it was finally finished, students tasted their syrup. Reviews were mixed, Gee said.

"It tastes more like molasses," he said. "Some of them liked it a lot."

Wedawin said she enjoyed it.

"It was sweet," she said.

The class made brittle candy using birch syrup and cranberries and Gee also distributed some of the sap to elders.

"They would use it to make tea," he said. "They said it was really good."

Gee said elders commented on how collecting birch sap had fallen out of practice.

"It was something they had heard of people doing in the past, but they had never done it themselves," he said.

New lessons

Throughout the process, students took photographs and made notes about each step. They then made booklets about making birch syrup.

A Tlicho teacher in the school taught students the Tlicho word for birch tree and an elder also visited the class to tell stories about the birch tree.

Gee said the combination of classroom and hands-on learning was the key to the project's success.

"I could have given them lessons on how to do it, but actually going out and doing it, the kids gained so much more from it," he said.

For Wedawin, that was what helped make the lesson memorable.

"We spent most of our time outdoors," she said. "It's much more fun than doing stuff inside."

Gee said he hopes to replicate the project in the spring, but possibly on a smaller scale.

"We won't do it in the same capacity," he said.

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