This three-part virtual workshop series will expose and engage early childhood educators, early years teachers, researchers, policymakers, instructors, professors, students, and others interested in creating conditions for sustainable pedagogies and practices in early childhood settings. The purpose of the series is to situate early childhood education as an important player in doing sustainable work, challenging the notion that climate action is too complex for young children. We aim to create a virtual meeting place where we can begin transforming our relations with the environment.
*A letter attesting to your participation will be provided after each session.
Learn More about this Series
The title of the series reflects a shift away from the ‘crisis narratives’ that often dominate discussions about children’s lives, toward an understanding of sustainability as an ongoing, dynamic process. Unlike the typical outcome-focused, goal-driven frameworks promoted by institutions and media, this series introduces sustainability as embedded in daily pedagogical practices, questions, and even moments of failure.
Each session will begin with a presentation or story about a sustainability project in an early childhood setting, followed by a facilitated, interactive workshop. Participants will have the opportunity to explore how they might incorporate sustainability work into their own contexts. The series highlights the potential roles that educators and children– as well as families and communities – can take to participate in sustainability projects, cultivating the collective wisdom necessary in the pursuit of a more sustainable future.
Series Organizers
Dr. Iris Berger
Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Language and Literacy,
Educational Leadership Stream, ECE Programs,
Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia
Dr. Iris Berger has been involved in the field of early childhood education as a classroom teacher, researcher, community organizer, policy consultant, and university lecturer since the mid 1990s. Her passion for early childhood education as a distinct and ever-engaging realm of/for research-pedagogy began when she worked with two, three and four-year-olds in the model classrooms at the UBC Child Study Centre under the auspices of the Faculty of Education.
Nancy van Groll
PhD Student, Department of Language and Literacy
Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia
Instructor, School of Education and Childhood Studies, Capilano University
Nancy has been involved in the field of early childhood studies as an early childhood educator, instructor, researcher, community organizer and advocate. Through her connections and experiences, she has developed a familiarity with the intricate tensions, strengths and areas of concern that characterize the landscape of early childhood care and education systems in Canada. She is particularly interested in climate-responsive pedagogies, and the ways children and educators collectively respond to ecological precarity in everyday practice.
Session 2 – (re)Turning to Garbage Pedagogies: What Might Garbage Provoke and (re)Produce in Early Childhood Settings?
Saturday, April 12 | 9:30 – 11:30 am | Virtual Online
In the first hour of the second workshop in the series ‘Doing Sustainable Pedagogies,’ Amy Young, an early childhood educator, and Erin Bowman, a pedagogical leader, return to a story that began as an encounter with garbage during forest walks with young children. Reflecting on their collaborative pedagogical journeying provoked by children’s responses to garbage, Amy and Erin discuss how their thinking with children, colleagues, families, and “garbage” over many weeks shifted from a desire for stewardship and a romanticized place “cleaning” to recognizing the complexity of how garbage is entangled with lives both inside and outside of the classroom. This complexity surfaced questions such as How might we respond to waste or garbage differently? Who bears the responsibility for waste? How do consumerism and consumption play in all of this?
In the second hour of the workshop, participants will be invited into an interactive photography experience that sets out to revisit relations with waste and place, led by Dr. Alex Berry.
Erin Bowman
BFA ECE IT
Erin worked as an early childhood and infant toddler educator for over two decades. In her current role as programme manager at UBC Child Care, Erin works as a pedagogical leader, mentoring senior educators, and early childhood/infant toddler educators in their practice with children and families, daily operations and pedagogical intentions. Her interests lay within place-based pedagogies and the belief that children and educators are co-researchers and co-designers of their education, positioning them as change agents within their inherited worlds. In her practice as a pedagogical leader, Erin is guided by questions such as:
- How can these pedagogies transform practices and encourage transformative relations between children, educators and through co-learning in situated place?
- What is possible when educators and children engage in common worlding within early childhood education settings and the places they inhabit?
- How might acts of pausing and noticing alter our attunement to world-making within our inhabited places and spaces?
Amy Young
Senior Educator
UBC Child Care
Amy Young is an educator, storyteller, and active researcher with a passion for sharing the “stories within her” and inspiring others to do the same. With a deep commitment to Early Childhood Education, Amy began her journey at Capilano University in 2006 and has since devoted herself to creating meaningful, collaborative learning experiences. As a Senior Educator at UBC CC, Amy approaches education with creativity and heart, seeing every child as a thinking partner. Children inspire her storytelling, and she believes that every project is an opportunity to weave together the narratives of children, families, fellow educators, and the community. Her long-term, collaborative projects allow for deep exploration, where learning becomes a shared experience, and each participant contributes their unique voice. Amy’s passion for working with children, alongside her belief in the power of storytelling, makes her presentations engaging, thought-provoking, and deeply connected to the human experience. Join her as she shares her journey and invites others to discover the stories they carry within
Deborah Thompson, PhD
Associate Director, Programme Development
UBC Childcare
In her role as Associate Director, Deborah engages with UBC Child Care educators as they consider early years’ philosophies and pedagogies. Deborah has worked in the field of early childhood education for many years, as an educator, a college instructor, a programme manager, and now as an associate director. These experiences have led her to question the dominance of developmental theories within early childhood educational policies and practices. With others in the organization, she works with pedagogical narrations or stories of practice to re-visit and re-consider praxis through other theoretical lenses such as Indigenous perspectives, Common Worlding ideas, and social and ecological justice orientations.
Dr. Alexandra Berry
Assistant Professor
Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary
Alex Berry, PhD, engages with the arts and research-creation toward anti-colonial early childhood pedagogies that respond to times of ecological crises. She is interested in feminist post qualitative methodologies for experimenting with the complexities of 21st century childhoods and for creating pedagogies alongside educators that answer to social and climate injustices.
Session 1 – Interconnected, Abundant, and Dynamic Processes of Sustainable Relationships in Early Childhood Education
Saturday, February 1 | 9:30 – 11:30 am | Virtual Online
Enalyne Point (Indigenous Relations and Engagement Pedagogist, UBC Child Care) and Rachel Lanphear (Senior Educator, UBC Child Care) will share stories that highlight how they centre and advocate for sustainable relationships in their daily practice with young children. Inspired by UBC Child Care’s journey of transformation on the unceded, traditional homelands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm people, presenters will share practices that resist and challenge colonial histories, romanticized views of nature, and extractive or consumptive relationships with land.
A facilitated, interactive workshop, led by Dr. Alex Berry, will follow the presentation. Together, we will rethink sustainability and early childhood education as interconnected, abundant, dynamic processes; opening space for curiosity, unlearning, and reimagining our responsibilities to land, children, and the ecological community. The session invites participants to explore the transformative potential of seeing early childhood education as embedded sustainably within broader ecological systems.
Session Speakers and Contributors:
Rachel Lanphear, MEd, ECE IT SN
Senior Educator, Infant and Toddler Programme
Huckleberry Centre, UBC Childcare
Rachel, who has worked in early childhood education for ten years, learns alongside the children and educators at Huckleberry Daycare. Her philosophy and values are based on holistic care, outdoor-place-based education, and supporting children’s respectful and reciprocal relationships with their peers, educators, community members, and the natural world. In 2023, Rachel completed her Master of Education at the University of British Columbia learning from alternative narratives such as a Common Worlds framework and Indigenous perspectives and ways of being. Rachel believes that learning occurs in the context of “place.” As an educator living and working on the ancestral land of the Musqueam People, she has a responsibility to respond to the 94 calls to action laid out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015), and how we can begin to decolonize our teaching practices.
Ena (Enalyne) Point
Indigenous Relations and Engagement Pedagogist
UBC Childcare
Since September 2021 Ena has been the Indigenous Relations and Engagement Pedagogist at UBC Childcare. Drawing on her background of creating Indigenous outreach programmes for Indigenous families, Ena is trailblazing a path to weave Musqueam values and perspectives into UBC Child Care’s commitment to pedagogy through strong reciprocal collaborations with Musqueam. As a first generation Filipina-Canadian, Ena has lived in the Musqueam community for over 20 years with her late husband Terry Point and their three children.
Deborah Thompson, PhD
Associate Director, Programme Development
UBC Childcare
In her role as Associate Director, Deborah engages with UBC Child Care educators as they consider early years’ philosophies and pedagogies. Deborah has worked in the field of early childhood education for many years, as an educator, a college instructor, a programme manager, and now as an associate director. These experiences have led her to question the dominance of developmental theories within early childhood educational policies and practices. With others in the organization, she works with pedagogical narrations or stories of practice to re-visit and re-consider praxis through other theoretical lenses such as Indigenous perspectives, Common Worlding ideas, and social and ecological justice orientations.
Melanie Walters, MA
Programme Manager
UBC Childcare
Melanie has been an educator for over 25 years at UBC Child Care and completed a Master of Arts Degree in Early Childhood Education from University of British Columbia in 2020. Her MA thesis, “(Re)Considering (Risky) Play in a Canadian Early Childhood Context,” involved research that emerged over several years through her pedagogical approach, praxis, and narrations with children and others. In her current role as a programme manager, Melanie oversees a portfolio of eight childcare settings. This role entails administrative responsibilities, mentorship, and pedagogical collaborations with educators and children. These collaborations cultivate curiosity and deep thinking with materials, places, and ideas, which generate complex pedagogical projects. It is this part of Melanie’s work that especially inspires her responsiveness to a vast range of pedagogical possibilities.
Dr. Alexandra Berry
Assistant Professor
Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary
Alex Berry, PhD, engages with the arts and research-creation toward anti-colonial early childhood pedagogies that respond to times of ecological crises. She is interested in feminist post qualitative methodologies for experimenting with the complexities of 21st century childhoods and for creating pedagogies alongside educators that answer to social and climate injustices.
Sessions 3 TBA
Session Recording
