丁香园AV

By Diane Luckow

Coquitlam teacher Nicole McKenzie has 22 years of teaching behind her. But after spending the past two years as a student in a unique focused on nature-based and place-conscious learning, she has transformed her conventional approach to teaching鈥攁nd her approach to life.

鈥淢y thinking has shifted entirely,鈥� says McKenzie, who works with home-schooled students in Coquitlam鈥檚 Encompass program. 鈥淏efore I took this program I saw learning in the natural world more as a backdrop. Now I see the natural world as a co-teacher.鈥�

She and 24 other educators in the MEd cohort spent only one day in the classroom during the two-year program. The rest of their classes were held in natural settings off-campus that included q虛铆c虛蓹y虛 (Katzie) and q虛史a:n虛茮虛蓹n虛 (Kwantlen) First Nations lands where they learned from Indigenous elders and experts about the land and land stewardship. They also learned about the long-term impacts of colonial practices such as overfishing.

Professor Cher Hill established the MEd program with colleagues Laura Piersol and Sean Blenkinsop, and former Maple Ridge school principal Clayton Maitland. She says the program grew from a request for 丁香园AV to develop a master鈥檚 program that would prepare teachers to work at the popular Maple Ridge Environmental School, Canada鈥檚 first outdoor public school.

To create the program, Hill and her colleagues partnered with the Environmental School, as well as the q虛铆c虛蓹y虛 and q虛史a:n虛茮虛蓹n虛 communities, to develop an MEd curriculum that uses inquiry-oriented experiential learning. The curriculum helps students examine and deepen their relationships with the natural world, and enhances their capacity to teach those lessons to their own pupils.

The first cohort graduates this October and Hill says the students have experienced the most transformative change she鈥檚 seen in more than 10 years of offering graduate education for practicing teachers.

鈥淭he extent of change that we have witnessed in the teachers over the two-year program has been astounding,鈥� she says. 鈥淪ome teachers who were dabbling in outdoor education are now supporting their students to develop deeply ethical and reciprocal relationships with the natural world. Others are working to decolonize their pedagogical practice and build relationships with local Indigenous communities. Many have come into their own as leaders of this movement, and you can see that they are carrying themselves in a different way.鈥�

The students鈥� enthusiasm for their lessons on the land led to community action after they learned about how the warming Fraser River threatens salmon. They initiated a creek restoration project that attracted more than 500 community participants who cleared local creeks of invasive species and planted 1,000 shade trees and plants along creek banks to cool the Fraser and improve the salmon鈥檚 habitat.

McKenzie says she now sees herself as a changemaker. She has transformed how she teaches to incorporate more outdoor lessons about land and land stewardship. And this fall she held a teachers鈥� workshop in Mission to tell other teachers about what she is doing, and why.

鈥淭he MEd program has really helped me be bolder, and act on making change,鈥� says McKenzie, who plans to take more community action in her personal life as well.

鈥淚t鈥檚 very important that kids learn in and from nature. If they have a connection with the natural world, then they鈥檙e going to want to care for it.鈥�