Last semester I received an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant from my school’s Environmental Studies department. The grant aims to support students to pursue internationally based situated environmental research projects. My proposal is to study place-based environmental education in New Zealand, which has a very progressive education system. Place-based education, in my view, aims to combine different aspects of a certain place (community, landscape, history, etc.) to foster a more rooted connection to a person’s education. From September 16th – December 7th, I get to go to New Zealand and learn all about awesome things that are happening in the education world! It’s a dream come true, since my area of focus is in place-based education, and I have been drawn to New Zealand for a very long time.
So far, I know I will be in Christchurch’s port, Lyttelton, for about two weeks. I’ll settle down there to get my bearings in a foreign country, and a local family has agreed to host me. I will volunteer with Project Lyttelton, a grassroots community based organization working to rebuild the town and the community after the devastating earthquake in 2011. After that, I’ll spend about a month and a half in Christchurch, working with professors at the University of Canterbury and community partners at Environment Canterbury. I’ll work with the SEEDs research group, which stands for “Social agency, Environmental education, Embedded justice, Decentred democracy and Self transcendence values.” I plan to volunteer with Greening the Rubble, an organization that builds community gardens where there was damage from the devastating 2011 earthquake. I’ll visit a Maori community and learn about indigenous education in New Zealand, and I’m looking for a Maori or place-based education school that I can shadow for a few weeks. Somewhere in there, I hope to find some people who will take me “trekking” in New Zealand’s breathtaking natural landscape, and have time to WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) in exchange for room and board.