Welcome to the first of many reflections for the Bridging Roots – Bayside Team!
The first two weeks have been intense! We dove headfirst into meetings, codebases, and cultural learning; it has been equal parts exciting and overwhelming. Here is what we’ve learned so far.
Our meeting with community partners was friendly and supportive, with Dr. Bird providing invaluable mentorship. The discussion clarified our objectives and established a support system for future challenges, which made us feel much more grounded in the project.
We came away from our school visit with SEX̱SOX̱ELWET (Lorelei), the SENĆOŦEN teacher at Bayside Middle School, and Kim (the Vice Principal at Bayside), feeling really supported by their sharing of knowledge. Since Sonya mediated the meeting and is SEX̱SOX̱ELWET’s supervisor, we didn’t hear as much from SEX̱SOX̱ELWET directly, but we are hopeful that future one-on-one conversations will be equally informative. While the meeting was highly effective, it ran longer than we initially thought. We realized that future meetings need more structure, we need to establish a checklist at the start and having someone track time will help us stay focused while capturing important points without wearing out our stakeholders.
Jessica’s presentation on reconciliation was eye-opening and culturally important for us, revealing both the richness of Indigenous traditions and the real challenges these communities face. This experience opened our eyes to the impact our project will have.
More on the technical side, the codebase presented significant challenges. Between technical debt, minimal documentation, and an extremely limited README, we spent considerable time figuring out which components were functional and identifying the most updated branch. The software also needs to be redesigned for extensibility. We are now making documentation a priority to support current and future team members of the project. We are also implementing structured onboarding to help non-co-op students integrate more smoothly, as they’ve been spending a lot of time catching up with project developments.
If these first two weeks have taught us anything, it’s that we have a lot to learn, but we are building the support systems and processes we need to succeed. We are already feeling more confident about the road ahead, and we’re excited to see where the next sprint takes us!