Graduate Work

Digital Portfoilo for the advancement to candidacy for the Masters of Education Degree from Sonoma State University

Because I believe that schools are the key to reconstructing environmental attitudes and practices, my research and applications throughout the program have involved ways to encourage creative connections between children and nature during the school day.

Research

Restorying the Landscape: An Arts-Based Approach to a Schoolyard Habitat Restoration Project

This project uncovers stories in the landscape through the restoration of not only the wild species displaced by human disturbance, but the creative and empathetic bond between children and nature.

coinciding with a period of unprecedented transformation in the field of education, my journey TO CANDIDACY FOR THE masters of Education at ssu has been absorbing, inspiring and generative.

Selected Coursework

EDCT 586 - Research & Application in the Classroom

Professor Karen Grady

The work I did the first semester of my program is a powerful record of the shock and panic of the early days of the pandemic as a research project on learning in a school garden was suddenly deprived of both school and garden. As the floor literally dropped out from under what I considered to be teaching and learning, new practices were being developed before my eyes. I eventually adapted my project to the situation and found that the constraints placed by having to interact with students digitally, gave the study a purity that I hadn’t expected, resulting in an interpretative analysis of the children’s artworks which foreshadowed my current interest in arts-based research methodology.

EDCT 585 -Curriculum Development; Theory, Practice and Evaluation

Professor, Michael Suarez

In this course, I explored theoretical approaches which allowed me to create a cohesive overview and rationale for Learning in the Landscape, a program I currently run. The curriculum is particularly influenced by Dewey’s belief that learning is social and experiential and must not stifle the individual interests of the child, as well as the Freirean notion of education as a dialogue, which through humility and love, individuals become agents of transformation and change.

EDCT 556 Technology, Pedagogy and Society

Professor Fawn Cannady

A case study of the Bay Area Nature Journalling Club, an online affinity group as it transitioned from a primarily local organization to a global community for online learning, helped me understand the educational possibilities of participatory cultures in digitized spaces.

Presenting my findings to the group, during one of the live Zoom sessions, was joyful and emotional as members saw the impact of their practices reflected through my research.

Other Artifacts From Core Coursework

Electives

Building my course of study through electives was incredibly valuable and has helped me build a framework for my cognate project through exposure to material, faculty and students in other departments.