In Lighting the Fire: Enriching Environmental Learning through Indigenous Perspectives during COVID-19, David Osorio (Grade 2 Teacher, JICS Lab School) and Doug Anderson (Author of the Indigenous Lens on Natural Curiosity) shares about their yearlong collaboration of connecting students to local nature, through story, inquiry, and other heart-centred approaches to education that bridge Indigenous and Western ways of knowing. They highlight the continued importance of bringing an Indigenous lens to inform our teaching practice, particularly in connection to student-led and land-based learning.
In this webinar, extraordinary guests from Yukon Education share about their approaches to land-based learning, integrating local Indigenous perspectives into practice, and using Natural Curiosity 2nd Edition to support an ongoing journey towards connecting children to the land.
On Thursday, April 8th, 7:00 - 8:30 PM (EST), Marlo Beaucage from Johnny Therriault School on Aroland First Nation led the Natural Curiosity community in conversation about how we can begin to decolonize the classroom, by grounding our love of teaching and learning on the land.
This is the third webinar of Natural Curiosity's 2021 series, Embracing the Shift, titled Natural Curiosity in the Early Years: Stories from the Lab School Nursery. In this webinar dedicated to early years educators, we were joined by Krista Spence and Norah L'Espérance from the Nursery School at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study Laboratory School, OISE-University of Toronto. Krista and Norah shared about their environmental inquiry practice, guided by the question of what it means to bring an Indigenous lens to how they teach and learn with the youngest of learners.
The first webinar in this series, Educator Strategies for Getting and Staying Outdoors, was joined by recent award winners of Natural Curiosity’s Burtynsky Award for Teaching Excellence in Environmental Education, Jennifer Baron (Teacher at YRDSB) and Miriam Snell (Teacher at Tamarack West Outdoor School), as well as Jay Field (Principal at Tamarack West).
The second webinar in Natural Curiosity's four-part webinar series highlights an Indigenous lens on the current crisis in education. A COVID-look at the Indigenous Lens on Natural Curiosity (recorded on September 17th, 2020) was joined by Krista Spence, Teacher-Librarian at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study Laboratory School, who shared the students' living land acknowledgment, and guest speakers Doug Anderson, the Author of the Indigenous lens in Natural Curiosity 2nd Edition, and Maria Vamvalis, an experienced TDSB Teacher and critical thinking education consultant, currently writing her PhD in transformative climate change education. This webinar was co-hosted by Brenda Simon, Rosa Na, and Asha Bruce of the Natural Curiosity team.
In the third part of this series, Grounding Virtual Learning in the Land and Relationship, the Natural Curiosity team was joined by two experienced and committed environmental educators from the York Region District School Board: Tanya Murray, Outdoor Experiential Learning Consultant, and Natasha Bascevan, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Education Consultant. In response to COVID, both Tanya and Natasha were called to teach temporarily in the virtual classroom.
This fourth and final webinar in our four part series, Using School Grounds Effectively to Enrich Learning, features Julie Whitfield, principal at Humewood Public School (TDSB), Ticia Heibein, kindergarten teacher at Forest Hill Public School (TDSB) and Steve Smith, baseball coach at the Toronto Playgrounds Baseball Association.
