Nature Labs
This isn’t a boring, out-dated, one-dimensional textbook.
This is Nature Labs.
Balanced storytelling. Inquiry-based learning. Engaging conversations. Real-world connections. Curated resources. Daily updates.
Nature Labs is a virtual high school textbook and so much more!
Built on a foundation of balanced storytelling, we use nature as a real-world example of class lessons, linking the inspiring true story of two grizzly bears to those of 150 diverse citizens – from former prime ministers to top chefs. We provide educators with curricula-connected, plug-and-play, inquiry-based resources that make learning relevant and fun, helping students think critically and act creatively, today and every day.
How it works
Imagine the wonder of a field trip to the Rocky Mountains or Parliament Hill brought to life in every high school classroom and enhanced by cross-disciplinary master classes delivered by experts and innovators. Now imagine the expensive, out-dated textbook being replaced with an immersive virtual experience that is relatable and responsive to the world where students live, with information being updated in real-time. All of this? It’s brought together with balanced storytelling that blends 60 Minutes fundamentals with the pacing of TikTok and the visuals of National Geographic to create the kind of multi-media content needed to spark a passion for learning.
This is Nature Labs.
Our online classroom is enhanced by lesson plans and education resources designed by a teacher for teachers, helping ensure every aspect of Nature Labs is curriculum-connected and plug-and-play, actually delivering what educators require. We aim to make education more efficient and effective, freeing-up time for teachers to work one-on-one with students, while providing students with real-world expertise and the tools to transform their lessons into projects that better their community and our world.
Nature Labs is not an advocacy platform. As a citizen-funded project, we have avoided strings-attached funding that might influence bias, real or perceived. We don’t seek to create a new generation of activists. We won’t tell students what to think and don’t take positions on the issues we face – economically, socially or environmentally. We do work, however, to reflect and challenge every perspective in Canada, helping students understand the true complexity of our society. We believe that by enhancing critical thinking skills we can help create a more thoughtful citizenry and more creative workforce – one that strives to balance the needs of people and nature in new and innovative ways.
Educator Overview
Nature Labs Courses
Why Nature Labs?
A Better Textbook
Textbooks are boring and out-dated the minute they’re published. Nature Labs is more than a textbook, it’s an immersive classroom. Plus, why learn from an American writer about the Canadian political system when you can learn from a former Canadian prime minister?
Experts Teaching Students
Teachers aren’t always experts in what they teach. Heck, nor are we. But you know who is an expert? Subject-matter leaders. We’ve curated the stories of 150 citizens (and counting!) to help explain class lessons and relate them to real-world issues.
More Efficient Education
Teachers are overworked and class sizes are growing and technology is changing. We take care of the lesson material so teachers can focus on working with students one-on-one. We also present almost all of our material in video, audio and written format, to help you reach students with different learning preferences.
Cross Curricular Education
No one wants to learn in a silo. We need the next generation of scientists to appreciate the art of storytelling and the next class of policy-makers to have studied science. We make education cross-curricular so you don’t have to worry about that too.
Constant Updates
A new prime minister is elected? Nature Labs reflects that across all lessons the next day. A war breaks out, a pandemic is announced, a Supreme Court case is settled or a major new scientific finding in uncovered that changes everything? We’re on it. Lessons need to reflect the rapidly changing world students live in.
Balanced Storytelling
Nature Labs is not an advocacy platform. We don’t tell students what to think and don’t take positions on the issues we face. We do work to reflect and challenge every perspective in Canada, helping students understand the true complexity of our society. That’s balanced storytelling.
Inquiry-Based Learning
There are many great resources in Canada, but so many are limited in scope or are trying to sell students on an idea, an outcome, a campaign or an idea. We’re not the arbiters of right and wrong, but rather the askers of better questions that we hope will provoke and unleash a lifetime of inquiry. After all, Nature Labs is basically one big Choose-Your-Own-Adventure!
Place-Based Learning
All of our stories start from and comeback to a real place that students can visit, but not everyone is able or willing to travel to Mount Robson Provincial Park. We bring this classroom to life through virtual field trips that capture imaginations and transform abstract concepts into real-world relevance.
More Relevant Education
The first question most students ask is why they need to know what’s being taught. And it’s the first question we answer in every lesson. And then we strive, at every step, to help students take what they’ve learned and see how it can be applied to advance their careers and help them solve the challenges facing our world.
National Yet Local
Canada is an incredible country, but we’re increasingly divided. If you grow up in St. John’s or Toronto or Assiniboia or Klemtu or Yellowknife? You’re learning differently than your neighbour, a reality that is at the heart of why we lack empathy for our neighbour. We’ve scoured every curriculum in Canada to find the commonalities that can allow for a national education program that still meets the requirements of each provincial and territorial jurisdiction.
No Funding Bias
Real or perceived, rightly or wrongly, we assume so many companies and foundations have a bias and attempt to influence the message, the direction, the outcomes of what they fund. As citizen-funded project, we have avoided strings-attached funding to ensure students are free to make whatever choices they want.
More Than Nature Literacy
Yes, Nature Labs will help students understand our natural world. But nature is really a metaphor – a gateway – to so much more. It’s how we can begin to tackle so many other important, more divisive issues in our society. In the doing, Nature Labs is a springboard to help students become literate in a range of subjects, fostering good citizenship in the process.
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5 courses and 20+ a la carte lessons (all lessons are curricula connected across Canada)
12 chapters per course (every chapter can be expanded into endless mini lessons)
150+ lesson stories (diverse experts explain curricula topics to students)
25 inquiry stories (connecting curricula and classrooms to real-world issues)
150+ conversations with experts (exploring the opinions of divergent leaders)
300+ class activities (including lesson plans, rubrics, extensions and conversation starters)
3500+ resource library (tools curated for students and analyzed for bias)
35+ place-based experiences (virtual hikes and drives that explore the Nature Labs virtual classroom)
50+ place-based stories (exploring the species and spaces of the Nature Labs virtual classroom)
3 types of media (99% of Nature Labs content is provided in video, audio and written formats for different learning styles)
1 teacher manual (how-to instructions, curricula connections, classroom set-up ideas, evaluation rubrics)
So. Much. More.
Why Nature?
Place-based education matters. Storytelling matters. It’s why and how Nature Labs links diverse courses and lessons together through the narrative arc of two remarkable grizzly bears in Mount Robson Provincial Park.
Why these bears?
They’re two siblings – one male and one female – who, despite conventional wisdom, have refused to separate after being run off by their mother. For three years, instead of competing with one another, these bears have elected to work together – grazing, hunting, playing, denning. They’ve learned to survive in an increasingly complex world by helping each other thrive.
This is not just another nature story. It’s so much more.
These bears are a visual metaphor for our fragile yet resilient relationship with nature and with each other. It’s a story that underscores that just because something has always been so, doesn’t mean it must always be so. It’s a story that reminds us that by working with unlikely allies in unlikely circumstances we can find new solutions to old problems.
We didn’t have to pick nature – two bears – as our metaphor for the challenges we face or the lessons that must be taught. There are always other metaphors; more pressing issues, more socially relevant issues. But for each of those issues – rightly or wrongly – we can’t always agree on right or wrong. Or even where to start.
We can all agree that this scene is beautiful.
But nature? We know that before we start debating the value of a park – and before we get into how best to balance people and nature – if we stop and take a breath and really look at this?
We can all agree that this scene is beautiful.
And that matters. By really stopping to look and appreciate this moment together, we can see that our natural inheritance is our common humanity. It is what unites us. It is what makes us equal.
By the end of Nature Labs, students won’t be able to agree on how best to strengthen our economy or advance social justice or steward our natural environment. But by finding a common starting point – by using nature to move away from what we disagree with and toward what we can agree on – we hope students will be more open to listening and learning from those they agree with and those they don’t; rethinking what they think they know and reimagining what’s actually possible when we work together.
Just like these two bears.
Testimonials
What do we need to do in terms of changing how our young people learn? What kind of skills are people learning? Are we organizing our education system in the optimal way to make sure that young people have the skills that they need to be able to roll with the punches in a rapidly changing world?
Kim C.
Nature Labs is an opportunity for young people in classes at large, right across the country, to be able to explore these tough questions and these tough issues through something that will allow them to go on a journey and learn through these different lenses.
Diz G.
Nature Labs gave me an object and goal to look forward to each and every day. And sometimes I would even think about my project at random times throughout the day.
Daniel B.
I more deeply understand our planet’s ecosystem and how every last thing here has a role and a significance and a connection to everything else that is amazing and miraculous and fills me with deep gratitude and awe for Earth.
Nikki R.
[The stories] read like you’re having a fun conversation that makes learning about wildlife cool without an adult trying to shove “cool” at you from the 70s.
Alyssa B.
In many cases we could say - hey, that’s what education is about. Education is really taking our collective experience and handing it down to the younger generation.
Leroy L.
You guys coming here has really got us to look at things in a different way as well. We really value what you guys are doing. I think students will take so much from this program and I think Mount Robson is such a special place to do this.
Elliott I.
The only way to factor those things in is to do initiatives that help people to realize that web of life.
Kerry B.
By the time students come to university, they have this way of thinking about the world that can be a really hard learning curve for undergraduate students to halt they way they’ve been thinking throughout elementary and secondary school and flip that on it’s head to learn in a really different - on the land - way.
Madison L.
We just don’t have the programs here that are necessary to really teach people about the outdoors. When I was in high school, I went on a field trip to a prison and the court house. And that was in my civics class. We’re not really encouraging our students here to get out and see nature.
Terrence J.
I think what you’re talking about in the classroom is very heartening because people don’t learn this naturally. We’re taught to be - we’re wired - to be attracted to really strong, polarized views. If you can teach kids how to do [the opposite], around what seems like a very benign topic like nature, then it gives me a lot of hope for other polarized issues that really need attention.
Donna K.
That’s what you’re doing a really good job on - nature literacy. As a youth, what I find with my peers is that the opportunities for nature literacy in particular are essentially non existent. And youth aren’t engaged because we think our teachers aren’t engaged.
Zeel P.
We have to figure out a way to create opportunities not only for people to experience these places in situ, but out of situ, exactly like what Nature Labs is doing by bringing the parks stories to educators, and thus to students. It’s a really beautiful cycle that needs to happen.
Dawn C.
The research is pretty clear that experiential learning, especially when it comes to democracy, is absolutely key. Well-being promotes well-doing. So if you are well as a human, you will be a good learner.
Ilona D.
When I went to school, nobody talked about the environment. If I went to school today, most people talk about the environment and it’s certainly important in our educational programs and for the government, the public and business.
Jimmy P.
You actually need the ecosystem piece, which you are developing. But ultimately, it needs to be institutionalized. It does have to get into the school system and institutionalized through the government.
Ken W.
Jill Cooper and Simon Jackson
Jill Cooper – an accomplished educator – and Simon Jackson – an award-winning storyteller – have spent a lifetime immersed in the stories and landscapes of the place we call home. They’ve travelled from the development-rich Oil Sands to the wilds of the Rocky Mountains, from Clyde River and Val d’Or to Calgary and Halifax, to better understand nature, education and our country. Their takeaway? Nature unites us all. By making the seemingly irrelevant relevant, it’s possible to showcase that nothing is black and white and, through better education, a more thoughtful citizenry that strives to balance the needs of people and nature is possible. This was the inspiration for Nature Labs..
Simon & Jill