Many of you that read our stories and support our drive to advance nature literacy live outside of Canada. And over the last few months, as we’ve introduced Nature Labs – our signature project that seeks to help Canadian high school students better understand and appreciate their natural inheritance – you’ve been telling us why we need to think globally, not nationally. We’ve listened.
Rather than create a program exclusively for the country in which we live, we’re working to ensure that our open-source platform is relevant and accessible to students around the world. Though our focus will remain on building content that connects to Canadian high school curriculum (given our expertise, network of champions and desire to start small and build outward), we now realize that the lessons and learning journeys we’re creating can be useful to students and teachers anywhere.
As is the case in every Canadian province, most jurisdictions have adopted the UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development objectives that mandate biodiversity intersections with every course. Why? It’s been proven that connecting students with nature helps promote creativity, confidence and empathy. At the same time, nature shapes innovative minds and allows students to think critically about their world. And biodiversity is the link between cultures and beliefs, promoting healthy and active lifestyles, and helping students think more wholly by incorporating both logical and emotional functions of the brain.
Our hope is that through Nature Labs, we can provide the critical resources that help ALL teachers with the tools to meet these objectives and help their students better understand the connection between class learning and the real world. And through Nature Labs Premium, we will now work to create curriculum connections between our content and locally mandated teaching standards not just in Canadian classrooms, but also for schools globally.
So thanks to you, let’s work together to build a world where millions support nature literacy in the classroom and act with a foundation of nature literacy. Find out how.
