Explore how land can be our teacher

At the heart of the upcoming Land, Literacies and Literatures Symposium is the principle: “Land as teacher.”

The April 11 gathering offers University of Calgary academics and students the opportunity to select from nine workshops that will explore methods for infusing place-based learning into teaching practices.

Dr. Kimberly Lenters, PhD, Werklund School of Education professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier II), is a member of the organizing committee. She says the symposium is also a chance for participants to re-examine their relationship with the living world.

“Land-based learning helps us move away from thinking of land as something that we just use, and instead, move into a place of engaging with land as a partner in our lives and our teaching practice. To engage with it less in user-mode, but rather shift ourselves into a more relational mode.”

Experiential learning

To get started, consider how literature is informed and inspired by the land — and how this confluence can be engaged with in the field of education, Lenters says.

The day-to-day demands of teaching, she says, can sometimes limit opportunities to step outside the walls of a classroom. Skill development should not compete with, or come at the expense of, experiential learning.

“Curricular guidelines provide a long and specific list of literacy skills that K-12 educators are required to teach, and this leaves less space for thinking about literature as a pleasurable exercise, or something that we can engage with in a holistic way in the classroom.”

“We're looking for that more dynamic space where literacies come into being part of land and literature rather than being kept separate or viewed as competing for precious teaching time.”

With that in mind, academics and community members will offer sessions that take attendees outdoors on the UCalgary campus. 

“The plan is to have people not just thinking about these things, but actually doing them,” says Lenters. “This is a space where people can begin making theory-to-practice connections. We can talk about land and literature in theoretical ways, but what does bringing them together actually look like in learning spaces?” 

Decolonizing literacy education

Co-organizer Dr. Aubrey Hanson, PhD'17, says learning from and with the land and through story are intrinsic to Indigenous education.

"Connecting land, literacies and literatures makes room also to connect with Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. So, this symposium can be seen as decolonizing literacy education but also simply opening up relationality between literacy or literary education and Indigenous knowledges.”

Hanson and Dr. Erin Spring, PhD, will contribute to this endeavour by sharing their project: Books to Build On: Indigenous Literatures for Learning.

"Some teachers don't know how to learn more or engage responsibly with Indigenous knowledges or peoples, but 'starting with story', as we call it, can be an accessible and powerful way to build confidence, knowledge and relationship," Hanson says.

Hanson adds that an opening prayer with a Treaty 7 Elder as well as a keynote presentation by Oji-Cree member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1) Dr. Joshua Whitehead, PhD'21, will ensure the day begins in a good way.

Transdisciplinary knowledge

While the primary concern of the symposium is literacy, Lenters says the concept of land as teacher is interdisciplinary in nature and will appeal to academics in faculties beyond Arts and Education. She points to economic and political decisions pertaining to issues like national boundaries, access to water and resource development as topical examples of how land can be incorporated in diverse fields of study. 

“When we plug disparate areas into each other, we can really open up spaces for thinking, so I think the themes really do reach across disciplinary areas.” 

Werklund School of Education organizing committee members

• Kimberly Lenters, Canada Research Chair in Language and Literacy
• Ronna Mosher, assistant professor, curriculum and learning
• Erin Spring, associate dean, undergraduate programs
• Aubrey Hanson, director, Indigenous education