Season 5, Episode 13: Fostering “Good Mind”: Teaching for Climate Change with Maria Vamalis
image credit | Dmitri Bong
Season 5, Episode 13: Fostering “Good Mind”: Teaching for Climate Change with Maria Vamalis
“And when I talk about regenerative ways of being, I'm really talking about interrupting the logics, ways of knowing that these harmful systems have produced in us. So what does it mean to practice logics that are not rooted in supremacy of humans over animals or … what does it mean to practice a slower way, an emergent way that is rooted with connecting with life, connecting with the land? What does it mean to really hold reverence and devotion for life?”
“I believe that our actions to protect and regenerate come from love. That it's the bird song that we love that ultimately makes us want to take action to protect, to regenerate. And so this regenerative field of practice is where we can actually be really unapologetic in our deep longing for love and connection and relational vitality. And … bring that forward as a key medicine and a key frequency that is needed as an antidote to the kind of horror and despair and violence that the systems are currently producing for so many …”
Maria Vamalis designs learning environments that strengthen collective well-being that help people rediscover their capacity to act together in conditions of uncertainty, through promoting critical thinking and relationship skills. Hear her inspiring conversation with Panu & Thomas.
Links
Maria Vamalis and Anayennisi
The Critical Thinking Consortium (TC²) Seven Transformative Thinking Habits
The Association of Canadian Dean's Accord on Education for a Sustainable Future
Beyond Sustainability: AI, Education, and Regenerative Futures
Program Example: Future Climate Collective (Portland, Oregon)
Transcript
Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.
Thomas Doherty: Well hello, I'm Thomas Doherty
Panu Pihkala: I am Panu Pihkala.
Doherty: And welcome to climate change and happiness. This is our podcast, the show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about, well, you know, a lot of things, issues about climate change and the environment and politics, but mainly we're thinking about what it means to be happy in the modern world. And I'm psychologist and I'm coming at this from a mental health and a wellness perspective, Panu is emotions scholar from Finland. and we've got a bit of an emerging theme on today for education and schools and young people and inspiration and for that we have a special guest with us.
Maria Vamalis: Hello, my name is Maria Vamvalis. I'm a founder of Anayennisi, a regenerative field of practice and a director at the Critical Thinking Consortium, Canadian not-for-profit.
Doherty: Yeah, we were really excited. We've already been having a neat conversation with Maria and I've been aware of her work for a while. So it's really nice to have her on the show. Panu and I know you, Maria have crossed paths in the past. So Panu, do you want to get us going?
Pihkala: Warmly welcome Maria also on my behalf. Lovely to see you again and continue our talks. You've been up to many things, but there's some common threads in them. What you said briefly about what you have been doing already includes mentions of them. So very holistic and humane and interspecies approach to things. Could you start by telling something about your path towards where you are now?
Vamalis: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think I've always been really drawn to this deeper sense of interconnectedness, even when I was a child, this sort of relational consciousness that I did not find a lot of mirroring for as I was growing up. I think in many ways it's educated and socialized out of us. But I was really deeply concerned about the environment and, you know, really all the violence that I felt in our society and this drew me to education and wanting to figure out ways that we can teach to create a more beautiful world, know, a more joyful world, a world where we were flourishing. And I started teaching about climate change about well over 20 years ago before it was even in the curriculum because I knew that this was something young people would be dealing with.
And through my experiences as an educator, I just became more and more concerned as I saw the cultural denial and delay around the issue. And I became very concerned about young people's mental health and how education was going to ultimately respond to that. And that led me to doctoral studies where my question was, how do we teach for climate change and climate justice in ways that nurture meaning, purpose and hope? that really support the psycho-spiritual wellbeing of learners. So that's really been part of my trajectory and doing that work and then trying to bring that research really into practice in these times.
Pihkala: Warm thanks for dwelling on that and listeners, if you have listened to previous episodes you'll notice that there's a lot of common between what Maria is doing and what I and Thomas are passionate about and I also have a long fascination and interest towards education and emotions and Maria, I know that you also have some Greek roots. Would you like to say something about that?
Vamalis: Yes, yes, both of my parents are Greek actually. They're both immigrants to Canada. My mother came when she was six years old, my father later in his twenties. And I think my Greek roots have always been deeply important to me and probably have also influenced in seeing my relatives who really had to come because of colonization and civil war and for many reasons were displaced from land that they truly loved. And seeing the impacts of that displacement on them, I think has always been something that marked me as a person is understanding that and going back to that land and feeling.
I think those ancestral connections and how powerful that is when you recognize your family has tended to the land, has tended the olive trees. And so the regenerative field of practice that I've started is called Anayennisi. And Anayennisi means regeneration, revival, rebirth, renewal in Greek. And it's really an impulse that I think we need to be taking very seriously right now in these times of, well, you know, ecological collapse in many ways is what we're seeing.
Pihkala: Yeah, that's profound. That's profound and the displacement and colonization and also resonating with what is happening globally. That's another angle to this. The world is becoming strange on quite deep levels. do you feel that this Greek heritage has affected your relationship to the modern human world? is it like having two kinds of ecosystems that you easily bond with, the one where you grew up in Canada and the Greek one, or how do you see this?
Vamalis: Yeah, no, this is, I really appreciate your question actually, because what I want to acknowledge is how it was my privilege of connecting with Haudenosaunee knowledge keepers here in the Canadian context, that actually, I think was the first time that that relational consciousness that I spoke to about was actually deeply mirrored and met. And through those connections was was able to deepen my connection to my ancestral homelands and my sense of that deep responsibility, but also recognizing the responsibilities that I have here to the place in which I live and to the treaty relationships with the First Nations that have been in many ways dishonored in this context. And so it's really connecting my own deep ancestral roots and the love of the land that is part of bringing myself into right relationship with the land and the people and the histories of where I currently live, of where I'm currently situated. So there's really a through line and it's the Indigenous presence.
Pihkala: Mmm.
Vamalis: and that deep respect for relationality of being in right relationship that I think has so much to contribute to the ways in which we're thinking about how to respond to the current moment.
Doherty: That's lovely. Yeah. So many resonances with other guests that we've talked about. We always ask people their origin story and it often comes back to their place of their childhood and their family and then this larger thinking about the world. And as you're talking, Maria, I think we should just also highlight the special. I think there's a unique Canadian context to this too. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but as I've observed, I grew up near where you live Maria in New York, in Buffalo, New York, but just knowing a bit about Canadian culture. Unlike other countries, in North America in particular, you know, there seems to be this, and Canada is not perfect either, of course, but there does seem to be a much more welcoming attitude to just basic ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. And then a unique kind of Canadian outdoors nature kind of ethos. But also, think openness to the First Nations. And anyway, this it seems like there's more support for this kind of direction toward right relationships. I mean, I've been in Canada at workshops and I've seen the blanket ceremony, for example, you might be familiar with, you know, where the Native ceremony or it shows how the how the Native cultures were slowly kind of picked away through the treaties. There's just an attention like the New Zealand to the treaties like it's much more people are much more aware of the legal rights of native cultures. But you want to speak a little bit about just the Canadian side of this.
Vamalis: Yeah, well, think, you know, obviously, I think this actually has a lot to do with an educational response that's needed. And we can look at the particular Canadian context, but also think about this from a global perspective as well, which is that if we think about climate emotions as signals, you know, they're signals.
Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Vamalis: in many respects of us being not in right relationship with the earth. And if we resist just individualizing them and start to think about them as responses to systems that are harmful, we can look at these roots as, you know, that that coloniality, which has so much about land displacement, of disposability of peoples. Getting peoples off of the land by whatever means necessary. You know, these roots are certainly part of the Canadian context of land dispossession, of residential schools, of destruction of cultures and knowledge systems that are actually profound and sophisticated and have so much to offer. In the Canadian context, there's been a process of what's called truth and reconciliation where these histories and the truth of the histories are really coming to light.
And there have been, there are ongoing efforts to come back into right relationship, to honor, for example, where we live. And it actually affects the area where you lived as well, Thomas in New York. But there was a great law of peace that came after there were many, many wars in this area. And the great law of peace really comes back to the fact that having a good mind, you know, being a good mind. So we're thinking about this podcast as being about happiness or, you know, that the good mind is a mind that does not seek to harm others, including the more than human world. And if we think about the great law of peace as actually the citizenship law, you know, in this region that has been erased, coming back into right relationship is coming back into that good mind that we do want to see the flourishing of all life, that that is actually an impulse that we have as human beings to connect and to feel relational vitality and reverence and beauty and joy. And it's really systems that interrupt that, that are part of the extraction, you know, without any constraint.
Extraction of the earth without any constraint, whether it's, you know, to, you know, be so violent to get what it is that you need. This is really underlying so much of what we're currently facing. Like the systems that we're in have actually created the complex emotions that many of us are contending with. And to bring it back into that wider perspective. So that's, I see as a through line.
Pihkala: That's fascinating and reminds me of a phrase I haven't been thinking of in years coming from the dissertation studies time which is by Joseph Siddler this American earth-minded theologian and humanist and the line is, abuse is use without grace. Abuse is use without grace. So that's from roughly 1961. that was an early sermon on environmental matters, but really resonating with what you say, and having the right mindsets and the deeper dimensions of what is meant by morality and even by style. What is the style in which we are in the world and treat others? Whether those others are humans, humans or not, so I think you are really going to the heart of this podcast also, so how to live a meaningful and good life in the classic sense. So not just a good life of having lots of luxuries, but what is really good.
Doherty: Hmm. Yeah, good mind. love that. I love that term. Yeah, and so we've done a good job on the high ground of, I think, tracing out some of the some of the ethics and the vision of this work. Let's think about teachers and teachers in public schools, because Maria, I know you're actually the ground that you're working in is the school system. And that's an area that always needs more support everywhere, I find. So for teachers in the audience, let's think about them and our listeners. Like what are some of the practical things that you're doing in schools or what are some of your initiatives? I'd be curious about that.
Vamalis: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've actually there's there's a number of things that we've done. One of the things we've done is that we've actually had a national online climate education course that that actually have taught co taught with a Haudenosaunee educator to bring these ideas of truth and reconciliation and, you know, decolonization, bringing that together with climate action.
And bringing really holistic responses so that with teachers, we actually talk about supporting the climate emotions, making that a part of how we teach. Because if we only taught students the scientific evidence and projections, we all know that's very dispiriting in many ways. And then we're not actually making the space for what will arise when young people are realistically encountering the scope and scale of ecological harm. But one of the things through my work with the Critical Thinking Consortium is that we actually look at the challenges around youth mental health, which are caused by a whole series of things, you know, intersecting, and to actually intentionally teach what we call the transformative thinking habits. So through a research-informed process, we've identified seven transformative thinking habits that we believe actually help transform some of the complex climate emotions into a deeper sense of agency, including collective agency in order to tackle these issues. So critical mindedness, relational thinking, courageous thinking, visionary thinking, accepting discomfort in learning, being inquiry minded.
If we actually teach the curriculum through these thinking habits so that, and especially in the context of AI, we wanna keep a focus on thinking, and nurturing that thinking and seeing these thinking habits as a profound way to engage any subject really, that we can teach history through a visionary lens, visionary thinking and inspire it to engage the climate crisis. So that's another piece is really scaffolding how we do that work in classrooms.
Doherty: Yeah. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought in the AI as well, because that's the danger is people kind of naively kind of outsource their thinking, so to speak. AI, of course, doesn't think I'm trying to stay away from actually the term artificial intelligence, because it's really more of a problem, you know, learning machine that's based on statistics and binary thinking. It's not thinking in the same way that humans think, you know, with our heart and our gut and our mind and all this other stuff. But yeah.
Pihkala: Yeah, that was actually what I was going towards here. that's very fascinating those thinking habits. And what do you think, Maria? Are they also partly affective habits or emotional habits?
Vamalis: Yeah, so I think when we talk about the holistic thinking, mean, when you're thinking holistically, I you really are engaging mind, body, spirit. And so when we're looking at thinking, it's not just a cognitive act. know, are thinking, we are engaging more holistically with how to approach learning and bringing the whole learner. And I think actually that distinct Indigenous knowledge systems, when you look at their educational approaches, they actually center the learning spirit. know, they use this term, Dr. Marie Bautiste here in Canada, in the Canadian context, talks about the learning spirit and that this is central to education, that we nurture the spirit. And I think we can, I think we could absolutely have a conversation to talk about the climate crisis as being something that is destabilizing not only the psyche, but really the spirit of people that the systems that we've created are harming the spirits of young people as they're thinking about if these systems are not interrupted, if they're not shifted, there's such dispiriting projections for the future.
And so I think it's helpful to actually, you know, invite us to talk about the spirit, you know, the underlying spirit, which is about again, being in right relationship to all that is, that interconnectedness, that we've been separated from the epistemologies that so many of us are trained in disrupt that way of knowing, that way of being.
Doherty: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. “Dispiriting “is another great, great term because spirit also is just if we if we if we just divorce it from the mystical side spirit is just this inspiration is just this motivation. It's our breath. So it's like getting your breath knocked out of you, so to speak. How does it look? What is some of these transformational habits actually look like in the in the classroom with an actual education topic?
Vamalis: Yeah, so for example, let's come back to this idea of the treaty relationships being really important in the Canadian context and wanting to invite students to think historically if we're inviting them into history education, but a way for them to engage with that history. it's not just studying the past in this kind of, you know, inert, let's look at the facts of history. we could invite visionary thinking by giving them a really rich inquiry question, like what would our community look like 10, 20, 50 years from now, if we began to truly honor treaty relationships. And we open up this inquiry that's visionary, in which they have to actually understand the history of treaty relationships.
And so really rich inquiry, critical inquiry is such a powerful way of engaging learners, of supporting mental health and wellbeing, and actually being intentional about the way we're scaffolding these transformative thinking habits, you know, so that we're encouraging that kind of visionary thinking, but rooted in evidence, rooted in oral histories, rooted in making connections systemically about what happened in the past and where are we now because we've dishonored treaties? What might be possible if we honor treaties? And you can feel the sort of richness and engagement of an inquiry like that and bringing that to life because our schools aren't necessarily, they're not therapeutic spaces in that way, but they are meaning making.
They can and should be meaning making spaces. And that's what engages us. And that's what invites our wholeness as learners to come in. And to use that to actually reimagine and think regeneratively, I think would be so powerful in this current context.
Pihkala: Hmm. Yeah, that's wonderful and resonates with many things in creative pedagogies in Finland also. And I'm tempted to talk more about the Finnish situations, but I will not. How has the reception been, Maria, for the work you and others are doing in this sphere?
Doherty: Yeah.
Vamalis: Yeah, actually, we've had a lot of really positive engagement. So one project I was involved in is we've had a climate camp that's been led by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Dr. Hilary Inwood, the Eco Schools and our largest school board. We've collaborated to do this professional learning in the summer and brought some of these frameworks together. And you know, teachers have reported that they feel more energized, that they feel more capable and more confident of really bringing these issues forward and teaching in ways that nurture climate action and agency. And that's the big piece is nurturing collective agency in the way we do this work. With the transformative thinking habits, as we're continuing to engage educators and system leaders. We've seen again a lot of enthusiasm and excitement because people feel that sense of possibility. And I think that is really, important in this moment when so many people are feeling quite heavy and feeling a lot of despair and anxiety. So we've seen a lot of really positive reception to these more holistic approaches to this work.
Pihkala: That's very good to hear. In Finland, experience of many of us working with education and teachers is that even relatively short interventions which build resources and encourage people to be in touch with also difficult emotions and then moving forward to how to build collective agency and efficacy. So that's very powerful. Of course, there's the challenge of how to invite those teachers who are not so motivated in the first place to start coming towards these meterials. But anyway, one has always to start where we are and not everything can be at one spot just testifying to both the potential and some of the challenges from the Finnish side.
Vamalis: Yeah, absolutely.
Doherty: Yeah, yeah, this is yeah, this is great. So pedagogy is one of those terms, you know, for listeners, that's like, you know, your theory of education, the teachers, the teachers sort of way of educating. it's one of those words that signal we're thinking we're thinking about our teaching and we're going to school about it. Yeah. So let's just stay with the teachers, because I think, you know, teachers just really do deserve support. I know I was at a climate conference last year and was a bunch of educators and education leaders talking about climate education. And I just was struck by how top down it was that even though the values and the content was good, was just all, I just felt it was just loading the teachers with so much, what the teaching standards and they have to get this information and that information. I remember saying at the group that I was with, know, what about the teachers themselves?
Like they, I think the danger is a lot of teachers don't feel confident to teach this material because they don't they haven't worked through their own environmental identity. You know Maria you're so eloquent about your culture and your background and you've clearly sat with it and worked through it but most teachers I think just haven't really thought about this. They're so I don't think they have the person skills sometimes to do this kind of work or how do we support teachers to do their own much like with therapists you have to do your own work first how can this is kind of a large just general question but like how can teachers do their own work?
Vamalis: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's so important. And we actually at the Critical Thinking Consortium speak a lot about the inner work and how we sort of look at a Mobius, you know, like a Mobius strip, and this idea that there's no, there's no really distinction between the inner and the outer and that when we're teaching, like, our practices are, are actually so much grounded in our own beliefs as educators and how we are in the classroom has so much to do with, you know, who we are and the kind of reflexivity, you know, the really thinking about our mental models, our belief systems, our assumptions. I do think that, you know, there's many intersecting issues here. And again, this is why we can't really separate the systemic dimensions and just individualize because we've got education systems that may work at cross purposes, that in many respects, they're oriented toward educating for jobs on a burning planet right now. And so there's one issue is, you know, what is the purpose of education currently? You know, I do believe it needs to shift toward regenerative, you know, and planetary flourishing as being the purpose of education. And the work will come from that. I do think that teacher education programs really taking this seriously. So we're fortunate in the Canadian context that the Canadian deans for schools of education have actually signed an accord saying that the climate and nature emergency must be taken seriously. And we're starting to see more and more uptake in teacher education programs around this. I'm seeing signs of that as well in the United States. Some states and districts are doing this work, of course, in others, not at all. And in fact, we're going in the opposite direction. So it's uneven globally, but there's momentum and movement. I think teachers finding communities of practice is very important.
What often happens, and I found this in my research, that there'll be one teacher who's the eco teacher or the tree hugger teacher, and the school will be like, check, that teacher has us covered. And that is not the approach we need to be taking. We actually need, you know, communities of practice. So I've also been doing work with the school board here that we're building a climate education leadership program for the most motivated teachers. So they've got a space to come together and not feel alone within that larger system. And we believe in kind of doing these levers of systems change. You know, that's been part of my approach is, you know, building those communities is part of this. So even teachers taking online courses and finding others, you know, and not feeling alone. But yes, the inner work is really, really important.
Pihkala: Is this Anayennisi connected to that or more specifically what I'm asking as we come towards the close of this episode, time always runs out. What do do via that field of practice?
Vamalis: Yes. Yeah, Anayennisi is really the place, it's a field of practice for people who want to practice regenerative ways of being. And when I talk about regenerative ways of being, I'm really talking about interrupting the logics, ways of knowing that these harmful systems have produced in us. So what does it mean to practice? Logics that are not rooted in supremacy of humans over animals or, you know, what does it mean to practice a slower way, an emergent way that is rooted with connecting with life, connecting with the land? What does it mean to really hold reverence and devotion for life?
What does it mean? Because I believe that our actions to protect and regenerate come from love. That it's the bird song that we love that ultimately makes us want to take action to protect, to regenerate. And so this regenerative field of practice is where we can actually be really unapologetic in our deep longing for love and connection and relational vitality. And you know, bring that forward as a key medicine and a key frequency that is needed as an antidote to the kind of horror and despair and violence that the systems are currently producing for so many and of course, inequitably around the world.
Doherty: Hmm. So you're such an eloquent speaker. It's just really great to listen to you. It's why we do this podcast. So I could get my, my own batteries recharged. That's so nice. I really appreciate all of the things you're saying. Unapologetic in our deep longing. That's in our deep longing. That's just such a nice, we're so far away from the, you know, the situation in the US right now is so dire. I feel like what we're talking about is, you know,
I think a lot of people are afraid in the United States because of our current government and they are afraid of even having conversations like this, or at least some of our superficial leadership is so far away from this kind of true cultural building, true knowledge that it is radical. It is very radical.
Vamalis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And really it's interesting because we look at the roots even of what's happening in the US and that kind of situation. We think about all these things we've been talking about and how certain ways of being of exploitation, of dominance, of hierarchy, of extraction that creates this kind of harm and fear and separation from relationality and really the joy of life. The joy of life is in the connection, it's in the loving. And why we've chosen to organize ourselves as human beings, you know, or why our systems have organized themselves is something we need to do really deep inquiries into and come back to that deeper knowing of what it is to be a good mind, coming back to the good mind, right? A good human being. And I think that this, the connections and the relationships is what forms the resilience that we need to counter the fear, to counter the kind of fear that's being really unleashed in the world.
Pihkala: Well said, very well said, I think. Even though we are over time, it reminds me of this Greek word, Spoudaiogeloion. Sorry for butchering the pronunciation, but that's the old concept for being grave merry or practicing earnestness. Spodio, Geloion. So that's the combination of comedy and tragedy and being so serious in your joy that it's able to hold both. So because of your Greek roots, just wanted to get it out there. But greatly enjoyed this conversation and very, very grateful for all the work you do.
Vamalis: Thank you.
Doherty: Yeah, thank you Maria. Yeah, thank you.
Vamalis: Thank you. It so nice. It went so fast. You're right. It's so lovely.
Doherty: Yes, that's what we say. Yeah. Well, listeners, we yeah, Maria, listeners, and, Panu. I want to thank everyone for the time. We're going to put a bunch of links to this community of practice and the Canadian Dean Accords and a lot of the really juicy things, especially for, know, for educators out there. This one is I mean, this is for all of us, but especially for educators out there. We only you know how challenging it is to to work in the classroom with truly holding mental health and well-being and trying to find joy. So we'll put this episode out. It'll be out soon and we'll have links to Maria's work, and Maria and Panu and listeners, everyone be well.
