Summary: Dilafruz Williams argues that many problems related to sustainability come from traditional schooling, which often teaches subjects separately and focuses on efficiency rather than real-life connections. She explains that sustainability education should instead help students see patterns and relationships—how people, nature, and communities are connected. Using the Learning Gardens program in Portland as an example, the article shows how students learn academic subjects by growing food, gardening, and working with their community. Through these hands-on, place-based experiences, students begin to understand caring for the environment, their health, and others as interconnected rather than separate. Overall, the article suggests that sustainability education helps students develop a deeper, more relational way of thinking about the world.
Stop 1
This article reminded me of Anna’s reflection from last week about how students often ask, “Why do we learn math?” and how we sometimes respond with “Math is everywhere,” which can unintentionally shut down deeper exploration rather than genuinely engaging with students’ questions. This made me wonder: how do we actually show that math is everywhere in ways that inspire deeper thinking and curiosity? Williams’ discussion of sustainability education feels like a possible response to this tension. The article suggests that meaning emerges when subjects such as math, science, social studies, and the arts are learned together through embodied, lived experiences. By emphasizing systems thinking, holistic learning, and place-based pedagogy through multisensory and multidisciplinary learning, students are encouraged to think in terms of relationships rather than isolated subjects. As a result, they may better understand why they are learning what they are learning, as learning becomes connected to real life and meaningful experiences rather than fragmented content.
Discussion Question
Given the realities of secondary schools—where subjects are strictly separated and schedules are rigid—do you see yourself creating a sustainability-oriented learning environment like the Learning Gardens program in your own classroom? If so, what might this look like in practice, and if not, what constraints make it difficult?
Stop 2
The student writings—especially those that showed care for spiders, plants, and people experiencing homelessness—made me pause. They showed how learning can nurture empathy and ethical awareness alongside academic understanding. As someone who was more accustomed to traditional schooling—thinking in isolated subjects and experiencing largely disembodied learning—feeling empathy or ethical awareness through learning is not something I strongly associate with my own schooling experience. However, as I began searching for my career path after university, I realized that this aspect of learning had been missing, and that it is one of the most important things I now see I wanted to nurture as I grew.
My favourite Australian math teacher and writer, Eddie Woo, says: “Don’t follow your passion.” What he means is that instead of starting with passion, we should ask what the world needs—and then do something about it, allowing passion to grow through that experience. People often ask, “What do you love?” “What are you good at?” “What are you passionate about?” “What can you be paid for?” but we often forget to ask, “What does the world need?” or “What does our community need?” To be able to ask and respond to these questions meaningfully, empathy is essential. Yet developing empathy can feel difficult within traditional schooling structures. This article, however, shows that sustainability education—such as the Learning Gardens program—offers a real possibility for learning that cultivates empathy, ethical awareness, and a sense of responsibility toward the community.
Discussion Question
Have you ever had an experience, as a student, where learning in school helped you feel empathy or develop ethical awareness? If so, what made that experience possible?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Amy.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate your reflections and questions, especially the way you hold both the promise and the tension of experience based learning at the same time. When engaging with this topic, I often find myself in a similarly complex position—one that I think many secondary teachers share. While there is broad agreement that students learn best when learning is meaningful, embodied, and connected to real life, the moment we move from theory to actual classroom practice, particularly in secondary schools, the challenges become very real. Even though I have encountered these ideas repeatedly throughout our program and feel I have a foundational understanding of them, I continue to struggle with what concrete actions I can realistically take as a high school teacher.
From my own experience teaching high school physics and mathematics, I have tried to incorporate hands on activities and real life connections whenever possible. In earlier stages, this felt both natural and effective: modelling motion through experiments, working with real data sets, or connecting mathematical concepts to everyday decision making resonated strongly with students. However, as topics became more advanced—such as abstract algebra, calculus, or theoretical physics—it became increasingly difficult to “embody” the learning in ways that are comparable to elementary level practices. Unlike gardening, storytelling, or simple measurement activities, much of upper level content does not easily translate into tangible or sensory experiences.
This may help explain why many of the most compelling examples of experiential or sustainability oriented learning in the literature appear at earlier stages of education. Experiential and relational learning often seems to occur most naturally in early childhood contexts, or else it requires substantial structural support that goes far beyond the capacity of an individual teacher. Programs like Learning Gardens depend on community partnerships, shared spaces, flexible schedules, and strong institutional buy in. In contrast, a single high school teacher working within rigid timetables, fixed curricula, and clearly bounded subject areas may find it difficult to create similar learning experiences. Even something as pedagogically powerful as a field trip can feel unrealistic—or even “invalid”—within the constraints of a typical secondary classroom.
These challenges are further intensified by high stakes assessment systems. Based on my experience, widely accepted international curricula such as A levels and AP continue to prioritize standardized examinations as the primary measure of student achievement. Even when schools express commitments to addressing students’ holistic development, sustainability, or ethical awareness, these goals are often pushed into extracurricular activities, service hours, or school wide initiatives rather than being integrated into everyday classroom learning. As individual teachers, we may value experiential and sustainability oriented approaches, but our professional responsibilities remain closely tied to exam preparation and measurable outcomes.
This leads me to an ongoing tension: while I strongly agree with the values behind sustainability education, empathy centered learning, and ethical awareness, I continue to wrestle with questions of implementation. How can this kind of learning be made possible at more advanced stages of education, rather than being confined to early childhood or isolated enrichment programs? And perhaps most importantly, how can it become a shared commitment within the broader educational system rather than a responsibility placed on individual teachers alone? I find these questions to be essential when discussing experience based learning, as they point to the systemic barriers that often hesitate—or even prevent—teachers from meaningfully shifting their classroom practice, despite their belief in its value.
Hi Amy, thank you for your response and thoughtful summary. I also resonate deeply with Li’s comments on the differences in opportunities between early and secondary education. The systemic barriers Li describes are the same ones that often constrain us as teachers. This is not to say that teachers cannot play, imagine, and cultivate sustainable education within secondary mathematics classrooms; rather, it can feel as though teachers’ voices and lived experiences are frequently overshadowed by research that highlights successes in early education.
ReplyDeleteTo meaningfully implement inspiring programs such as the Learning Gardens, secondary mathematics teachers must be supported within the system. In my curriculum analysis of the BC and Quebec curricula, it is clear that there is curricular support for fostering empathy-based and sustainability-oriented classrooms. However, these intentions cannot be realized without addressing persistent barriers—such as high-stakes assessments (as Li notes), rigid school scheduling, and, perhaps most significantly, limitations in school resources and institutional support for teachers.
I remember Kabula and our other classmate Julia's work on food waste and food insecurity and how those topics were incorporated into their teaching. We cannot deny however, how long and how difficult it was for our classmates to find the time to make this work happen. As a relatively novice teacher still, I have less freedom within new and sometimes temporary schools to implement what I want.
To answer your second question, I did not encounter many empathy-building experiences in high school. If anything, it was during university—through meeting people with diverse backgrounds and learning about their lived experiences—that my worldview shifted most significantly. In contrast, high school can often feel like a bubble: students exist largely within the confines of their school and immediate community, creating an echo chamber in which few assumptions are challenged. As students transition out of high school, however, they are exposed to perspectives beyond the small group of peers they may have known for the past four or five years, opening up opportunities for deeper reflection and growth.
Also, not all empathy-building situations are comfortable; in fact, they can be treacherous and met with reluctance. For many teenagers, decentering themselves from their own worlds is challenging, particularly when their experiences have been shaped within familiar social, cultural, and community contexts. Discomfort, tension, and even resistance are often integral to the process of developing empathy. Recognizing this is important, as it suggests that meaningful empathy-building in secondary education requires careful scaffolding, trust, and sustained support—rather than the assumption that such learning will be easy or immediately embraced. Are teachers adequately equipped and supported to hold these conversations and to create these spaces?
Thank you all -- it's good to hear about the constraints and barriers (external and internal) that we all face as teachers when trying to put change into action. A lot depends on your teaching context (national, provincial, local, systemic, within your department...), and some contexts are more supportive than others. In my experience, quite a few of the barriers are internal to each person as well. It can be difficult to try out something as a teacher that you haven't experienced as a learner, and normative pressures from colleagues, parents, kids, administrators can be hard to deal with.
ReplyDeleteAs a secondary school teacher and a prof, I've faced these pressures too, and I know how hard they can be when you are relatively new to the system. Nevertheless, having a touch of boldness in trying new things can be very rewarding, and can win respect! My suggestion to people dipping their toes into these new waters is to start small and manageable: try one activity or small project per course per semester (or year). Don't change everything, but add one small thing that is well considered and not expensive, exhausting or too challenging to the school. The next semester, add one more small thing. The more times you try something (and refine it through experience), the easier and more accepted it gets. If you take a small risk and try another new thing each semester in each course, it's not long till you have a repertoire of familiar and more polished activities -- and you build a reputation in the school community for the cool things you do! Younger sisters and brothers will start demanding that they get to try that amazing thing that their older siblings did in your class.