Nature education courses, new to secondary and tertiary level institutions, are attracting people from across the country. In the elective course Emerging Environmental Issues at Sichuan University, students happily delve into their assignments of finding ‘secret gardens’ and making green campus maps. Their teacher Zhou Jin, an experienced nature education practitioner, designed the course as part of her goal to build up a network of nature educators. Zhou calls herself Foxtail. She’s from a new generation of nature educators who name themselves after nature – you will soon meet Sea of Fir, Sunshine, Vegetable Root, and Licorice.
In May 2021, the Sustainable Research and Education Centre of Sichuan University’s College of Architecture and Environment launched a year-long community building and co-learning project with secondary and tertiary teachers, in partnership with PCD. Led by Foxtail, the project aims to develop nature education curricula, experiential activities, and educators. The diversity of the 19 participating teachers – of Anthropology, Architecture, Chinese Herbal Medicine, Ecology and Travel Management, from Chengdu City, Chongqing Municipality, Guiyang City, Hubei Province and Kunming City – has brought a range of perspectives, widening the project’s scope and expanding people’s imagination.
The team has coordinated three workshops and regular co-learning activities since October 2021. Participants visited an experimental eco-farm developed by Sea of Fir (Liu Xie), a teacher at Xi Chang College, Sichuan Province. Anthropology teachers facilitated activities that integrate nature and culture, including local history, agriculture, vernacular culture, and tourism field studies. Becoming more aware of the need for nature education to be rooted in society, culture, and daily life, participants organised various co-learning eco-activities, including mountaineering. They supported each other on their journeys, of personal growth and as nature educators.
Members of a nature education group at Sichuan University learn from one another.
The team has coordinated three workshops and regular co-learning activities since October 2021. Participants visited an experimental eco-farm developed by Sea of Fir (Liu Xie), a teacher at Xi Chang College, Sichuan Province. Anthropology teachers facilitated activities that integrate nature and culture, including local history, agriculture, vernacular culture, and tourism field studies. Becoming more aware of the need for nature education to be rooted in society, culture, and daily life, participants organised various co-learning eco-activities, including mountaineering. They supported each other on their journeys, of personal growth and as nature educators.
The project has yielded fruit. At Guizhou Normal University, Sunshine (Wang Yan) has initiated a colearning club on species resources. At Hubei Qianjiang University, Vegetable Root (Wu Han) promotes ecoethics and composting on campus. At University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Cheungdu, Sichuan, Licorice (Wan Peng) is teaching a new course to observe and document changes in the Chinese herbal medicinal garden, adopting the nature note-taking approach.
Back in Sichuan Province, Foxtail continues to inspire through the nature education co-learning group called To Blossom. While Sichuan University has become a nature education hub, many educational institutions have yet to add the courses to their curriculum, and there is a nationwide shortage of nature educators.
As always, we hope for more people-people and people-nature connections, thus we hope that more teachers can embrace nature education, which can help open up a new world.
* Excerpted from Annual Report 2021-2022