Building relationship to land
It may seem an obvious point, but an eco-school relies on access to and use of land—perhaps one site in particular, perhaps a variety of locations, perhaps moving seasonally from one place to another. Whatever the circumstances, the school’s use of the land has an impact on the more-than-human residents (soil, water, plants, birds, animals, insects…) and possibly on other human occupants or visitors. At the outset, you may not know much about these other participants in the life of the land, but how they experence and respond to the school’s presence will have a major impact on the well-being and integrity of the school itself.
We have found that it’s important to provide opportunities for parents/caregivers and extended family members to build relationship with the land, in addition to the teachers and students. In part, this means spending time on the land, for example in guided workshop sessions outside school hours. It might also mean bringing in local experts and knowledge holders to share stories of the history of the land, or insights into the various species that live there, or perspectives and experiences of the land rooted in various families and communities. Over time, the land will come to be understood as a storied and inhabited place, worthy of care and attention, and perhaps in need of defence or restoration in the face of damage and exploitation.
Building relationship to local First Nations/Indigenous communities
Throughout North America, and in many other parts of the world, any area of land has a history of Indigenous occupation and use, even if that history has been obscured and built over by colonization. In some places, Indigenous nations are actively engaged in efforts to reassert sovereignty over their traditional territories; in many others, they are working with allies to restore the health of habitats and ecosystems, to share traditional knowledge of plants and animals and other beings, and to transform colonial understandings of what it means to live on Indigenous land.
It may seem natural for eco-schools to build relationships with local Indigenous communities, and yet there are many potential pitfalls. The communities (and their individual members) have their own priorities, and often an unhappy history of experiences with schools and educators from the dominant state-run system. For their part, members of the eco-school community may assume that their own good intentions will be enough to open doors, and may underestimate their own ignorance of Indigenous culture, history and perspectives. Patience, humility, and a willingness to let go of one’s own agenda are required. Yet we would also emphasize how important and valuable this work is, with the potential of enormously enriching and even transforming the life of the school in the long run.
Building relationships to neighbours and to the broader community
In addition to local Indigenous communities, eco-schools benefit from building strong relationships and alliances across the broader community in general. This can be for very pragmatic reasons, like having the dog-walkers who use the same park understand where kids will be learning and what activities they will be doing, or engaging with local residents who may be concerned how the school’s use of a particular area may lead to erosion or other damage. This is connected to building relationship to land, for the land is not the exclusive domain of the eco-school and it’s important to cultivate a sense of shared responsibility and stewardship with as many other participants as possible.
More generally, broad support across the community allows the eco-school to tap into goodwill, to people with knowledge and skills to share, to gain access to various spaces, be it a local park or a BMX track, and also, importantly, to engage with a range of cultural and individual perspectives on land and education. There is always the risk that a “school of choice” like an eco-school becomes something of a closed community; intentional, sustained outreach is a way of mitigating that risk. This community liaison or relationship building is an ongoing task that exceeds what the principal or staff of the school can accomplish on their own. It is therefore often necessary to find a couple of parents/caregivers who are willing to commit to ensuring that the relationship building and maintenance continues over time.
Building relationships to other schools
Relationships with other schools can likewise be critically important. School systems are very efficient gossip factories, and if the eco-school community doesn’t work to ensure that its approach to teaching and learning is understood by other educators and the larger community, rumours and misunderstandings may run rife. One effective way to get such information out is to host professional development days where other educators are brought into the school to experience some of the school’s activities and to meet the students and teachers. Public events hosted by the school may be a way of reaching a wider audience of parents/caregivers and the larger community as well.
Another advantage of strong relationships with regular schools is that they may be prompted to think more deeply about how to ecologize education. If the eco-school is managing to do something that’s different from the rest of the school system, and there are signs that the students are flourishing and succeeding more then their peers in conventional schools, then other teachers or parents might come to the realization that “perhaps our regular school isn’t helping kids out as well as it could.” A strong relationship makes it less likelly that people will respond purely defensively (or aggressively) in this situation. Instead, space may open up for constructive discussions about ways in which other schools could learn from the eco-school experience.
Essentially, the eco-school community bears an additional educational responsibility: they have to help other parents/caregivers, teachers and administrators to understand what the school is about, why it does things differently and how this benefits students and the community. While the eco-school administrator may play a particularly key role in this, other members of the community can also take on the work of “translating” what the school does into the operating language of the school district and the outside world.
Building relationships within the school community: Governance and responsibility
Eco-schools are often schools of choice. Because of this, the families involved with them often want to play an important, perhaps even decisive role in shaping decisions at the school. This can be exciting and energizing, but it also bring challenges. For school governance to work well when there is a high level of community and parental involvement, the school community has to cultivate values and skills of collaboration and effective participatory decision-making. Relatively few people come to the school with these skills already developed, because they are fairly rare in modern industrial societies; most of us have been schooled in and have worked in hierarchical systems, and we know of governance as a largely adversarial process exemplified by the courts or Parliament. So, an eco-school community will likely find it invaluable to invest in some self-education. We would recommend seeking out a skilled facilitator to help with this.
It’s quite common for a small group of parents/caregivers to take particular interest in decisions regarding the school. This group’s efforts will often prove invaluable, since many will not have the time to engage deeply and to work through all the various tasks involved in founding an eco-school. However, some caution is needed. There is a risk such a group will come to dominate discussions, so other parents/caregivers (potentially including those from marginalized communities) do not feel their priorities and concerns are being aired and that they have little influence on decisions. This is an example of the kind of issue that can be avoided or mitigated by investing in good process. That means, for example, building in ways to continue engaging the broader school community, make space for less dominant voices, keep the dialogue going and ensure that there is institutional memory.
Though consensus decision-making can be initially more challenging and time consuming than simple majority voting, we think that it holds significant benefits for the school community. It may take more time, but if it helps those involved come to a deeply held and widely shared understanding of what the school is out to achieve, that will make things much easier when major decisions are on the table. At the same time, allowance needs to be for the fact that down the road there will be disagreements, problems, critiques and complaints that will need to be resolved. Thus, the system of school governance should include processes of conflict resolution that specify how these issues are to be addressed, what procedure will be used, and who needs to be involved.
It’s also important to consider the balance of responsibility between parents/caregivers, teachers, and the administrator. Teachers needs to feel that their expertise and particular role in the school is being respected; the administrator may have statutory responsibilities that can’t be delegated, and may also have an important leadership role that needs acknowledging. It doesn’t make sense to have parents/caregivers involved in making every little decision in the school, and some decisions simply need to be made by staff as situations arise. It may be important to talk through the perceptions, needs and expectations of all of the various parties, not just once, but on a regular basis as the culture of the school develops.