Land_Place Based Ed Rough Draft - Aryana Jones

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Running head: Land-Based Education Jones 1 Land-Based Education Aryana Jones Northern Arizona University October 5, 2023

Land-Based Education Jones 2 Land-Based Education To many, land-based education is a foreign term; it’s not something that is widely practiced or discussed. Although its prevalence in today’s modern society is miniscule, the impacts this educational ideology has is immense. Essentially, land-based education is an approach to instruction that focuses on a deep and holistic connection with the natural world. Unlike conventional classrooms, land-based education utilizes the environment surrounding it as its classroom. The main classroom resource within these practices are simple: the land. Knowledge is gained through engagements that take place within the environment and nature the students are immersed within. Not only does land-based education teach through the utilization of the environment, but also those who dwelled on it prior. It highly emphasizes the importance of indigenous and traditional ideologies. It may seem hard to incorporate these strategies and methods within a conventional classroom, however, simply a shift in perspective or teaching approach may help align strategies with those of land-based education. For instance, educators can begin to research and understand the land and environment in which they teach, recognizing who owned and utilized the land well before western ideologies took hold. Educating oneself on what land-based education is and then reflecting on your own practices is a small step in the right direction. Educators may also delve into their own, as well as their students’, cultures, backgrounds, and values as a means to get a deeper understanding of the community they coexist in. Taking the time to understand what land-based education is has many benefits that provide rewards for the educators and their students. Thus, land-based education is incredibly important to understand. It allows students and educators to be more culturally aware of those around them and those that lived before them. It teaches students to think more critically about the world

Land-Based Education Jones 3 around them. Land-based education preserves culture, creates a sense of community, offers a heightened sense of sustainability, the benefits are endless making land-based education so important to the ever-changing world that is lived upon. “Learning from the land: Indigenous land based pedagogy and decolonization”, an article by four Canadian authors, explores the ins and outs of land-based education and what it means to implement it. The article defines land-based education as a reciprocal relationship with oneself and the land which aims to keep indigenous cultures alive (Wildcat, McDonald, Irlbacher-Fox, Coulthard, 2014). As the years grow on, indigenous cultures are dwindling and students are being educated on them less and less, land-based education is essentially rewriting the erasure that has taken place of these cultures and practices. Land-based pedagogy prevents these groups of people and their culture from dying by educating students in similar ways that these people educated their own. By doing so, educators and students are retelling their stories and acknowledging who dwelled on this land previous to them. Another article, “Land as teacher: understanding Indigenous land-based education”, provides a deep explanation of what land-based education is and how powerful of a tool it can be. It explains how this pedagogy also “preserves culture, language and philosophy, and addresses the ramifications of colonization” (UNESCO, 2021, pg 2). By actively taking part in land-based education, educators are working against colonization. It allows stories to be told from indigenous peoples that may not be told otherwise. Not only does it give a voice to those who are not often heard, it also keeps their language and philosophy alive because teaching it passes it onto the next generation and hopefully that generation will do the same, another way that land-based education follows indigenous principles of the passing of knowledge from generation to generation. These stories

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Land-Based Education Jones 4 are passed down through language, which is often forgotten as one of the most powerful tools of knowledge. With that being said, these languages and stories are regionally based (UNESCO, 2021). With each region comes different stories and philosophies, thus, land-based learning could look different in each region, but with the same overarching idea. If regionality and colonization are taken into account, if these people are removed from their land, so is their voice and their stories. Land-based education works hard to keep these stories and languages alive by teaching that aligns with these ideologies. Not only does this pedagogy serve as a preservation of culture, it also serves to preserve the natural world that is lived upon. It serves to protect the land from industrialization and respect it as it respects human life (McDonald, 2023). In McDonald’s special report, she goes on to emphasize how environmental stewardship is a huge part surrounding land-based education. She explains how it offers a sense of responsibility for caring for the natural world because it nourishes and provides everything to sustain life (McDonald, 2023). Through the focus of land, it encourages the ideology of interconnectedness that all beings have. To teach in a land-based way is to teach future children an understanding of what once was and a respect to that. It instills a form of empathy and respect for one another that fosters reconciliation between differences. In all, land-based education is extremely different from the ways in which students are educated, but it provides many benefits that may even outweigh those of modern pedagogy. More locally, Harris Elementary is located on Gilbert and Baseline which is in boundary with the Gilbert Public Schools District. Harris Elementary is one of only a handful of full Title I schools, meaning that more than 40% of its student population come from low-income households allocating more funds for educational purposes and resources within this school.

Land-Based Education Jones 5 Harris Elementary is located within a lower socio-economic region of Gilbert, which also means that this school has a low retention rate of students from year to year. As the years have gone on, retention status has improved, but there is still a large amount of students who are transient. A majority of students who attend Harris Elementary are of the Hispanic ethnicity, there is also a large amount of African American students who attend this school as well. Harris Elementary is one of two schools within the district that has a SPICE I program. SPICE I is a program that offers a self-contained classroom for students who are on the autism spectrum. It allows these students access to resources and support that benefit their learning. In terms of land-based education, there is no trace of it within Harris Elementary. From an administrative or district standpoint, it would be hard to fully convert this school into land-based pedagogy without the approval of current students or the district. This school also works hard to retain students and highly focuses on doing so to ensure that these transient students get the education they deserve. Another plausible explanation for the absence of land-based learning within Harris could be as simple as not being aware of what land-based education exactly is. All of these reasons of course have solutions that would provide an opportunity to begin implementing land-based learning even on a small scale. As previously mentioned, even acknowledging who owned the land and the practices they did aligns with land-based learning. If teachers within this school shifted social studies curriculum to ideologies based on land-based learning that dealt with the indigenous groups that once resided in this area of Gilbert, they too would be aligned with land-based education. Shifting the curriculum to educating on indigenous peoples who lived here prior could go far beyond just that, utilizing children’s books or other modes of literature that regard indigenous practices and philosophy to educate these students would also aid to the presence of

Land-Based Education Jones 6 land-based learning. It would allow students to understand the land in which they go to school and what it was before the school was ever built, or maybe it would give them a sense of connection to the land their own home is built on and how indigenous peoples lived on this land as well. Maybe even some students would find that their own family’s culture is one of which dwelled on the same land they are. This small switch in instruction would bring an awareness of this pedagogy, which would hopefully encourage students to crave more education that’s based around it. It could encourage parents to go to the district and ask to implement more of this pedagogy within the school. The only difficulties land-based education could have is that it would be expensive to implement within an established school or to get a majority of the parents on board with a huge switch in the ways that their students are instructed. Despite the difficulties and challenges that could occur with land-based education, it provides a richer, more engaging way of teaching that extends far beyond the classroom walls.

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Land-Based Education Jones 7 References Land as teacher: Understanding indigenous land-based education . Canadian Commission for UNESCO. (n.d.). https://en.ccunesco.ca/idealab/indigenous-land-based-education McDonald, M. (2023, January 31). Indigenous land-based education in Theory & Practice: A yellowhead institute special report . Yellowhead Institute. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/land-based-education/ Wildcat, M., Mandee McDonald, Irlbacher-Fox, S., & Coulthard, G. (2014, November 3). Learning from the land: Indigenous land based pedagogy and decolonization .

Land_Place Based Ed Rough Draft - Aryana Jones

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