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Articles 1 - 30 of 45
Full-Text Articles in Educational Sociology
Eco-Justice Poetry: An Emotive Transgression, Nicola H. Follis
Eco-Justice Poetry: An Emotive Transgression, Nicola H. Follis
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Dualistic value-hierarchies that are deeply embedded within Western culture assign certain identities, traits and ways of knowing as superior to others. According to eco-justice frameworks, these hierarchies allow some humans to be valued over others and all humans to be valued over the Earth. I specifically talk about the mind/body and human/nature split as two dualities present in Western discourse. Emotions are deemed inferior to the mind’s rational and objective ways of knowing while humans are considered separate and superior to nature. I argue that eco-justice poetry acts as a small transgression against a value- hierarchized culture that devalues emotional …
New Frontiers In Gaming: Playing With Hope, C. Thumper Ormerod
New Frontiers In Gaming: Playing With Hope, C. Thumper Ormerod
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
The author, a queer educator, documents how a transformative experience sharing their love of collaborative storytelling games with peers lead to them designing a new game. The author explores the potential of games like Dungeons and Dragons to make space for voices that popular media doesn’t offer a platform to. They explore opportunities to use role playing to practice new social skills, build community, and the potential for emotionally therapeutic play. Finally, outlined is an original game entitled Frontiers which aims to help players develop environmental hope.
Collecting: A Process Of Learning, Growth, And Forming Identity, Nate Trachte
Collecting: A Process Of Learning, Growth, And Forming Identity, Nate Trachte
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Why do people stuff their homes full of things that have no real utility and attach such great personal attachment to them? It is the relationships involved in any action that provide a lasting sense of satisfaction. Transformation in life as with education is about being able to sit with uncertainty, asking questions, and seeking to understand with the spirit of earnest curiosity. We should seek to hold each other gently in the uncertainty of learning and growth. What if instead of focusing on rushing to meet standards and goals, we slow down and embrace the process of learning missteps …
What To Make Of A Diminished Thing: Re-Envisioning Spirit And Relation In Environmental Education, Zoe Wadkins
What To Make Of A Diminished Thing: Re-Envisioning Spirit And Relation In Environmental Education, Zoe Wadkins
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Traditional westernized systems of education reflect complex historical, social, and political forces that prioritize uniformity at expense of people’s multi-dimensionality. This paper details a returning to relation via education’s potential to entwine multiple perspectives in mutual understanding of lived experience. Education in this way becomes an interwoven tapestry and a means to speak across difference in mending, rather than in mutual deterioration. Enjoining personal storytelling with indigenous epistemology, the author pursues hope in reconfiguring the display of our educational tapestry.
Nourishing Solidarity: Critical Food Pedagogy And Storytelling For Community, N. Tanner Johnson
Nourishing Solidarity: Critical Food Pedagogy And Storytelling For Community, N. Tanner Johnson
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
This piece was delivered in four parts in tandem with a four-course meal, with the intention of providing the audience with time to engage in the sharing of their own perspectives around food and eating. Foodways, the particular cultural and social contexts within which food sits offer a unique entry point into deeper, more connective opportunities for environmental education. The food justice and food sovereignty movements provide a foil for traditional forms of environmental education which reinforce settler-colonial narratives about the more-than-human world. Food is something that everyone has some sort of interaction with every single day. At the same …
The Queer Agenda: A Fluid Education, Charlee Corra
The Queer Agenda: A Fluid Education, Charlee Corra
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Throughout this paper, I weave together various aspects of my identity in order to investigate how fluidity and questioning form an undercurrent of my being and therefore of the way I teach. Through metaphors and narratives of my experiences within environmental education and experiential learning I seek clarity and expansiveness rather than definitive answers, leaning into the certainty that change is inevitable and there are rarely any static answers. Using queerness, Judaism, and my scientific background as the layers of my unique identity lens and positionality, I explore the ways in which the power of questioning, critical thinking, democratic education …
Pedagogy Of Tarot: Simultaneity Of Past, Present, And Future, Ashley S. Hill
Pedagogy Of Tarot: Simultaneity Of Past, Present, And Future, Ashley S. Hill
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
A three card tarot spread can represent the past, present, and future. As a reflective practice, tarot does not divine the future; rather it invites the practitioner to consider context and imagine multiple futures. Simultaneously experiencing the past, present, and future of education is valuable and is possible through a pedagogy of tarot. A pedagogy of tarot connects fxminist and democratic approaches to education through non-hierarchical relationships that honor lived experiences - calling teachers and learners to remain conscious and awake to one another. By acknowledging the possibility of multiple truths within current sociopoliticial and hxstorical contexts, we can make …
Farm Camp Fun, Rebecca Moore
Farm Camp Fun, Rebecca Moore
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
This piece is a personal narrative about the journey of a young woman in the constant process of becoming an educator. The wonder of children is what drives this individual, discussed here through the lenses of thought of adultism and with a focus on play. The fallacies of higher education and the systemic injustices the US is built on are touched upon, with specific reference to the industrialized standardized school system. The author promotes the notion that this nation needs educators who see the inherent wisdom in children, because kids are the ones who are the hope for bringing this …
Womxn: An Evolution Of Identity, Ash D. Kunz
Womxn: An Evolution Of Identity, Ash D. Kunz
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Environmental Education is situated firmly in the hegemony of White, settler-colonial, capitalistic, able-bodied and –minded, heteronormative, patriarchal society. Individuals whose identity does not conform to this dominant metanarrative are excluded from and marginalized by “othering”. Trauma and violence are commonplace in society against Indigenous peoples, Black and Latinx folx and People of Color, womxn, people with disabilities, people in the LGBTQIA+ community, and all minoritized identities. That history of trauma, coupled with social and physical isolation can lead to mental and emotional struggles that negatively impact personal wellbeing. A lack of wellbeing, in turn can lead to or further depression. …
It’S Not All About Climbing Rocks: Reorienting Outdoor Educators Toward Social Justice, Sarah J. Clement
It’S Not All About Climbing Rocks: Reorienting Outdoor Educators Toward Social Justice, Sarah J. Clement
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
The field of outdoor adventure education was born in the Western world in the twentieth century because of several specific factors. These factors include, but are not limited to: changing Euro-American attitudes toward wilderness, Kurt Hahn’s character education schools and the pervasiveness of white supremacy. Today, outdoor adventure education is widely popular among the white middle class. According to current instructors in the field, outdoor education is for the purpose of individual development, learning in a wilderness setting and teaching students how to be environmental stewards for wild places. These purposes result from underlying, sometimes false, assumptions about the nature …
Stop, Collaborate, And Listen: The Importance Of Critical And Creative Thinking, Kalynne Gallagher
Stop, Collaborate, And Listen: The Importance Of Critical And Creative Thinking, Kalynne Gallagher
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Creative thinking and critical thinking are necessary skills for equipping individuals to be the social change makers, leaders and innovators we need to make the world a better place. However, with our current education system focused on standardized testing and conformity, how can we foster these skills and be empowered to challenge assumptions and take risks? Kay ties in her own experience as well as the work from scholars in the field of education like bell hooks, David Orr and Sir Ken Robinson, to support her beliefs. Throughout this piece Kay examines where she believes that her critical thinking and …
White Guy Hiking: How I Learned To Think Critically About My Ecological Identity, Nick Engelfried
White Guy Hiking: How I Learned To Think Critically About My Ecological Identity, Nick Engelfried
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Our encounters with the “natural” world are made possible by a complex of historical, political, social, and economic forces that shape each person’s ecological identity, or the way in which we relate to nature. I grew up in a White, middle-class family with easy access to green spaces, and this contributed to my growing up to become an environmental activist and educator. I now realize the doors which opened to allow me to embark on this path did not do so by chance and that many other people are prevented from engaging with nature in the ways I did as …
Lessons & Landscapes: Lived Experience In The Outdoors, Rachael Grasso
Lessons & Landscapes: Lived Experience In The Outdoors, Rachael Grasso
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
This personal narrative documents Rachael Grasso’s lived experience in the outdoors, focusing on mental health and female leadership. Originally written for a graduate capstone presentation, the narrative visits landscapes that Rachael associates with life lessons and pivotal moments in her career and personal life. She hopes to incorporate these experiences into her future work as an educator and outdoor instructor.
(W)Here Is Here?: Variations On Voice And Location In Environmental Education, Alexei Desmarais
(W)Here Is Here?: Variations On Voice And Location In Environmental Education, Alexei Desmarais
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
This paper revolves around the question “where is here?”, a question that has implications for the politics of self and politics of place. Implications for how we think about ourselves in place, in relationality to other perspectives and epistemic positions, and specifically in relationship to specific geographical, socio-political, and historical structures. Attending to place and emplacement can help us to uncover and celebrate the vitality of particular, incomplete knowledge(s). In working to unsettle universal and hegemonic conceptions of how and what we know, this paper employs a polyphonic and queer logic, which is to say that the many voices and …
Phylogenetics: A Catalyst For A Biophilic Revolution?, Holli N. Watne
Phylogenetics: A Catalyst For A Biophilic Revolution?, Holli N. Watne
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
A biology framework in Environmental Education can inspire biophilia, the love for the complex array of lifeforms on this planet, in students. In this paper, a simple, multi-scaled phylogenetic tree is presented to express such a framework. When viewing life from a framework such as a phylogenetic tree, the human species is seen as just one part of something vastly complex. This view is contrasted to another framework, more anthropocentric in nature, that seems to be more typical in the developed world. Challenging students to view the role of humanity from a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, framework can lead to …
How To Make An Orchestra Alone: A Critical, Experiential Performance Of Ben’S Year In The Mountains, Ben Kusserow
How To Make An Orchestra Alone: A Critical, Experiential Performance Of Ben’S Year In The Mountains, Ben Kusserow
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
This paper shares the hour-performance traveled from the boat house to the middle of the dam on Diablo Lake, WA. There were two distinct activities in each of the four sections. In each section, Ben shared a story from his year in the NCI Graduate Residency program. He then engaged the audience in some critical thought leading into an activity.
Eating Is An Act Of Learning; Eating Is An Act Of Love, Annah Young
Eating Is An Act Of Learning; Eating Is An Act Of Love, Annah Young
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Environmental Education should exist to address injustices in our world, be they social or environmental since the two rarely exist isolated from each other. Environmental Education should exist to unite people, transcend social boundaries, and bring about solutions to shared socioecological challenges. One of the most pertinent socioecological challenges we face today revolves around our food system. We now have an opportunity to change our education system to reflect the current reality of our food system and reimagine a future where all communities have control over the cultivation, production, and distribution of the food on their plates all while treading …
Education For Wholeness: La Womb De Mi Labor, Ginna Malley Campos
Education For Wholeness: La Womb De Mi Labor, Ginna Malley Campos
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Conventional education teaches and reinforces disconnection from ourselves and disengagement from the world. This presentation considers power, privilege, and the act of listening in educational settings and identity development and explores the importance of holistic education for transforming self and society. Through a personal journey that interweaves the complexities of colonial history, heritage and identity with spirit and healing; we invite all to engage inwardly with the suffering implicit in our existence in order to reconnect with the wholeness that enables our shared journey towards healing.
Inextricably Season 1, Episode 1: “Now What”, Adam F. Bates
Inextricably Season 1, Episode 1: “Now What”, Adam F. Bates
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
This is the transcript of a fictional weekly podcast called Inextricably, performed in front of a live audience at North Cascades Institute’s Environmental Learning Center in North Cascades National Park in March 2017. The author outlines and examines the personal themes and seasonal cycles throughout an entire graduate school residency, a Master’s of Education in Environmental Education offered in partnership with North Cascades Institute and Western Washington University. A search for the purpose in the way information and knowledge is transferred, a sense of disillusionment with traditional models of education, and the unexpected learning outcomes of this experience are the …
Uniting Passions: The Transformation Of A Teacher, Emily Baronich
Uniting Passions: The Transformation Of A Teacher, Emily Baronich
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
This presentation explores the formulation and evolution of an educator through the lens of mathematics, formal and informal settings. It leans on personal experiences, self- evaluation, and the process of developing a dream school that exemplifies environmental and mathematical learning.
Holding The Center: Story And Community, Emma E. Ewert
Holding The Center: Story And Community, Emma E. Ewert
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Stories are fundamental to our experience of being human. They help us to make meaning from our lives, and to construct and understand our identities. Although we sometimes struggle to define story in words, we easily recognize when a story is present. This capstone does not present an ultimate definition of story, but rather a series of ideas and patterns that are most commonly found in story. In particular, it says that most stories contain protagonists who overcome a series of obstacles to achieve a final goal and find a meaning or moral behind a series of events. Through examining …
The Making Of A Naturalist, Joseph Loviska
The Making Of A Naturalist, Joseph Loviska
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
The purpose of this work is for you, the reader, to be sufficiently informed, entertained, and inspired that you find yourself reaching your own hands down into your soul, or your soil-filled gut, or the soles of your feet or your over-stuffed brain – wherever it is that you keep the meaning of your life — and press with your thumbs to make room for a new seed. Through story and poetry, I will use my own life as a site of inquiry to illuminate the educational structure and purpose of ideas around ecological identity. I see that dominant Western …
Being, Fxminist, Aly Gourd
Being, Fxminist, Aly Gourd
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
This presentation explores various expressions of voice, arguing the importance of defining and implementing a feminist [fxminist] perspective to inform a cultural shift in how we work to communicate truthfully, resist fear and violent oppressive systems, and find hope. A variation of the following was presented as a capstone presentation in March 2017 and has been reconstructed to reflect aspects of the speech and activities as well as an analytical orientation to the capstone.
Querencia, Sasha Savoian
Querencia, Sasha Savoian
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Querencia, where I am are strong from. Querencia, translated literally from Spanish to mean “beloved place”. It informs identity, it gives us a place of belonging in the world, and it roots us to a particular memory experienced through landscape. It is as broad as it is narrow, but it inextricably links us to a literal or metaphorical landscape we call home. Querencia is a place where we know exactly who we are. It is often a physical location, a landscape, but it may also be a movement of music, a perfect wooden chair, a lyrical linking of words in …
Faith And Environmentalism: A Personal Reflection, Jessica T. Davis
Faith And Environmentalism: A Personal Reflection, Jessica T. Davis
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
This paper was presented as a culminating capstone project at North Cascades Institute as required by Western Washington University’s M.Ed. program in Environmental Education. Guided by seven themes, this paper seeks to demonstrate the connection between Faith and the environment. The seven connections explored include the following: prayer and meditation, peace, food consumption, seasons, material consumption, taking care, and fellowship. While environmentally responsible decisions may not necessarily be a top priority for all people of Faith, religious beliefs and Spirituality may influence some to develop a deeper connection to the environment. Although this paper is a personal reflection, focused on …
Truth Grounding Education, Zachary Lundgren
Truth Grounding Education, Zachary Lundgren
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
The following is a transcript of an oral presentation delivered at the Environmental Learning Center in Diablo, Washington in March of 2017. It explores wisdom shared by personal relations to the author that relate to education and education systems. It takes a critical stance on education systems and celebrates learning as a fundamental human act.
Braiding Identities In Nature Through Preschool, Hannah E. Newell
Braiding Identities In Nature Through Preschool, Hannah E. Newell
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Preschool is an age when many things are yet to be discovered. This capstone presentation engages the public in what free play in nature is like. Often as adults, we lose our ability to think with our imagination first. Preschool aged children can lose this ability as well if they are not allowed the time to explore freely. More importantly, they can lose the opportunity to develop a sense of place making it less likely that they will feel connected to nature. It is also pertinent that children of this age are introduced to the many differences and similarities that …
The Greater Unconformity, Emily Ford
The Greater Unconformity, Emily Ford
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
In recent light of sexual harassment cases going unaddressed at Grand Canyon National Park and other public lands, there is a need to call out the persistent social, political, and economic structures that allow such acts to occur and go undocumented and unaddressed. A thorough explanation of geologic unconformities, especially the Great Unconformity in the Grand Canyon, is used as a seamless metaphor for a lack of space for women in the outdoors. This graduate capstone presentation includes an exploration of the gender binary, feminism, the geology of the Grand Canyon, the nature of unconformities, intersectionality, and ecofeminism. In conclusion, …
Dobrodošli: Sensitivity In Learning And Ee, Rachel A. Gugich
Dobrodošli: Sensitivity In Learning And Ee, Rachel A. Gugich
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Rachel Anne Gugich defines herself as a superhero. In this speech, Rachel described how being an introvert gives her a “superhuman sensitivity” to her surroundings and work. She hopes to continuously create educational opportunities where students can each bring their own powers for the betterment of learning.
Not My Story: Honoring Diversity Through Multicultural Environmental Education, Kelly M. Sleight
Not My Story: Honoring Diversity Through Multicultural Environmental Education, Kelly M. Sleight
Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays
Kelly Marie Sleight’s presentation had us participants sitting at tables filled with crafting supplies. While some of us started to paint, knit and mold Kelly explained that Multicultural Environmental Education seeks to make an atmosphere where every student can succeed. One of her largest challenges in class is the need for constant hand movement. Without that, she cannot focus. Her personal solution is to knit. Kelly sees the marriage between multicultural and environmental education having students of various backgrounds engaged in many different and unique ways.