Engaging Spaces: On School-based Habitat Restoration

Abstract

Through a survey of one school board in southern Ontario and a ten-month case study at a school within the board, I aimed to get a sense of participants' experiences of and stories about schoolbased habitat restoration. Of particular interest to me were the ways that teaching and learning through habitat restoration might foster a lived sense of being in a more-than-human world. In an institutional context which by and large denies access to our earthly fellows, what might be the benefits of allowing students the time and space to step outside and engage with them on an intimate, embodied level?