EcoLinks 2020 – Postponed
EcoLinks Conference 2020 will be postponed due to COVID-19
POSTPONED: More info to follow. Be well, friends.
The annual EcoLinks conference will return to High Park Nature Centre at a date TBC, 2020/21, dependent upon public health guidance. Hosted by the Ontario Society for Environmental Education (OSEE), the conference supports educators with integrating environmental education into their teaching practice.
The field of Environmental Education (EE) can be used to bring curriculum to life, to support different learning needs and styles, and to build curiosity and environmental ethics in learners, educators and wider society. Though not structurally integrated in the school system, EE belongs across all grades and subjects and there is policy we can point to, to support this! OSEE has chosen to highlight six themes within EE in our workshop offerings to make more visible the diversity of ways we can learn about and for the environment.
EcoLinks 2020 Workshop Themes:
1) Indigenous Perspectives & EE
2) Arts-based Nature Education
3) Champions of Change: Shifting School Culture
4) Gardening as Pedagogy
5) Global Citizenship and Climate Justice
6) EE, Mental Health & Mindfulness
Workshops
Workshop Description
Labyrinth Walking: A journey of the body, mind, and soul
Championing change is hard work. Bring your burning questions, unresolved feelings, or simply an open mind for this walk to the centre of the High Park labyrinth and back again. Find your own rhythm and explore the answers and insights generated from within that you can take with you to your work.
Workshop Description
Nature Through Song
Songs can bring the most mundane academic topics to life while also acting as a potent emotional anchor for learning about local ecology. In this workshop you will have an opportunity to listen to, discuss and co-create nature-themed songs. No prior musical training required!
Workshop Description
Getting a Better Sense of Nature
Children spend so much time inside, staring at 2 dimensional screens. We were born with the ability to perceive the natural world in a deep and abiding way; with all of our sense tuned and primed. In this fast paced, technological world, we find ourselves relying on our sight and hearing – seeing and listening to the world through our glowing windows. In this workshop, you’ll be introduced to a whole suite of activities that practice using your sight, hearing, feeling, smell and taste in new ways to help your students connect to their environment. From following scent trails, to creating micro-trails, from drawing sound to creating beautiful nature sculptures, we’ll activate all of our senses so you can feel more connected to this wonderful world.
Workshop Description
Trade and Consequences
Play a revamp of the Trappers and Traders program from an Indigenous perspective. Learn what happens when ecosystems are out of balance and stresses of resource extraction and land appropriation are happening in the area. Written in consult with local elders, this program gives you another side of the story. Can be used in outdoor education centres or school yards – come and see how the balance in the environment comes with challenges.
Presenter(s)
Workshop Description
Naturally Queer: Celebrating difference through Nature
Through this workshop, we’ll look at all the ways that nature expresses itself in unique and ever evolving ways in order to promote concepts of queerness and diversity. We’ll chat about how everything from fashion magazines to the grocery store has made us forget about the vast and amazing spectrum of shapes, sizes, colours, and sexualities that nature actually exhibits.
Presenter(s)
Workshop Description
Connecting Students to Nature Through Music
In this workshop, you will be lead through a variety of activities that you will be able to bring back to your students and implement the following day. These activities are aimed to connect students to their voice, and the natural world around them.
Workshop Description
Think Like A Plant – Then Grow!
TGC works with schools/kids across Canada and globally through space/water efficient gardening. This presentation focuses on using all our senses in the garden, to create & appreciate the food-growing process, and to imprint it solidly in the minds/lives of students. Teachers will easily appreciate how to adapt gardens to writing/record-keeping/math/art and communications. We will feel, see taste, smell & hear from the plants themselves – and we will have a hands-on planting session – with one Caja container as a prize for a workshop participant.
Workshop Description
Grow to Your Room – Making low scale growing accessible in the classroom
In this workshop, educators will be introduced to the joys and wonders of simple, fun and economical ways to teach students how to grow their own food, using recyclable items. Providing students practical ways to reduce food waste and their footprint on the environment, participants will each build their own sub-irrigated planter out of a used pop bottle to take home. They will plant seeds or food scraps in their planters and learn how to care for living things as they grow. Materials will be provided. If possible, participants are encouraged to bring their used and empty 2L pop bottles, seeds and food scraps (carrot & beet tops, green onion, lettuce & celery ends) to share with the group.
Workshop Description
Rooted in the Curriculum
You don’t have to have a school garden or a green thumb to engage your students in learning through garden themes. Garden education experts from Ecosource, and environmental charity in the Region of Peel, will share hands-on ideas and activities for supporting garden connections in the classroom. Together, we will adapt activities for indoor and outdoor learning, identify curriculum connections and share examples of how educators have developed garden-themed activities with their students. During this session, expect to get your hands dirty as you explore new activity ideas! In addition, you will leave with your very own classroom-ready action kits to help facilitate these connections in your own teaching practice.
Workshop Description
The Adventure in Understanding. A perspective on Indigenous Knowledge and Reconciliation in Outdoor Education
There is a lot of discussion about reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada. Join Glen Caradus from Camp Kawartha as he shares his perspectives in developing Indigenous Awareness Programs for several local camps. Glen will also present a 7 minute documentary on a yearly canoe trip he leads with Indigenous and non Indigenous youth from Peterborough to Curve Lake First Nation. Participants will experience; traditional Indigenous games, fire making skills, plant identification, they will also play a giant reconciliation/ecology board game. Simple ideas and resources will be shared to help educators incorporate Indigenous history and reconciliation into their programs. *All of Glen’s programs have been developed in partnership with Curve Lake First Nation.
Workshop Description
Fish Skin Tanning in the Classroom
This workshop is an introduction to SciXchange’s newest Indigenous science lesson plan, tanning fish skin! This easy and engaging classroom activity introduces students to Indigenous science which touches on a variety of topics from history to chemistry, art and more! This hands-on lesson will have students transform a salvaged piece of fish skin, into a useable leather!
Workshop Description
Teaching the Human Dimensions of Climate Change
An understanding of climate change – its causes and effects – goes beyond the realm of climate science. As perhaps the greatest threat to humanity in the 21st century, climate change is cross disciplinary and encompasses many of the fundamentals of human geography and history. In this hands-on session, the presenter will focus on putting the science in a social perspective, first by examining the trends over the past 200 years that correlate to climate change (population growth, fossil fuel use, changing land use) and then by examining the relative vulnerability of different countries to climate change impacts (sea level rise, severe weather and agricultural loss). Participants will learn how to lead thought-provoking, inquiry-based lessons that focus on the human dimensions of climate change, including a) how human activities have contributed to climate change since the Industrial Revolution, b) current energy use trends and how they vary around the globe, c) how some global communities are more vulnerable than others to impacts of climate change, and d) how these vulnerabilities widen inequities and may portend more climate refugees.
Workshop Description
How to Organize an Eco-Fair at your School
In this session, participants will learn about the six year York Region DSB Journey of an amazing interactive Eco-Fair that places its focus on community involvement, student-voice and environmental engagement. Through a hands-on inquiry model, participants will explore some environmental issues through various media texts and begin to build the foundation of interactive projects that could be done with their students. Partnerships, grant applications and funding options will also be discussed and shared.
Workshop Description
Seeding the Future of School Gardens
Growing the movement for garden-based learning (GBL), this interactive and experiential workshop will dig into the inspiration for and praxis of successful school-based learning gardens and seed libraries. Participants will learn how to sprout and trellis gardening initiatives across core subject areas and beyond. GBL offers transformative learning opportunities able to meet the critical social and ecological crisis of our thyme, promoting literaseed and SOILidirty among all beings – empowering students to meet their real needs for intellectual and physical nourishment, along with the needs of our ecological society.
Workshop Description
Youthquake: Empower your students to engage in climate change action projects
Youth across the world are standing up as leaders in the climate justice movement. How can you support your students to take action on climate change in their community? This presentation will introduce educators to the Roots & Shoots program and help teachers to engage their students in youth-led projects on climate change and climate justice. It will be co-hosted by one of Jane Goodall Institute of Canada’s dynamic youth leaders, Hannah Faris, and the Roots & Shoots Manager, Lauren Saville. Hannah will share her own experience with Roots & Shoots and how she worked with other youth to design and implement their own action projects, and what kind of support young people need. Teachers will work on a case study in small groups, by learning about the Roots & Shoots 4-step framework: to inspire; to understand; to act; and to celebrate. Participants will leave the workshop with tools they can adapt to support youth-led actions in their schools.
Workshop Description
Soundscapes: acoustic explorations with/in our environment
Soundscapes are representations of our experience of sound as it exists around us. Using the environment as the context, soundscapes can be a powerful tool to use with students to explore creative process and our relationship to the natural world. In this experiential and participatory session, we will take you through the process of mapping a soundscape and discuss how to integrate this activity into broader strategies that can engage learners in, about and for the environment.
Contact email: ecolinks@osee.ca