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Ghosting Pedagogies
Anna Tsing (2015) reminds us that there are lives and worlds that somehow persevere within the precarity of capitalist ruins and whose stories need to be heard. By storying the particular and peculiar as well as the shadowy and the mythical, ghosting pedagogies trouble the anthropocentric notion of dead spaces by pushing past “the deceptive comforts of human exceptionalism” (Haraway, 2016, p. 212). Ghosting pedagogies focus instead on complex entanglements of both the seen and unseen, the living and the dead, the imaginary and the real. It supports the possibility of telling different kinds of lively, vibrant, and precarious stories of living alongside the more-than-human in times of climate change…
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From Death Springs Life
The following piece was inspired by an encounter with a partially fallen tree in our forest. From death springs life. We gather around a large fallen tree- half fallen actually; the top is supported by the limbs of a neighbouring one. It is suspended at an angle; its root base lifted from the soil and exposed. The tree is lifeless; no new growth is evident on its upper limbs. Its greyish hue is washed out, colourless. The tree is dead. Or is it? We begin to explore this tree with fervour- poking, picking, kicking, scraping, knocking- trying to scare up any sign of life. Maybe deep down I hope that…
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Shadows and Tracings: thinking through poetry
Shadows and Tracings snow reveals tracks tracks reveal possibilities possibilities reveal stories shadowy stories of humans and nonhumans that have crossed time and space wonderings and wanderings moments fleeting what tracks go unnoticed when snow no longer reveals shadowy presence remembering and forgetting stories untold erasing, rooting following, leading, walking, crawling, slithering, running, leaping away from and towards paths converging and pulling apart snow reveals tracks who/what walk(ed) these places? waiting watching listening what might the presence and absence of tracks reveal being neither (a)lone nor lone(ly) Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) reminds us that speculative inquiry “pushes the boundary of acceptable” (p. 73), while Val Plumwood (2002) writes…
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Paths
Seeing tracks on the ground from animals and others. Making our own tracks in the snow. Noticing and following tracks and paths of tree branches and vines twining through the snow. Trying to follow an auditory track of a bird we hear in the trees but cannot see. Using landmarks like the school, the path, to find our path out of the forest. Looking at a path as a route or course that tracks movement. We see this in charcoal works, in the concentrated energies in some places, then the trickle-out effect where marks and energy are less dense but still there. Following animal tracks that will presumably lead us…
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Tracks in the Snow
Poems continue to inspire thought – Wanderings and Wonderings Snow reveals the passing tracks of those that have come before us, if only for a brief moment But I wonder what other tracks go unnoticed when snow is not there to remind us Following, leading, erasing Walking, crawling, slithering, running, leaping Away from and towards Paths converging and pulling apart Prints in the snow How many other humans AND nonhumans have stood where I stand Neither alone nor lonely Waiting watching listening Who/what has walked these place before What might these tracks tell us about the presences of others Being and belonging in a multispecies world “Poetry shuts out the…
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The Beginnings
We would like to propose that together we focus on the arts of slowing down, paying attention, and noticing. hat it might mean for us to support children to notice and slow down when we go to the forest. How might we invite children to slow down rather than “consume” everything they find/see in the forest? How do we invite children to focus, slow down, and notice? If a child picks up a stick, we might become curious about what it is about this particular stick (and not others). Can we stay with what children notice about this stick (and challenge them to think beyond) rather than moving on to…
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Witnessing Ruins of Progress: Recuperating “Staying with the Trouble”
Our pedagogy is guided by a devoted commitment to the aspiration of noticing and the active and ever shifting process of paying attention. We are committed to an aspiration, as opposed to a tangible goal or outcome, because it signals our willingness to engage with the only true constants our world offers us: uncertainty and mutability. In this extended moment of history, our world (the children’s world) is characterized by ecological and economic precarity, one that educational systems too often try to soothe by fostering illusions of stasis and stability. We are committed to bringing this essential instability of our surroundings to the surface of educational encounters with the children.…
