"All of this is a great forest. Inside the forest is the child. The forest is beautiful, fascinating, green, and full of hopes; there are no paths. Although it isn't easy, we have to make our own paths, as teachers and children and families, in the forest. Sometimes we find ourselves together within the forest, sometimes we may get lost from each other, sometimes we’ll greet each other from far away across the forest; but its living together in this forest that is important."
Loris Malaguzzi (1994)
THE EMERGENT LAYER- uppermost layer of a forest, where sunlight is plentiful and trees tower on thin trunks.
In the Fall of 2020, we attended the Vancouver Reggio Association's Digital Environments conference highlighting the work of Lorenzo Manera and his colleagues in Reggio Emilia, Italy. This inspiring event sparked curiosity, wonder and joy for us. What has also emerged from the conference is this collaborative project that we are sharing in this presentation.
We would like to thank the Vancouver Reggio Association for this inspiration as well as for the support of the Learning Journey Grant that made this collaboration possible.
Our team of collaborators is from the community of University Highlands Elementary in the Burnaby School District. Leah Dixon and Kristina Carley are classroom teachers with classes of grades 2/3 and 3/4 students. Lindsay Shuster is also a UHE classroom teacher, however this school year she is working in the distance learning program and has connected her students as they explore distance learning across 12 different schools. Rebecca Heyl is an atelierista and member of the Burnaby Mountain community who joined Leah and Kristina’s classes in their outdoor studio learning. Rebecca works as an artist-in-residence with the AIRS program in Vancouver schools.
Together, we brainstormed, dreamed and co-constructed possibilities to pursue with our students across varying in-class and virtual contexts. Our shared interests, passions and pedagogy combined with the gift of time together and innovative digital tools is where it began. Initial conversations consisted of ideas around nature, forests, light and story.
THE CANOPY- or overstory is a structurally complex and ecologically important subsystem of the forest. This layer provides protection from strong winds and storms, while also filtering sunlight and precipitation, thus creating a special microclimate for understory's plants and animals.
The canopy is what we envision for our students and ourselves. The space in which curriculum, story, pedagogy, place and progettazione can interplay. Just as the canopy provides a specific microclimate by filtering what gets into the forest, we knew we wanted to create a climate for students' playful inquiry that explored multiple ways of knowing and being in the world, including artistic modes as well as indigenous ways of knowing.
In our initial dialogue our team hoped to explore new perspectives, places, stories, and interconnections around us by wondering together, with our students and one another, questions such as:
What stories can the land tell us?
What is the story of our forest?
How can we understand the cultural context and histories of the places we live?
How can light help us understand perspectives? How can we bring light (to shed light, illuminate) as a way to attend to the particular, to see more, to notice patterns and begin to make connections?
How can we share the stories of the places we live using digital and analog mediums?
How can our understanding of story help us understand ourselves and the world?
How can we create a dialogue with materials between students across space and time?
How can we understand the understory and other stories invisible to the eye through using digital and analog tools?
How can we re-imagine, deconstruct, and reconstruct everyday items to help us explore new perspectives?
How can caring for the places we live and love help us show stewardship and empower action?
Although our team was once joined together in the physical space of UHE, we find ourselves connecting across virtual and outdoor spaces in this new way of being. Once imagining a project to create a digital studio within the school, now we are exploring how we can create a “studio disposition” that we take across spaces and outside with us.
THE UNDERSTORY- The lower level of vegetation in a forest. Usually formed by ground vegetation (mosses, herbs and lichens), herbs and shrubs.
Our inquiry was woven throughout our learning this year. As we explored, we were guided by the interests, passions, and curiosities of the children we work with across our various contexts.
Below we will share some of what unfolded over the school year. We have divided these stories into three distinct themes that follow how the process unfolded outdoors, indoors and in virtual spaces: Bringing Light, Finding Stories of Biodiversity, Relationships & Stewardship
BRINGING LIGHT
Our guiding questions to working with light were:
- How can light help us understand perspectives?
- How can we bring light (to shed light, illuminate) as a way to attend to the particular, to see more, to notice patterns and begin to make connections?
One of the processes we worked with in the forest was a pre-photographic technique for capturing shadows called cyanotype invented in the 1840's. The light-sensitive paper revealed the patterns and intricacies of nature and fixes it into a material with which we can begin a dialogue.
"We used an endoscope to find all the rocks and bugs. Look closely there’s some strange things in this video..." - MG
"When when using the endoscope we saw some thing mysterious and we have yet to discover what it is." - GS
"I was super inspired because there was so much strange stuff was under the water." - BW
reflections by grade 3/4 students
FINDING STORIES OF BIODIVERSITY
Building on our skills of bringing light and being keen observers:
- we began practicing artistic ways to capture our ideas
- reached out to both scientific institutions as well as
- to knowledge keepers in the community
students practiced slow looking and created observational drawings of forest specimens borrowed from UBC's Beaty Museum of Biodiversity
We connected with Lori Snyder, Métis Herbalist and Educator, to help us explore who lives here and how we are in relationship. She helped us learn about the diversity at the edge of the forest and how it is just like our diversity as learners. Each plant and animal has a role to play. Our students realized they all support and teach each other and are stronger together.
We are so grateful that Indigenous elder Lori Snyder was able to visit UHE this year and share her passion, knowledge and stories about the forest. For the students who were not present or learning online we created a series of Nature Walk videos. In addition, UHE's Division 8 students continued the dialogue by created a video in which they reflect on their learning from Lori's visit.
What stories can the land tell us? How can our understanding of story help us understand ourselves and the world?
Relationships & Stewardship
Noticing led us to understanding, which led us to caring deeply about the places on which we live, learn, and love. With this understanding, students wondered:
- How can we explore our own stewardship role in tending to the spaces where we learn by engaging in restoration?
- How can we encourage climate resilience by encouraging biodiversity?
We were so grateful to Pablo Vimos, school garden educator, community member, and landscape ecologist who was our partner and collaborator in habitat restoration, helping us dream up ways to explore our places.
"It felt good placing the plants, it felt like we were making nature happy.
"To me it means happiness, more diversity in plants, more chances for other plants to have lives."
"I felt happy looking at what the UHE forest is going to be."
reflections by grade 2/3 students
THE ROOTING SYSTEM- Trees have a symbiotic relationship with microorganisms in the soil, like fungi. Fungi form white thread-like colonies on tree roots. Trees give carbon to the fungi in the form of sugar and in return fungi give the trees essential minerals such as nitrogen and phosphorus.
As our project unfolded, our relationships changed – with the forest, with each other, and with our spaces. We imagined this as our roots. Our learning becoming entangled, inspired by exploring, sharing, and reflecting. Through the act of looking closely and noticing, we built our appreciation. By naming, identifying, and pursuing inquiries, we strengthened our roots and felt compelled to care for our spaces and take action.
As we collaborated over time and space, we recognized the teachings of the forests. We are better together, and we grow stronger with one another. By sharing across grade levels, we saw how we can inspire each other through dialogue as buddies, mentors, and partners in learning. By exploring across digital mediums, we reimagined what a community can look like. We found community in unusual places. By looking closely with new tools, we considered many ways of seeing and understood that there is always more to learn.
Our studio lens revealed new pathways in the forest, showing us how everything is in relationship and that we also are nature. Now we have become part of the story of the forest, first by entering into a dialogue and then by embodying our reciprocal relationship with the land and the places we love through restoration and stewardship.
THANK YOU
Credits:
Photos by UHE Divisions 6 & 8, online students of Lindsay Shuster, teachers Leah Dixon, Kristina Carley, Lindsay Shuster and Rebecca Heyl