Welcome!
Hi Everyone!
Welcome to our course, "Education for Environmental Stewardship". Please take a few moments to introduce yourself to the group in this discussion thread.
Best,
The TIGed Professional Development Team
5 Replies
Hello fellow eco-spirits,
My name is Hanna Porter and I am the ACL for Canadian and World Studies, as well as a Geography and Politics teacher at Northview Heights Secondary School in Toronto. This is my 12th year teaching (give or take a few years on maternity leave), and for the last five years, I have been blessed to be part of Northview’s environmental initiatives, both through our Professional Learning Community (Eco-PLC) as well as being a staff advisor for our Northview Environment Action Team, NEAT. I have also for the past few years been fortunate enough to teach the grade 12 Environment and Resource Management course (CGR4M1) at our school, something that I feel very passionately about.
My personal interest in the environment and environmental education and stewardship is probably genetically embedded. My mother was one of the driving forces behind environmental education in Sweden (where I am born and raised) and one could say I am in many words her “pilot project”. I have spent most of my childhood outdoors, learning with and from this beautiful gift, nature, because she made it a priority. It is because of people like my mother that I have the knowledge, the insight, inspiration and the …guts to start this journey, and it is because my two boys, age 9 and 7 that I have made it my priority to try to change the world we live in.
[ ”After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space would say; ‘I want to see the Manager!’” W.S. Burroughs]
Hello everyone,
My name is Mary Zervas. I’ve been an educator for over 20 years and have taught in various schools around the city of Toronto. Currently, I ’m principal at North Preparatory Junior P.S. I’ve been here since February 2007.
The focus on environmental literacy at North Prep is a priority. As a Gold Certified Eco-School, we are participating in a number of environmentally friendly actions that promote positive behaviours students can become engaged in at an early age to help the environment and also to instill a sense of connectedness with nature. However, we want to go deeper and insert environmental literacy throughout the curriculum.
On a personal level, I’m passionate about the environment and nature in general. I love the opportunities I get to “connect” with nature. I always feel a sense of “calm” and I feel “grounded” when in nature. I often feel that we are disconnected from nature and I worry about future generations losing this “connectedness” and appreciation for the natural world. I hope through this course that I will learn and become more aware of how we can integrate learning and an appreciation of nature into the curriculum.
Hello Everyone,
My name is Carmen So and I am a History, Civics and Special Education teacher at Northview Heights Secondary School in Toronto. This is my sixth year teaching in Canada, in addition to the two years I taught in Beijing.
Though my earliest memory dates back to my Grade 6 project on the depletion of the ozone layer, I would be considered a late-bloomer “eco-spirit”, as my environmental consciousness and activism mainly took shape in the last ten years. I became acutely aware of the effects of pollution on the environment and society when I lived in Beijing. When I returned to Toronto, I familiarized myself with environmental issues through literature and documentaries. Since then, I have become a vegan, joined a food co-op and adopted two adorable furry Lionhead rabbits.
I have also co-facilitated Northview and Maplewood High School’s student environmental clubs as well as participate in Northview’s Eco Professional Learning Community. I am looking forward learning about how meaningful environmental education can be effectively implemented across the curriculum. I am most interested in learning about how to better engage and empower students to be global/environmental citizens/activists.
Hello,
My name is Biz and I have the good fortune of teaching at the Scarborough Outdoor Education School in Kearney, Ontario. Our mandate is for Grade 6s, so we have students from the Scarborough area of TDSB up for 3-5 day visits, and we also deliver programming for intermediate and senior groups throughout TDSB. Before teaching at S.O.E.S., I taught grades 5 and 6 in Scarborough for 4 years and in outdoor alternative secondary schools in the U.S.
I relate strongly to the notion of facilitating an appreciation of nature in the early years, since my upbringing of swimming in lakes, building forts in creek valleys and digging in gardens are still some of my favourite things to do. I think the lessons available when we are in these situations are invaluable and innumerable. While building forts was purely pleasure when I was younger, the structures we made, the friends I was with, and the vandalism and pollution we saw, are only some of the factors that contributed to my future understandings of concepts such as ecosystems, social dynamics and industry.
As an educator, my goal is to help students want to learn. As an environmental educator, I want to provide them with experiences that safely allow them to explore the different environments around them, see themselves integrated within these systems, and empower them to be active stewards of those environments.
Hi all, I’m Brenda Carling. I have been teaching outdoor and environmental education for around 20 years. Although this was not what I thought would be my career, it is indeed a perfect fit for me. I grew up with parents from post-war Britain where nothing was wasted. We were composting and recycling before it was something our neighbours had heard of. My degree in agriculture gave me natural science training and solidified food as an integrating element to my ‘environmentalism’. I got international perspectives in part, through volunteering at Asian Rural Institute in Japan, where Asian and African community leaders come to learn about organic agriculture and leadership skills. I believe that actions speak stronger than words and am impassioned about growing my own food and eating with conscience (without being fanatical about it).
A grounding quote for me comes from Dr. Helen Caldicott (in her book “If you love this planet”):
“ It is clear to me that unless we connect directly with the earth, we will not have the faintest clue why we should save it.”
I truly believe in the positive impact that overnight outdoor education experiences have on students in many different ways – from experiencing the ‘natural’ environment for the first time, to letting students shine for their teachers and peers in a different setting, to developing greater responsibility, to enriching their classroom curriculum, and to hopefully planting the seed for growing more environmentalists. As a Platinum EcoSchool we attempt to model exemplary practices and inspire our visitors.
Through this course, I hope to continue to work on strengthening the connections between students visiting our outdoor education centre and their classrooms.
Hanna Porter
Mar 12, 2013 at 9:44 PM