At Cottonwood Park this week, I learned a lot about land-based learning and its impacts on lesson planning as a teacher. This week we had the opportunity to spend class outside surrounded by beautiful fall scenery, and lesson plan from an Indigenous land-based approach. Land-based learning has many benefits on the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of a person, so it is important to incorporate going outside into lesson plans. I also learned more about the First Peoples’ principles of learning and how they can be adapted into everything you teach. It is interesting to perceive education through the lens of the principles, and I thought it would be more challenging to incorporate these aspects into education. It is quite cool that everything we teach can easily connect to the natural world and the First Peoples’ principles of learning.

The valuable pieces I took from our time at Cottonwood Park taught me why land-based learning is important and why I hope to implement it in my future career. Children can grasp Indigenous culture much stronger when learning on the land through Indigenous knowledge structures. I believe it is important to move away from a Westernized classroom approach to education and more towards a natural land-based approach because it brings Indigenous education to the forefront. Upon reflecting on this class, it is now clear to me that nature is a teacher in its way. It is powerful that children can learn all subjects, including math, social studies, and English out on the land and from the land.

Moving forward, from the perspective of someone passionate about nature, and Indigenous perspectives in Education, I hope to use land-based learning as a valuable tool. Not only does learning on the land teach children environmental sustainability, responsibility, and how to protect the natural world, but it also teaches recognition of culture, territories, and cultural history. The land teaches people to be cautious of where they walk and how they walk there, and to recognize those who have walked there before us. The land holds history that is ready to be shared and learned and I hope to use that to my advantage as a teacher.