Teaching through a pandemic

[Upbeat lively music begins to play. A green background appears on screen dotted with pictures of a garden shovel, a fly resting on flowers, fresh herbs and garden soil. Text appears on screen. A small leafy plant grows through the words.]

Text on screen: Good News Grows

[The text on screen slides away and reveals the title of the video.]

Text on screen: Canada Agriculture and Food Museum: Teaching through a pandemic

Female speaker: It’s incredibly inspiring and rewarding to be a teacher to hundreds of thousands of children.

[A woman wearing a bright red shirt and work boots walks out of a barn on the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa. She makes her way to the exterior pavilion on the museum grounds. The afternoon is partly cloudy.]

Female speaker: So much of our quality of life in Canada is dependent on agriculture…

[A row crop tractor works on the farm's fields which is bordered by tall residential buildings and family homes.]

Female speaker: … and just the fact that that we can open people's eyes and minds to that is wonderful.

[A little girl fills trays with soil and sowing seeds. Her sleeves are rolled up and her arms stained with dirt.]

[The same woman previously seen wearing a red shirt stands for an interview inside the museum.]

[An animated head of wheat sprouts near the bottom of the screen to reveal the woman’s name and title.]

Text on screen: Kerry-Leigh Burchill, Director General, Canadian Agriculture and Food Museum

Female speaker, now identified as Kerry-Leigh Burchill: Hi, my name is Kerry-Leigh Burchill. I’m the Director General of the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum which is located on the Central Experimental Farm here in Ottawa.

[Kerry-Leigh swings the dairy barn's Dutch door wide open as she proudly smiles to the camera.]

Kerry-Leigh: The museum has always prided itself on being a very experiential way for people to engage with agriculture and foods.

[Kerry-Leigh then feeds tall grass to a few hungry goats and a sheep through their pen’s fence.]

[Inside the dairy barn, she gently rubs a cow’s head as it picks up a smell off her shirt.]

[Then, another view of the farm’s fields with a few more buildings in the distance.]

[The screen becomes blurred and text appears on screen.]

Text on screen: The COVID-19 challenge

[Kerry-Leigh being interviewed.]

Kerry-Leigh: As one of the three Museums of Science and Innovation I think that now that mirror has been put up for us to be innovative in how we are going to engage with visitors and how we are going to empower them to still have dynamic learning experiences, but perhaps in a scaled back way.

[Kerry-Leigh letts a donkey out of its pen. She then caresses the donkey as it eyes the camera.]

Kerry-Leigh: It’s really been an opportunity for our staff to unlock and unleash their creativity…

[She walks towards the Central Experimental Farm’s Learning Centre.]

[Kerry-Leigh being interviewed.]

Kerry-Leigh: … when it came to reaching out to teachers and saying “If you can’t come here for an experience how can we bring it to your school whether that’s virtually or through a community visit?”

[Kerry-Leigh walks through rows of dairy cows.]

Kerry-Leigh: Over the last couple months we've really expanded on that. So, we had been thrilled already to work with partners…

[She then picks up buckets of fresh milk which she places in a calf’s pen. The youngling is visibly excited by its meal.]

Kerry-Leigh: … to put out educational activity kits that teachers or parents can download and have an interesting, engaging time to learn.

[A young boy sits by his laptop as he peers through a magnifying glass to better see an onion’s skin.]

[A young girl sits at her desk, hard at work as her mother helps her through an exercise.]

[The screen becomes blurred and text appears on screen.]

Text on screen: Teamwork and passion

[Kerry-Leigh being interviewed.]

Kerry-Leigh: We have educators, everybody from a curator to a science advisor to an exhibition development officer. They're all working together because they love what they do here.

[Pictures of Kerry-Leigh and her team smiling through their face masks as they work on the museum’s grounds of staff wearing face masks as they guide donkeys out of their pen, and of a worker snuggling a bunny on her shoulder.]

Kerry-Leigh: When we can offer a summer camp or offer adistanced learning, the idea that we might be inspiring someone's future career choice or that we might be inspiring a future leader of the country to be cognizant of some of those facts is why we do it.

[Kerry-Leigh being interviewed.]

[A curious calf in its pen sticks its head through the gate to get a better look and smell of the camera.]

[A white semi-transparent rectangle appears over the footage and text appears on screen.]

Text on screen: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada congratulates its partner, the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, on its reopening. Learn more about the museum, farming and food at: ingeniumcanada.org/cafm

[The Canada wordmark appears on screen.]

[The upbeat lively music fades. The screen goes black.]