I always loved to teach and help others with their school work so I get involve in everything that has to do with this. In high school I helped groups of younger students do their homework every week and in CEGEP I did a lot of tutoring in calculus at the Maths Help Center. During my undergraduate studies I continued the tutoring but this time at home and in physics. When I learned about the outreach program at McGill I jumped on the opportunity to help and I really love the experience so far. With this group I create activities, go to schools and receive kids at McGill to promote science education and the physics department. It's so nice to see kids having fun with science and share my passion with them. On this page you see a little summary of my contributions to the group. The group also has a webpage with more details.
CEGEP talks
I love to talk about science with everyone who is interested so I gave a presentation on black holes at CEGEP de Terrebonne and College Jean-de-Brebeuf in the Winter 2016. I thought this was an interestting subject that is accessible to people with a basic knowledge of physics and that it would be different from all the astrophysics that we already hear a lot about in the news. The slides are available here (in French).
Junior Astronaut program
During the year 2015-2016, many groups of people in the outreach team went in primary schools in Montreal for the Junior Astronaut program. We built 5 activities together about physics and we went into the classrooms to perform them. We always went to the same schools to form a bond with the children and be able to follow their learning. Since then, we repeat the program every year in some of the same schools and new ones.
Activities
I spent some time in 2014-2015 on building an activity to make the kids learn the concept of density. The module is based on the "sink or float" concept and I created many variations for kids of different ages. The activity has been tested a few times and it seems to be working pretty well. I also created during the year 2017-2018 another activity on the concept of pressure that uses vacuum pumps.
Visits
I have been apart of a group that visited a primary school in Montreal during the winter 2015 semester to animate an activity from the Astro outreach group. We build comets with dry ice and mud and the kids loved it. I also welcomed kids at McGill many times to introduce them to physics, for instance during MyDay@McGill and 24h of science.
Inquiry institute
One of the most important thing that we did so far was taking part into a day of formation for primary school teachers in May 2015. With the Astro and Neuroscience groups we presented activities to teachers and explained to them how to reproduce it in their classrooms. It was very interesting and I feel that it is going to make a real difference since the teachers now know for real how to do science and they are aware of the existence of our group. We repeated the experience in May 2016 and it was again a huge success so we repeat it every year since.