Acknowledging

Many parts of this book have been written in the temperate rain forest of Canada’s West Coast, amid their soggy and vibrant communities. Specifically, many pages have been crafted alongside the Alouette River itself and surrounded by Water Strider, Step Moss, Sword Fern, Pacific Wren, Rough-Skinned Newt, Red Huckleberry, Douglas Squirrel, Skunk Cabbage, Red Cedar, and Chum Salmon, to name just a few. Many more pages have been conceptualized and penned in the presence of Harbor Seals, Pink Salmon, Glaucus Gull, Bald Eagle, Purple Sea Star, Gooseneck Barnacle, Bull Kelp, Hermit Crab, and the generous Pacific Ocean. These places and beings brought us inspiration, gifted us with ideas, and made possible other ways of knowing and understanding our responsibilities to writing this book. They are our co-teachers and collaborators throughout this book.

In similar ways, this book has also been created in companionship and collaboration with Cypress, Golden Ears, and Steele Mountains, Hardangerjøkulen Glacier; in the shadows of Red Cedar, Hemlock, Broad-leaf Maple, Red Alder, Douglas Fir, and Sitka Spruce; and amid the gifts of Sword Fern, Deer Fern, Lady Fern, Licorice Fern along with Salmon Berry, Black Berry, Huckle Berry, and Blue Berry. We are grateful for the microworld teachings of mosses, lichens, and fungi and to all the twittering, strutting, slipping, and hopping feathered beings and amphibians and reptiles—too vast in number to name. We are grateful to all the four-legged and furry ones who have left tracks, scents, inspirations, and lessons for us along the way. And we express gratitude to all those whirring, fluttering, plodding, scurrying, sliding smaller beings of earth and sky and the stones, soil, Sun, and weather that hold and protect them and us along the way.

Our engagement with these beings has occurred on the territory of Indigenous Nations, in particular the Coast Salish and we are so thankful to the Elders, teachers, and community members who have spent time with the students and patiently listened as we fumbled around in search of moments of understanding. Without their stewardship, guidance, and incredible generosity in terms of patience, shared story, time spent with learners the work and these lands in fact would be the lesser for all. As authors, we write from our perspectives as white settler scholars and educators trying to live in better relationship with the unsurrendered and traditional territories of Shishalh, Katzie, Kwantlen, and Snuneymux peoples in the place colonially known as British Columbia, Canada. We recognize the complexities of relating to land in this role and our ethical responsibility to disrupt and unlearn colonial ways of being and teaching. Through our sharing of who we are, we establish the parameters of what we may know and what we may not know. We also acknowledge our limitations in understanding these territories, Indigenous Knowledge systems, and ourselves in the context of this work—work in which we strive to recognize, hear, and uplift the voices of Indigenous peoples, the land, and the myriad beings that make up the larger more-than-human world. We acknowledge that we have a responsibility to nurture sacred, reciprocal relationships with the land and its inhabitants, to learn about what it means to be a good relative to all beings, and to educate in ways that foster mutually beneficial flourishing for all.

We are indebted to that amazing, humble, openminded, curious, and courageous group of founders—Jodi MacQuarrie, Clayton Maitland, Mark Fettes—and researchers—John Telford, Laura Piersol, Mike Datura, Michael Caulkins, Veronica Hotton, Chris Beeman, Yi Chien Jade Ho, Naomi Steinberg, Tom Green, Chloe Humphreys, Stephanie Block, Gillian Judson, Lara Harvester, Anya Chase, Carleigh Smart, and others. We appreciate your amazing energy, teacher talent, and all-around brilliance and are so happy you are in the world doing the work you do.

We thank all the teachers and principals (especially Clayton, Sally, and Randy) who joined and continue to join the ecologizing journey. Your willingness to literally “step outside the box” of public school; to decenter yourselves and allow space for nature, children, and other humans to share space as teacher; to continue to strive for rich learning and align it with the demands of public education and a culture in crisis; and to be humble enough to continue to change the work even when the direction is unclear is inspiring. We hope this book does justice to everything you do and inspires others to take it up and take it further.

We also thank all those who surround any school. This includes the superintendents, trustees, union leaders, and employees of the ministry of education. Your role in providing space, in flexing the assumed rules, in allowing nascent ecologizing projects to set down roots and build strength cannot be understated. The process of change cannot occur without you. Our appreciation also extends to those parents and guardians who support, cherish, feed, clothe, and house all the learners we have had the opportunity to work and learn with. Your willingness to take the risk with your most precious of loved ones and enter into an untried educational program is something that still touches us most deeply. But we are also grateful for your willingness to step in when needed, to start visiting your children’s and grandchildren’s special places, to trust the place and process, and even to camp out the night before school starts.

Our gratitude extends to all the community members, organizations, local groups, and neighbors who have supported this long process. Many community members (especially the Alouette River Management Society, the CEED Centre Society, the District of Maple Ridge, Big Feast, Blue Mountain Woodlot, Malcolm Knapp Research Forest) have offered resources, expertise, places to meet, helped build greenhouses, honored highway crossings as classes headed for the park, helped make outdoor spaces safe for learning to those who stepped in to teach about birds, local medicines, and the stories of the land and on to those who just expressed interest and came out to support the learners and the projects and huge thanks and let us keep talking.

Importantly, several individuals worked with, cared for, and supported us, during the writing process by staring at pages and offering thoughtful and essential feedback. Stan Rushworth, Jesse Haber, Bob Jickling, and Donna Grand read various versions and portions of the manuscript and offered important and even challenging feedback. We would be deeply amiss if we did not thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for taking the risk to support the research end (remember, these are publicly funded schools) of these projects for without that support it would have been impossible to make this book happen. A great many others—human and more-than-human—have contributed directly, indirectly, fleetingly, flittingly, quietly, and humbly to this work. We hope you know who you are, feel your impact on these pages, and hear our thanks.

Sean adds: I have deep gratitude to my parents and son, Quinn, for indulging my crazy need to be “on-trail” all the time, for without a rich home to return to the adventure changes quite a lot. And my forever thanks and love to Jane, for being the best human teacher I have ever seen and for sharing my deep love of the natural world. I would not be who I am if you weren’t here and as any who know us will attest, I am definitely the better for it. Estella adds: Thank you to my first teachers—my mother and father, from whom I learned the joy of curiosity, the pleasure of spending time in the trees and by the tidepools, and the importance of respecting the furry, winged, and wiggling creatures of the world. And thank you to my children, Maxwell and Celia, whose deep and protective love of the natural world inspires the work I do.