Climate Action Figures

Season 2, Episode 22: Hilary

• John Whidden • Season 2 • Episode 22

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In this episode of Climate Action Figures, hosts John Whidden and Dr. Hillary Inwood discuss the importance of education in addressing the climate crisis, focusing on initiatives like SCAN at the University of Toronto and ESETE. They highlight practical tips, integrating Indigenous knowledge, and the critical role of art and experiential learning in environmental education.


00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:49 QuickFix of the Week

01:35 Discussion on Fast Fashion

01:56 SCAN and Its Mission

03:07 Role of Education in Climate Action

07:32 ESETE and National Initiatives

10:00 Indigenous Perspectives and Turtle Island

11:22 Accelerate Project and Climate Change Education

17:42 Personal Insights and Inspirations

20:51 Conclusion and Farewell


https://directory.goodonyou.eco/

https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/home/ 

https://eseinfacultiesofed.ca/

https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/scan/about-scan

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Hilary:

Hi, I'm Hilary Inwood, and you're tuning in to Climate Action Figures.

John:

Hello and welcome to Season 2, Episode 22 of Climate Action Figures. My name is John Whidden and this week there will be two of us with too much to talk about. Stand by for Dr. Hilary Inwood. We always love to hear about your QuickFixes, small doable things that can make us all better stewards of the environment. So please send yours into climateactionfigures@gmail.com. That's all one word, climateactionfigures, or any of our social media outlets, and we will use it on a future episode. This week's QuickFix was sent in by Sylvie, if you remember back to episode 13. of Season 1 from Calgary. She says, be aware of what you are buying and what waste will be created by that. And she gave us a wonderful website. you enter the name of a brand and it will tell you their feelings about the sustainability on that brand. The website and this will be in our show notes is directory.goodonyou.eco. we'll put that in the show notes so you can click on it yourself. She says, if you click on the menu, a search option comes up where you can type in the brand you're curious about, and then you can find out how they're doing on the environmental scale. Well, welcome Hilary.

Hilary:

Thank you so much. Thanks, John.

John:

What do you think about that QuickFix today?

Hilary:

I think that's a fantastic idea. We're just starting a new environmental art installation at the place I work and our focus on it is on fast fashion. So really interested to hear about that website and I'll look forward to tapping into it to learn more about some of these fast fashion brands that are causing such harm to the environment.

John:

Yeah, fast fashion is crazy these days with the throwaway aspect, right? Hilary, let's get on the acronym train because we are going to be talking about a bunch of great organizations today, starting with U of T, which would be University of Toronto, OISE, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that is the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,

Hilary:

You are correct.

John:

and under that umbrella falls the Sustainability and Climate Action Network, or SCAN. How am I doing so far?

Hilary:

You're doing great.

John:

The SCAN website says this, Because we are in a climate emergency and we all have very little time to shift to low carbon ways of living, all organizations must actively contribute to a more sustainable future. And then it adds that OISE is uniquely positioned to be a leader in this critical mission. You're the SCAN coordinator. Tell us what excites you most about this initiative and this organization.

Hilary:

Well, we are one of the leading faculties of education in the world at OISE, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at U of T. And, uh, we are really well positioned to influence faculty members, students, our alumni, our community members that we're engaged with to help lead climate action. So we take advantage of that through the sustainability and climate action network, through scan. We truly believe that education is a fundamental way that we're going to address the climate crisis, uh, even though sometimes the. Ways in which we are reducing greenhouse gases and carbon emissions is hard to measure. Education is really central to helping bring about the cultural shifts that are needed to figure out ways to live sustainably on this, on this planet because right now we are not living in sustainable ways.

John:

there's so many aspects of education that can play into this. What do you think is the most important thing that education can offer to this problem?

Hilary:

Well, I certainly what we could offer is the influencing and helping to prepare teachers to teach about the climate crisis and about the poly crisis more generally. And by the poly crisis, I mean the decreasing biodiversity in our world and the increasing pollution. So we have some really wicked problems that we're facing and getting teachers up to speed on these issues and how we can solve them. Start to work with younger people to to address these issues, to help them understand their agency and how important their action is, is a really important role that teachers can play. And one of the things we do at OISE is to help educate teachers, both those at the beginning of their careers, as well as those who are mid career.

John:

I tend to talk with people quite a bit out and around rural and urban, Alberta, about the climate crisis. And I find with older people, sometimes I get this reaction: Oh, well, oil and gas got us here and it's never going away. And I sometimes think, you know what? Carry on. And it's the young people that I want to focus on because first of all, it's, it's more their future than ours now, but also they seem to be more open to these things. Is that part of your reason for being so focused on education and environmental issues?

Hilary:

Well, absolutely. And I think we shouldn't write off the seniors yet. I know a lot of really active seniors who are doing fantastic work in the climate space. But I would say that you're right. Youth have brought a greater level of awareness. Now, I think that's in part because they're tapped into multiple media sources that have really been bringing the realities of the climate crisis to the forefront. And they are absolutely realistic about how this is going to impact their future. we didn't grow up, you and I, with the same kind of existential threats. We had other ones, nuclear war was looming over our heads in our younger years. and that one hasn't really gone away. But youth are seeing the impacts on their own communities. So this is not something that's now, you know, You know, out in the future that's going to happen sometime in the future. It's happening now and youth are really aware of that. Um, and I think they're, they're demanding more from the adults in their lives that they want them to help fix the mess that they helped to create.

John:

Yeah, absolutely. And thank you very much for pointing out about the older generations, because I was certainly not writing them off, but it could have come across that way. I know so many, uh, wonderful elders, seniors middle aged people who are doing incredible things. Actually, a number of them listen to the show and watch the show. So we better be careful not to lose the audience here, right?

Hilary:

definitely

John:

Now Hilary, research is clearly central to scan. Why is that so important to you?

Hilary:

the whole field of environmental and sustainability education and climate change education in the grand scheme of things is still a, an emerging field of practice. And we need to know that there is an evidence basis for it. Uh, I've seen lots of great practice that's happening in classrooms, but I've seen some that needs a lot of improvement. And so when we take time to study both the experiences of our learners while they're engaged in something like climate change education, when we take time to the impacts of that, whether it's with teachers or with students, then we start to develop an evidence based approach. Um, again, the field is still really new, so there's a huge need for more research in education at all levels of how we go about shifting people's understandings to bring about not just attitudinal change. Oh, yes, the environment's important. Oh, yes, I should recycle, but actually shifting that to behavioral change. So moving from just, oh, yes, I understand about the problems to, okay, now I'm going to take some action to help address the problems.

John:

Moving on to another organization that is dear to your heart. ESETE is the Environmental and Sustainability Education in Teacher Education. Did I say that right?

Hilary:

You did, yeah.

John:

Okay.

Hilary:

it's, a mouthful, I know.

John:

it's dedicated to advancing and supporting the development of high quality environmental learning in teacher education. So this is going to be more broadly focused than SCAN. Is that correct?

Hilary:

Yeah, so SCAN works within the purview of the place that I work, at OISE, at the University of Toronto, and it works closely in partnership with the work that we do in climate change education with the Toronto District School Board and their sustainability office. They have amazing programs that they run within their school board, and we partner with them to help their teachers professional learning in this area. The work of ESETE, that is a national network, and it really tries to start and maintain a national conversation about how important this work is in faculties of education. So we engage with lots of teacher educators like myself, but in faculties of education across the country. We also engage with teacher candidates and we engage with K to 12 teachers as well. So we've really tried to broaden our reach with the ESETE network to better embed environmental and sustainability education into teacher education programs across the country.

John:

I'm curious to know, Hilary, as you look across the country, do you find that there are certain areas that are already on board more readily, and other ones that are more reticent, or are there great examples everywhere across Canada?

Hilary:

There are no doubt geographic differences across the country but that's not surprising when it comes to teacher education because the biggest number of teacher education programs are in Ontario and then also in British Columbia. So, um, in terms of the teacher education piece, yes, there are regional differences, no doubt, but I would say that there's pockets of really promising practices that are happening across the country, which is exciting. We were just talking yesterday in a national meeting. About some of the work being done on the East Coast, for example. Uh, my colleagues at Cape Breton University do some great work in their teacher education program, but so do my colleagues in University of British Columbia. So I, I'm really heartened by seeing what's happening by, by raising these conversations across the country. And when we learn from each other, how quickly things are changing, it's, it's really exciting to see.

John:

As I read through the information on SCAN, I noticed that there's definitely an Indigenous component. How are Indigenous ways of seeing the world important?

Hilary:

Oh, you know what? they're foundational and especially here in Canada and on Turtle Island. We know that Indigenous peoples generally have figured out ways to live sustainably on Turtle Island. We need to learn from those practices and those theoretical and philosophical ways of knowing and being. So we try our best to center Indigenous voices whenever we can. We have elders and knowledge keepers who work with us. They join us for Conferences for camps, they join us for webinars. We're always looking for ways to center their voices in this work because it's so incredibly important.

John:

someone was actually asking me this not that long ago. What is Turtle Island exactly? So I was explaining that to them. I think a lot of our listeners will know that, but do you want to share with those who don't what, What Turtle Island is?

Hilary:

Turtle Island is the First Nations way of referring to North America, and so Canada is part of that because of Indigenous histories existed long before the boundaries between Canada and the U. S., those boundaries aren't always referred to in the same way by Indigenous knowledge keepers and elders. So they, they look at the continents instead and refer to it as Turtle Island.

John:

Now, we need to talk about another thing that is very cool that you're invested in, and that's Accelerate. But before I ask you about it, we need to look at this logo. Have a look at this, this is spectacular. It's mesmerizing. Who designed this beautiful logo?

Hilary:

Well, I have to tell you that we actually drew inspiration from one of the climate maps from the Climate Reanalyzer website, and they have a really amazing set of maps. Now, we didn't want to just copy one of the maps, so we had one of the doctoral students who was working with the Accelerating Climate Change Education and Teacher Education Project, Tashya Orasi, who is an artist and she did some manipulation of it and came up with this particular logo. So thanks to Tashya for that.

John:

That really is beautiful. Now this project supports climate change education in pre service and in service teacher education across Canada. Tell us about how that differs from your other projects.

Hilary:

Yeah, so the other national project, the ESETE Network, was founded earlier in 2017 and it started provincially in Ontario and then spread across the country. This project has focused, just very specifically in climate change education, which is one tradition in a broader series of traditions that make up environmental and sustainability ed., so it's got a greater focus to it. We've been really lucky to have funding from the environment, Climate Change Canada group as part of the federal government. They've been incredibly generous with us and with a number of different groups across the country to really help to stimulate conversations, programming, uh, and research around climate change education. I work with my colleague Dr. Ellen Field on this project Lakehead University, which is the sponsoring organization. We work with a whole team of people. to help bring different types of programming focused on climate change education across the country. And we've been relying really heavily on digital technologies to do that.

John:

Now one more website we need to share and these will all be in today's show notes. Your own personal website. If anyone would like to check out Hilary's writing, artwork; you won't be surprised after what we've said to find out that there's a lot of artwork in your background. Community art projects, student artwork, research, resources, links. What have I missed?

Hilary:

That's a pretty good summary. a researcher, an educational researcher. I'm a teacher educator, but I'm also an artist and I take my responsibilities to my community pretty seriously. So over the years, we've been working on, I think we're up to about 15 community environmental art installations at OISE that can be found in the building, and I've got links to that on my own website. I I've got to admit though, that. With everything else on the go these days, my own personal art making is what doesn't get enough attention. I've done enough time, so that will come one day when I retire. Not quite yet though.

John:

Now we keep connecting to art. How is art important to the future of our environment?

Hilary:

I hear this with increasing frequency in environmental education fields that the arts are incredibly important to that that way of getting people to shift their attitudes towards environment, but also their, behaviors. So we know that in the past, environmental education was focused really heavily on our cognitive domain, trying to provide us with information that hopefully would change our behaviors, but we found that that didn't work well and it didn't work well, I think, because it didn't touch us individually It didn't touch our emotions. It didn't touch what's called our affective domain well, I think the arts do that really, really well, whether it's through music, whether it's through drama or dance, whether it's through visual arts, they have a way of touching us to our core as humans and really helping to encourage that shift between attitudinal change and behavioral change. my background is in visual arts education. I started there which is very different from any of my colleagues who started in science education. So I, I bring a slightly different perspective, no doubt, to the field of environmental and sustainability ed. And I really firmly believe in the power of the affective domain to bring about personal change and transformation.

John:

Right, we always used to say right brain, left brain, which is not quite correct, but it's that sense of it's a different thing you bring to the table in that, in that way, right?

Hilary:

we often talk about the head, the heart, and the hands, that we can reach people's head, the cognitive domain, with information, but it doesn't necessarily change them as humans. The minute that you bring in head based learning, cognitive dimension alongside the affective dimension, the heart, and then marry that with experiential learning, learning that activates your physical sense, then you've got learning that really sticks with people,

John:

you're telling us about all these amazing things that you're doing. Do you ever have time to yourself? You said you don't have much time for your artwork. Do you somehow make time?

Hilary:

family is super important to me, I'm a mom of two amazing young men. I have a number of siblings and a wonderful partner. I've got to admit that I try to privilege time with them, uh, with my, my parents as well. So, so family is really important, but also getting out into nature. One of the ways I stay. Sane doing this work, because it is, it's heavy work to be done, is to get out into nature, whether that's walking or hiking or biking, all of those are important to me to help maintain positive mental health and a sense of optimism.

John:

So true. What's your secret to making that happen? A lot of people say, yeah, I need to do that, but then it doesn't happen. How do you make sure it happens?

Hilary:

You know what? I almost have to. There's only so many hours you can sit at the computer each day doing this work. One of the ways I've ensured it in my teaching schedule, though, is increasingly I'm moving my courses outside. I work in the heart of a very busy urban environment, and helping my students learn how important it is to use city as classroom has been an important part of that, and introducing them. to where we can find natural spaces to work with our learners in, in a very busy urban environment has been a real blessing as well. I think all of us appreciate those moments when we're connecting with the natural world even if it's in downtown Toronto. That's so important to helping us maintain an even keel.

John:

Wow. A university educator who practices what she preaches.

Hilary:

Try to.

John:

I'd like to ask you if you don't mind, Hilary, what the roots are of this amazing journey that you're on. What initially got you involved in climate action?

Hilary:

Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, I know for sure I can track it back to my mom, in part, who was an avid gardener her whole life. And my dad, who used to take us as children, used to take us to go and pick up garbage wherever we were, whether that was on the concessions near our home in London, Ontario, or whether that was on beaches when we went on vacation. He was always the one out modeling for us. to leave the places that we were in slightly better ways. So between both of the influence of both my parents, I think that got me going on a certain path. I'm really lucky to have had educators along the way that, that also sort of fanned those flames. A math teacher who took 37 of us into Algonquin Park on a canoe trip in our final year of high school. Those kinds of people are hugely influential in my life and have, uh, helped me to understand the value. Of this work and how important it is that we leave the earth in a, in a state that future generations can continue to live sustainably and to enjoy it.

John:

Wonderful points. I know as a teacher, anytime I'm stuck, I go back to what my teachers did. And that's so important to have those great role models to go back on. And not just in teaching, in life. You know, if you're walking around and you see garbage, you pick it up because, hey, that's what I was taught when I was young. So, so important for us to be great role models. you have done and are doing so much. You could choose from so many things. What have you picked today for your climate action?

Hilary:

one of my preferred climate actions is educational gardening, is helping my students and hopefully then their students learn about the power of bringing native plants into our educational spaces. I'm a huge fan of bringing the power of nature inside buildings. We just put up a new really large mural of our educational garden inside our building at OISE on the fifth floor. But I'm also a huge fan of tending those. Spaces of the Natural World, helping people understand, as I've learned from Indigenous Knowledge Keepers like Robyn Wall Kimmerer, that that plants and trees are kin, there are relations and they deserve our attention and they have so much to teach us.

John:

Right. Shout out to Braiding Sweetgrass. In case you have not yet read that book, get on it.

Hilary:

Absolutely.

John:

That's such an interesting concept, bringing nature in. You know, we often think what we just said, we need to get out into nature more, which is pretty obvious to most people, I think, but bringing nature into us, you see plants in the background. Someone said, you shouldn't have plants in your house. It makes it too humid. I'm like, forget that. I need to have plants in my house. You know, it brings that nature to us. Last question today for you. What gives you hope?

Hilary:

Working with the young people that I have the privilege of teaching and learning alongside in my courses and in our teacher education programs at OISE. They are smart, they're capable, they're enthusiastic and energetic, and I know that as they move forward in their teaching careers that they're going to make a huge difference on the wicked problems of our world. So I get hope from young people.

John:

Well, that is essentially why we had you on the program today. Usually we have youth, and I think you're very youthful. I like to think I am too, but we had you on because we heard about this amazing work that you're doing with youth, and we thought, oh yeah, we can stretch to that, because this is very cool to hear what you're doing. So thank you very much, amidst all the busyness in your life, for taking time to join us today, Hilary.

Hilary:

Thank you, John.

John:

And thank you, dear listener. We will be back again next week. Same time, same place to hear from another climate action figure. Until then,

Hilary:

Go figures!