← Back to image gallery and discussions
-
Kia ora koutou, a warm welcome to this discussion space for hope in a time of socio-ecological crises,
Wow, there is so much beauty and thoughtful provocations in this collection. I really encourage you to spend some time with the images and reflections. There is a focus on noticing the life around us (thorny lizards, lichen, bees and blossoms, trees breaking through concrete), embodiment in our teaching, connecting across places, people and more-than-humans, and some really difficult stories too, of how we might hold despair and hope together in a time of socio-ecological crisis.
Please feel free to respond to a particular contribution, connect a few of them together, ask a question, respond to someone’s ideas, or start a new thread if something takes you somewhere else. If starting a new thread, please label it clearly with a title so others can easily find it.
I’ll put down a few things that jumped out at me as I went through the page to get us going.
I think there is something important here about what changes when environmental learning goes beyond ‘crisis’, and builds relationships and encounters with the living world.
One thing that really struck me is the idea of attention – how paying attention to the life around us, and enabling our students to notice life differently can be a act of hope. Clare’s Thorny Devil is just extraordinary (I’ve never seen a creature like this!!). Debojyoti’s lichen does something similar in a different way – something that could easily be passed over becomes a sign of the health of an entire ecosystem, and then a way of thinking about the health of institutions too. Victoria’s bee and blossom begins with beauty, but then moves into grief and the possibilities that might emerge from listening to children. Amara asks us to notice the hidden costs of AI. These, and other contributions, made me reflect on what kinds of attention my own teaching encourages. How might we enable students to notice a place differently, when our teaching environments are so often organised around screens and learning objectives?Another really strong thread is hope as action – and perhaps hope that comes from acting, rather than something we need to have before we begin. Chris writes about educators coming together, and Linda’s restored landscape gives us a concrete example of what can happen when people actually work together over time. Quite a few of the contributions also take learning outside. Carlo’s image of students lying together on the ground is beautiful, and I really like his idea that hope has to pass through the body. Will takes his students into the woods to play Solarpunk Futures around a campfire. Daniel’s students go out to the street, and I really liked his idea that what really matters is not just talking about hope in a course, but allowing students the space and authority to act. Dimas, Midhat and Mirko each show different ways learning travels beyond the classroom, through history, student sustainability work, and public pedagogy around extraction and finance.
John asks whether universities themselves are actually fit for the future we face. I was really struck by his call for both unlearning and exnovation. I admit, I had to look up that word, John. I learned that exnovation can mean deliberately stopping or phasing out practices and systems that are no longer desirable. That’s so good to think with. Universities talk constantly about innovation, but what do we need to stop doing? Yuki’s horse chestnut might give us a powerful image of a different kind of hope in/for higher education – hope as “subterranean energy”, growing from below. Natascha reminds us that play and joy also matter when we are teaching about/into difficult futures.
But I also really appreciate that this collection also asks difficult questions of hope. Tausif’s reflection is about an English teacher in Gaza who still imagines a life beyond the present, but is very careful to say: “I do not want to mistake her hope for an absence of grief.” And Kim asks us to consider a pedagogy of hopelessness. This seems like a really important tension for those of us teaching climate and ecological crisis. How do we tell the truth about what is happening without either collapsing into despair or reaching too quickly for reassurance? Can hopelessness sometimes have a place in our teaching?
There are so many other directions we could take this, so please take these simply as starting points. I’m really interested to hear which images or ideas stay with you, trouble you, make you rethink something, or maybe connect with your own experiences of teaching and learning in this moment.
