You Grow Girl

Hello! Welcome to my blog, it's tree-mendous to have you here!

I've been reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which besides the fact I highly recommend it (if you decide to read it, please buy it from an independent bookstore), it also sparked a deeper understanding of nature and land. Though the book has many messages, what I took away from it is that we need to regard the land as a gift, meaning we need to show appreciation and reciprocity. If we want the human species (and every other species) to continue to call Earth our home, we need to start using only the resources we need and be respectful with how we use them. I am hoping to continue to grow this understanding of a relationship between ourselves and the land when I start my new role in environmental and sustainable education with SustainEd Group .

Wait, what? That's right! This blog is the first of a few entries into my experience working with SustainEd Group where I'll be designing (and hopefully implementing) lessons on sustainability.

Why environmental education?

I spent most of my life avoiding ecology and environmental education (ok, ok, I know this sounds horrible). In undergrad I wanted to avoid all plant courses like the plague. Probably due to the fact that I did not find plants interesting in high school and had a particularly mediocre ecology course in second year. But then I decided to pursue grad school, which really just takes everything you thought you knew about yourself and throws it out the window (we can talk about this later). I came to accept that my life was surrounded by ecology and environmental science and I needed to dive into it!

During my MSc and failed PhD attempt, most of my fellow scientists were researching plants and would constantly talk to me about their efforts to understand the complexities of plant interactions. Their exploits into the field and general knowledge of plants and the environment had me a little jealous that my scientific research was keeping me in the lab. My appreciation for plants began to grow and getting to interact more frequently with plants through my role as a Teaching Assistant in university made me shift to deeply appreciating ecology, and buying lots of plants (pictured above).

The next shift in my views that set me on the path to wanting to become more involved with environmental education was my teacher education program. I took an environmental education course where I was able to explore the relationship between science, the environment, and Indigenous ways of knowing. This had me hooked on wanting to learn more (hello Braiding Sweetgrass). When I got the opportunity to sign up for the Community Engaged Learning course, I knew I would like to find an opportunity that let me connect my love for science outreach with outdoor or environmental education. So here we are!

Why SustainEd Group?

I'll be honest, SustainEd Group was not originally on my radar when I first started looking at organizations. Before coming to the MT program, I had volunteered and worked with science outreach programs and was really interested into delving into this educational area again. Particularly, I was interested in finding an organization that allowed for me to develop learning materials around STEAM and socio-scientific issues for use in science outreach programs or in classrooms. So I had my eye on museums, zoos, or Evergreen Brickworks, as those were the main organizations I could think of that actively developed learning materials. But then my attention was brought to SustainEd, an organization that works to produce lesson materials on sustainability that can be delivered in secondary classrooms. Their approach reminds me of Let's Talk Science, where pre-made lesson materials and activities centre around a key learning goal are brought into classrooms by volunteers.

The goal of SustainEd Group is to inspire students to take action "with a sustainable mindset" in their futures and careers through hands-on projects delivered to classrooms. Their video does a great job of summarizing their mission:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnR6fLzE1Uk

Though our Ontario curriculum emphasizes a focus on environmental education, many teachers may still struggle to incorporate meaningful and authentic environmental connections in their subject courses (Evans, Whitehouse, & Gooch, 2012). This is where SustainEd Group comes in: they build lessons that introduce important sustainability issues around curriculum subject expectations. Their emphasis on making sure that youth feel empowered to take action is also key in their lesson design, and it's what caught my attention. I have become really interested in the use of problem-based learning in classrooms, especially in conjunction with Science-Technology-Society-Environment (STSE) framework in Canadian curriculums. Therefore, their mission is one I can really get behind and support, so I knew this was the organization for me!

What is my role?

Well, like most people, the pandemic threw a wrench into my plans. Back when students were still in brick and mortar classrooms, SustainEd Group got their intern volunteers to develop lesson materials alongside a teacher and deliver the weeklong lesson to the class. Though I am not quite able to take on this original role due to COVID-19 regulations, we can adapt and push my role into new areas! I am now responsible for adapting the Energy module into individual lessons that can be delivered alone or in conjunction with each other, for the online classroom. I even get to work with my colleague from the MT program in this endeavour. We are expected to put in 5 hours a week towards team meetings and developing the material in January and February, then (hopefully) delivering the lessons in March.

I feel that I have a lot to offer to this role as I have experience teaching high school classes online and know how to structure activities and lessons to make them engaging for an online audience. However, I also know the challenges of teaching online, such as students keeping their cameras off and the difficulty of navigating group projects. So I do anticipate that delivering some of the lessons may present a bit of a challenge as we learn how to adapt the lessons to the online environment. But I'm excited for this experience as I feel it will prepare me to develop effective and engaging materials for an online environment.

Learning goals and further questions

Transitioning into the virtual realm for education is an exciting endeavour that leaves me excited to learn and improve my skills in developing educational programs, adapting educational programs for a virtual classroom, developing programs that aim to inspire action in students, and learning about the nuances of running out-of-school educational programs.

In the meantime, I do have questions relating to the business side of educational programming and lesson planning. Some questions I have are:

• How does SustainEd Group enter into partnerships with teachers and schools to deliver the content they create?

• How can I adapt the current lesson materials to call upon Indigenous ways of knowing in an online environment?

Hopefully I'll find some answers to these questions as I progress into my internship journey. Until then, thanks for reading!

Literature References

Evans, N.S., Whitehouse, H. & Gooch, M. (2012). Barriers, successes, and enabling practices of education for sustainability in far north Queensland schools: A case study. The Journal of Environmental Education, 43(2), 121-138.