As part of the CURR 387 Science and Technology course, teacher candidates were asked to create an art installation that represented their learning about homelessness in Kingston. Drawing on their understanding of project-based learning, they developed this project to also highlight the importance to their students of cross-curricular teaching. Using subjects such as science, math, art, and language, as well as the engineering design process, teacher candidates worked in small groups to design and build scale models of shipping containers, which are often a viable option for temporary housing. From there, and through subjects such as social studies, health, language, and art, teacher candidates created messages that were placed on the model containers about the challenges of homelessness and our community’s responsibility to respond.
Around 300,000 people in Canada experience homelessness in any given year, and 60,000 or more people may be experiencing homelessness on any given night. Young people account for one in five of the people living in Canada’s homeless shelters.
“Homelessness is not a failure of people-it’s a failure of systems to respond to people.” Bhavana Varma
