Nurture Art Show, Spring 2021 – a LEAF Project by a student at Lord Byng Secondary School, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
support the cultivation of our relationship to the land and the development of an environmental consciousness. I took a professional development day about six years
ago to sit with these questions. I carefully considered the First People’s Principles and how they connected with me on a personal and professional level. I created a document entitled “Teaching with the First People’s Principles”; it lists many of the traditional teaching approaches we may have learned in our training and use every day and how each one connects back to the First People’s Principles. Once I real- ized how aligned these principles were with my own peda- gogy, I stepped onto a path of reconciliation. I began work- ing with my district Indigenous Education Department and led a collaborative inquiry that explored the intersections between environmental education and Indigenous pedagogy. This inquiry led to the development of the LEAF Certifi- cate program at Lord Byng Secondary School. This profes- sional learning journey has uncovered the deeply connected threads of Western and Indigenous pedagogy.
Teaching teachers to LEAF We have identified some key questions for educators to
address in order to develop their capacity to work with an integrated LEAF pedagogy:
• Where are you? [Connect to Place] • Who are you? [Explore Identity] • What is the work that we are going to do together? [Cul- tivate Relationships and Make Connections]
• Reflection [Learn & Grow] I use these as framing questions for professional devel-
opment. I also use these as guiding questions in my Visual Art classes. We link everything we do back to our unique identities, the local landscape, nature, and Indigenous ways
Page 40
of knowing and being, thus expanding our existing ways of knowing and being. These questions are universal and may be explored through any subject area and at any grade level. Teachers and students can both work toward deepening their responses to these questions. This is part of a process of “decolonization” and “rein-
habitation” that Gruenwald2 proposes as a critical framework for place-based education. These concepts can be simplified:
• Decolonization — a process of recognizing and dis- lodging dominant ideas, assumptions, and ideologies as externally imposed
• Admitting critical social and ecological concerns into one’s understanding of place and the role of places in education.
• Reinhabitation — learning to live-in-place in an area that has been disrupted and injured through past exploitation
• Re-educating people in the art of living well where they are2 Teachers must begin to decolonize their practice so that
they can reinhabit their space on the land where they reside. The cultivation of place-based consciousness with aware- ness of one’s position in relation to the original inhabitants of that place should be the foundation of environmental education programming. This is not easy work; rather, it is a complicated journey of undoing and rebuilding. Unlearn- ing and relearning. Looking at historical narratives and rela- tionships on the land through multiple lenses. Allowing for learning to transform our practices and then leading our stu- dents — those who elect to do so through similar processes. The LEAF Certificate program is simple in structure, but
it has powerful implications for the future of environmental education. By creating a strong connection to the First Peo- ple’s Principles of Learning, we insist that when you work on the land, you acknowledge Indigenous views. We use a
Green Teacher 131
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
