PEDAGOGICAL PRACTISE

BEE LAND: Excursions into the Culture of Bees, University of Guelph (2017 - 2022)

Bee Land is an interdisciplinary seminar course for first year university students that I designed and taught at the University of Guelph. In 2017 I co-taught with Karen Houle.

Bee Land explored the question: what can we learn from bees about how to BE in the world in a time of ecological and political instability? This course explores the culture of bees through the lenses of art, philosophy, dance, ecology, Indigenous knowledge, science, poetry, gastronomy, and hands-on encounters with wild and domestic bees. Students engaged in field and arts-based research, looked at intersecting and divergent ideas about interspecies relationships and the systemic roots of ecological decline, and explore inter-species activism and advocacy.

OWLS AND OWLETS, Trillium Waldorf School (2016 - 2021)

Owls and Owlets is a program I ran with educator Danielle Gehl for young children and their caregivers hosted in the forest and farmlands of Fourfold farm in Ennotsville.

‘Owls” provided an opportunity to gather, connect with the natural world and build supportive care-giving community.

GARDEN QUILT, Ontario Arts Council Artists in the Schools (2010 - 2016)

I designed and facilitated programs in Ontario schools exploring pollination biology, natural history and gardening through the arts. Students learned about wild pollinator species and their connections with plants and ecologies. Though hands-on workshops, students made hand sewn field guides with drawings, seed paper and sewn sculptures and created pollinator gardens on their school grounds.

Garden Quilt was generously funded by the Ontario Arts Council.