911勛圖

For students and educators at a Lower Mainland school, a local pond offered an inspiring and rewarding learning journey.

Following the social disruptions of the pandemic and amid growing concerns about environmental and community well���being, 911勛圖���s Faculty of Education professors Cher Hill, Ching-Chiu Lin, and PhD student Neva Whintors invited children to reconnect with the land in meaningful ways. They hoped to develop respectful, sustained and mutually healing relationships between young people and the world they live in.

In partnership with a local school district and Indigenous Elders and artists, the team invited children aged 9 to 12 from 10 classrooms to join a lunchtime learning program in the natural areas surrounding their school. Armed with iPads and cameras, students documented the more���than���human life they encountered. Many became especially interested in a small pond behind the school, where they spent time observing and filming tadpoles.

Each researcher brought complementary expertise. Hill���s research focuses on community-based, land���centred, and anti���colonial learning. Whintors, a dedicated elementary educator, specializes in outdoor pedagogies, social emotional learning, and action research. Lin specializes in community arts education and arts-based educational research. Her work engages digital storytelling as both a research methodology and a form of creative and community-engaged research output.

The team also worked closely with Elder Rick Bailey of the Katzie First Nation, who has long championed the protection of local waterways and wildlife. Hill, Whintors, and Bailey previously collaborated on the project, and many of the participating students had taken part in that project as well.

When they discovered their beloved school pond had unexpectedly begun to dry up, leaving the tadpoles stranded, the students immediately took action. They collaborated to move and protect the tadpoles, worked to restore the pond, documented their efforts, and shared their learning with the wider school community. They hosted a school-wide film festival and fundraiser, participated in regular outdoor learning sessions, and brought friends and family to visit the pond.

The students, who named their group the Tadpole Movie Makers, received the Graeme Loader Community Panda Award from (WWF) for their leadership in community engagement and habitat protection. The WWF year-end video accumulated over 46,000 views within four weeks of its release, reflecting the public reach of that collective action. In addition, Cher Hill was recognized with 911勛圖���s Emerging Community-Engaged Researcher Award for her contributions towards contributing to more connected, thriving, and just communities���for this and her other community initiatives.

Below: WWF ���Together for Nature: Looking Back on 2025.��� Graeme Loader Community Panda Award begins at ~3:05

Hill, Whintors and Lin, alongside the Tadpole Movie Makers, detail their approach and findings in , published in The Canadian Journal of Action Research. The article will soon be featured on the .

���Our research shows that when children are given the chance to lead digital storytelling projects, they become more engaged learners and help spark positive change in their communities,��� note the authors.

���In schools, young people are seldom granted the autonomy to direct their learning, lead initiatives, or share their stories beyond the classroom. Through this project, the children discovered the power of their own voices���and their ability to contribute meaningfully to the transformation of their communities.���

We spoke with the researchers about their work and the impact of the project.

What makes this research project so significant?

This project was not research conducted on students, but with them. As an action research initiative, we worked alongside the children throughout the process, co-designing the inquiry, responding to events as they unfolded, and supporting students in exercising genuine agency over their learning and advocacy.

The pond rescue and film festival were not outcomes observed from a distance; they were part of a shared process in which students, researchers, teachers and community members acted together. The research contributes a complementary form of knowledge by theorizing the pedagogical conditions of land-based learning, Indigenous perspectives, and digital storytelling that made such student-led action possible.

What benefits do students receive from the experiences of learning on the land, that they may not receive by classroom instruction alone. What learning outcomes did you observe?

The learning for the students was diverse, complex and unpredictable. Individual students delved deeply into different areas of our collective learning.

One boy felt compelled to learn as much as he could about climate change as a result of witnessing the depletion of the tadpole pond. He brought in pages and pages of research that he did at home to share with others. Other students learned about water filtration and what kinds of water enables tadpoles to thrive.

Some students developed their interviewing skills and their capacities for public speaking, driven by the desire to learn more from experts and share their learning with the community. Others developed entrepreneurial skills, brainstorming how they could raise funds to support creek restorations efforts.

The students learned about the superpowers and teachings of tadpoles, and imagined how tadpoles might need to adapt to survive in an increasingly warm climate. All students enhanced their curricular competencies, which are foundational to all aspects of learning, developing their critical and creative thinking skills to enhance collective wellness, as well as their sense of personal agency as they worked towards their goals.

How did Indigenous perspectives and teachings inform the project?

Some students, who had been involved in a previous project with Elder Rick Bailey from Katzie Nation, drew on what they learned from him about the importance of caring for salmon like family in the face of current challenges within local rivers and creeks, including pollution, development, overfishing, fish farms and global warming.

The students applied this learning within the context of the tadpoles, making the connection about kinship relations, as well as the larger impacts of global warming. Neva shared a video from with the students, outlining the teachings of tadpoles and frogs, which involve adaptability and the ability to live in two worlds.

The students began to think of tadpoles as their teachers, and also worked with Snuneymuxw artist, Ryan Hughes, to explore the superpowers of tadpoles through art. Overall, this work was consistent with the . The learning was wholistic and relational and contributed to ���the well-being of the self, the family, the community, the land, the spirits and the ancestors.���

What surprised you most about the students��� leadership and decision making during the pond rescue?

What surprised Neva the most was that the students continued to return to the pond long after the tadpole rescue, including over the summer break. They brought their families to the pond, and involved them in increasing the water levels of the habitat, and researched how to do so in ways that would not harm the tadpoles.

Cher was delighted to learn that the teachings of Elder Rick were enduring, and children activated this learning several years later and within a different context. Although the teachers did not explicitly make connections to the work some students in the group had done to care for salmon, the kids often referred to aspects of this learning and drew parallels between salmon and tadpoles. Even children who were not part of the learning with Elder Rick began to carry his teachings, indicating a larger cultural shift within the school.

Overall, it was impressive to witness the impact of the project on diverse students, including students who struggle to see the relevance of school and find their place within the school community. This work gave them a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose. It demonstrated to them that they can contribute to something bigger than themselves in meaningful ways.

How did digital storytelling shape the students��� understanding of place and environmental responsibility?

Digital storytelling gave the students a methodology for making meaning. It is not just recording what they observed, but also interpreting and communicating their relationship to the pond and its inhabitants. Through the process of sharing their stories, the children developed a sense of authorship and accountability that extended beyond the classroom into the broader community. The stories they produced functioned as community-engaged research artifacts that documented ecological change and called others to respond.

What future research questions emerged from this project, and where do think you might take this work next?

This research has inspired multiple new projects, following the lead of the children and the land. The outdoor learning group continues to meet in the forest weekly. The students are keen to grow food to help feed the animals in the area, as well as flowers to attract pollinators. They have a top secret plan to raise more funds to support creek restoration, that will also help to educate community members about the superpowers of local animals and plants and the challenges they face.

Elder Rick has gifted the students a water testing kit so they can learn more about local streams. Our research is now focusing on multi-aged learning and how children form knowledge communities with the land that extend ideas and practices into the future.

The experiences of learning with tadpoles informed Neva���s doctoral dissertation research. She is currently working in collaboration with four other teachers to create learning opportunities that are wholistic and passion-driven that naturally arise from real world learning, similar to the forest learning, as an entry point for embodying mathematical learning.

Could the program be adapted for other schools?

This program can absolutely be adapted and enlivened in other contexts, providing that dispositions and ways of being on these lands since time in memorial, as taught by Elders and knowledge keepers, are centred within the learning.

Additionally, all members of the group must be positioned as both teachers and learners, and the nature of the learning should be understood as emergent and indeterminant, guided by the land and the children. This type of learning unfolds naturally when children are afforded agency, find something they are passionate about, and engage wholistically. Rather than asking children what they know or what they are learning during forest encounters, Neva often asks children, how they are feeling, which makes all the difference.

Not all schools will be surrounded by a forest, but there are always ways to connect with more-than-human kin and care for the land, for example monitoring storm drains that channel water into fish-bearing creeks, and observing the birds who visit schoolyards. It is nice to have a forest, but you don���t need it. Supporting students in feeling connected to the land where they live and to be aware of the storied landscapes of these places since time immemorial is always possible.

For more visit:

• Cher Hill���s Faculty web page and
• Ching-Chiu Lin���s Faculty web page and
• Youth Led Environmental Action Recognized with WWF Canada Award
  
  

This project was supported by the Government of Canada���s New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF), as well as a Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education (NOIIE) Grant.