Countering Heat Islands, Planting Trees: Studies of Schoolyards as Habitats for Climate-Just Learning

• In Event: Climate Emotion, Agency, and Justice in Formal and Informal Settings

Abstract

Purpose. Climate injustices are historically and spatially produced (Sultana, 2022). Within cities for example, race, class and disability are geographically constructed through redlining, “urban renewal” and school rezoning, in turn magnifying vulnerabilities to accelerating heat and flooding (Hallegatte et al, 2011). Building transformative climate-just futures entails education research and practice that engages with these spatial relationships that are felt and emplaced.

Theoretical Framework. Learning is always occurring within interconnected social, political and ecological systems, across spatial and temporal scales (Learning in Places Collaborative, 2022). At the same time, such learning is inseparable from emotion, where feeling, sensemaking and practice configure and reconfigure (Vea, 2020). As Davidson and Milligan (2004) conjecture, “Emotion, then, might be seen as a form of connective tissue that links experiential geographies of the human psyche and physique with(in) broader social geographies of place (pg. 525)”.

Methods, Data Sources and Analysis. Drawing on social-design based research methodologies (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2018), this multi-year project seeks to address heat-related climate injustices through urban tree forestry initiatives around public elementary schools in a mid-Atlantic city. We ask: What learning occurs as relationships with and within a schoolyard reorganize for children, caregivers, educators, administrators, facility staff and more than human life? Data sources include focal group interviews, participants’ GoPro video, field notes, shared correspondence artifacts, and ecology system indicators. Using socio-ecological network analysis (Janseen et al., 2006), we trace changing relationships among nodes (key entities in the system) and edges (the relationships among them) across social and ecological systems, making possible new configurations of feeling, sensemaking and practice (Vea, 2020).

Findings. Since the initial schoolyard reforestation efforts started in 2023, analyses have documented changes in the nodes and edges in the reforesting schoolyard and the learning communities springing up in and around the elementary school. For example, as the monoculture grass turf was removed and replaced with pine saplings and other early forest succession local plants, caregivers have started gathering in a shared seating space at drop off and pick up, forming a “garden party club” to organize and learn about the watering and weeding needs in the juvenile forest, in turn creating new feelings of belonging. Simultaneously, new plants such as crabgrass and asters are simultaneously learning about the changing shade patterns, shifting their limbs to capture more sunlight. In afterschool hours, neighborhood children are learning where favored hiding spots are in block-wide hide and seek games. Combined, the social and ecological networks together create shifted opportunities for new social practices, feelings and sensemaking.

Significance. This study makes theoretical and methodological contributions by studying learning within social and ecological systems simultaneously, drawing on urban ecology and social geography theories to understand how these changing spatial relationships make possible new configurations of feeling, sensemaking and practice in ways. It also illuminates new approaches for educating for climate-just futures, by centering learning within city greenspaces themselves and opening up to a wide community of learners (human and more than human) in a schoolyard community.

Authors

• Kathryn Lanouette, William & Mary

• Meredeth Dash, Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay