Educators often get short shrift in this economy. They are political punching bags, they deal with all the challenges of young people growing up, and increasingly, in a messed up world. And they simply are not paid enough to do all of the things we ask of them. They are burned out, unsupported, undercompensated, and underappreciated. From K-12 educators through college professors, it’s a difficult job.
But, as my guest today describes it, the role of an educator in this moment of the climate emergency is to be a culture-shaper, and the classroom has the potential to be a site of regeneration, healing, and love for the earth and each other. My conversation with Dr. Maria Vamvalis, author of a forthcoming book called Courageous Inquiry: Educator Stories of Unlearning, Relearning, and Reconciliation, is an invitation to touch into the beauty and reverence and connection of your own humanity, whether you’re a teacher or not.
These times ask a lot of all of us. Who will we be? Who do we want our kids to be? What kind of people do we need to become in order to bring about the change we desire, and how do we get others to become those kinds of humans with us?
This is part one in a four-part series Climate Magic is curating for all the educators looking for inspiration as they head into the fall term.
Shownotes
Note on a correction: in our interview, Dr. Vamvalis says that Nixon circulated a memo in the 1950s about sea level rise and the disappearance of eastern seaboard cities. She followed up with a correction, and links, below: “The research was circulating among Congress in the 1950s about the profound impacts of climate change, how unprecedented it was, and the potential impacts on coastal cities. But it was not until 1969 that the memo went up to the President's office. That memo says, ‘Good-bye, New York and Good-bye, Washington” (not Miami). But the coastal cities' piece was already starting to be documented. I had meant to say "1960's" but had 1950s in my head because that is when the research was first circulating in some government circles. Nixon was not even President in the 1950's!”
- Information about Maria’s new book:
Courageous Inquiry: Educator Stories of Unlearning, Relearning, and Reconciliation is an educational professional learning resource from the Critical Thinking Consortium. Written by Dr. Maria Vamvalis with guiding wisdom from Mi’kmaw scholar Dr. Marie Battiste, the book features honest educator stories, reflection prompts and practical tools to support K-12 educators and school leaders in doing inner and relational work that truth and reconciliation (and climate justice) require. The same systems that severed Indigenous peoples from their Land and knowledge systems also produced schools structurally unprepared to respond to the ecological crisis with depth, justice, and regenerative capacity. This book supports educators to continue showing up for the long, relational repair work that transformative systems change requires. Read more about it and order a copy here.
- Dr. Vamvalis’ website: https://www.anayennisi.org/
- Dr. Vamvalis’ work at The Critical Thinking Consortium: https://tc2.ca/products/courageous-inquiry-educator-stories-unlearning-relearning-and-reconciliation
- Gesturing Toward Decolonial Futures: https://decolonialfutures.net/
- Big oil in the 1950's:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/12/big-oil-fossil-fuel-warning
- Nixon memos:
- Info on Earth Day:
TRANSCRIPT
Maria Vamvalis: We have created systems that have created real harm, profound harm, to the point that we are condemning present and future generations not to feel and experience that aliveness. And so education has to be a site for remembering and healing that.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Welcome to Climate Magic, a show where we explore the messy human side of climate politics. I'm your host, Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray, an author and a professor of environmental studies at Cal Poly Humboldt.
My guest is Dr. Maria Vamvalis, a Canadian educator, facilitator, and researcher, with over 20 years of experience working at the intersection of education, social change, and collective well-being. Her award-winning doctoral research from the University of Toronto proposed new ideas for how to teach climate, climate justice, centering students' agency, centering their whole lived emotional and embodied experiences, and thinking about the colonial capitalist context in which climate education most typically takes place.
She currently serves as a director of the Critical Thinking Consortium, which nurtures action for a flourishing world. Maria also led Canada's first national climate education course and co-designed the Toronto District School Board's inaugural climate camp.
I had the pleasure of working closely with Maria at a conference I co-hosted at UC-Riverside a few years ago. Yes, she's absolutely brilliant, but there's also this magical quality about Maria. I don't know how to explain it. The rational explanation is that she is walking the talk, so much so that she can just show up with that quality of being that supports the work she is inviting others to do.
So, are you ready to think about how to become more human with my guest today, Maria Vamvalis? Let's dive in. Welcome to the show, Maria.
Maria Vamvalis: Hi, Sarah. It's great to be here.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yay! I'm so happy to talk to you. I just, we'll just start off easy. Tell us a little bit about how you got to the work that you're doing now and describe that work a little bit.
Maria Vamvalis: Yeah, so I'm an educator. You know, I've been a teacher within the public school system, teaching, you know, young children and, you know, adolescents for many years. And I think, you know, when I started teaching, I started teaching like over 20 years ago, and I was really concerned about climate change then, but it wasn't in the curriculum. And I just found a way, as teachers do, to find ways to stretch curriculum to do important things. And really, as the climate crisis and climate denial just kept intensifying, I just got more and more concerned about how we were actually going to teach through this crisis, teach about it, and how we're going to support young people's mental health and well-being as we did it.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yeah.
Maria Vamvalis: So.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yeah. What were you seeing in young people 20 years ago? Or in this interim of 20 the last 20 years? Have you seen anything in terms of their mental health and their own preparation for this polycrisis they're growing -- coming of age in? What's the sort of temperature on the young people that you observed over the years?
Maria Vamvalis: Yeah, I guess what I've seen is as they became more and more aware of it and I also want to talk about awareness is it's not just young people learning the facts about climate change or coming to understand the scope and scale of ecological harm. I think we also have to acknowledge because we're all these embodied relational beings that kids also have a felt sense of knowing that something is off, you know, even if they don't know yet what it is, they have a sense of, you know, not really being in right relationship, you know, that we're not really in we're not really in a good place.
And then, as they learn more, you know, two things happen. I think both young people are getting increasingly concerned, especially as they see leadership not do what needs to be done to address the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis. And then, also, because when they're provided with opportunities where their own agency can really come through, we also see them absolutely leading.
So it is a paradox. It's not just young people are in total despair, but there is real despair, and there is real anxiety, and there is distress, and there is nihilism and cynicism. That's real. But there's also unbelievable, you know, agency and insight and a real commitment, you know, to resistance and to shaping different futures. So, both of those things exist in young people.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Are they getting their education in schools, or are they getting their education about that felt sense that you describe, I guess, that felt sense that something's wrong? Where is that coming from? Where are they getting that from? And then, what is the responsibility of the educator to meet that? And how do they do that?
Maria Vamvalis: I think that it happens at multiple levels. I mean, I teach in the Canadian context, and you know, we've had a number of surveys and also researchers who have really identified that we know kids aren't getting enough climate education. If they're going to get it, they're going to get it maybe in a science class or a geography class where it's part of the curricular expectations. It's certainly not something they're getting across grades, across subjects at this point.
So they are getting, some are getting some of it in school, but I would still say it's limited. I would still say it's largely dependent on motivated educators to really, you know, bring it in a robust way forward. And I do think they're getting it from being aware of what's happening. I think they're getting it from the news. I think they're getting it from social media. I think they're getting it in all of those different ways.
But I don't think that yet formal education has centered this crisis the way it needs to. And when you talk about what teachers' role is, I mean, I really do have a bold vision and radical, but I'm not afraid of the word "radical" because it actually means getting to the root of things. Like, I'm not afraid of that word. I think we have to really, like, you know, look at, yeah, get it, get -- let's get to the root of this crisis so that we can actually chart a regenerative pathway through it. I think that teachers are profound culture workers. And we are in a moment that requires a huge cultural transformation.
And so I believe that this is the responsibility across education systems to really center charting a regenerative pathway through these times. I don't think that anything less than that is enough to preserve dignity and justice in a rapidly warming world.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yeah, and I know that Canada is doing a lot of really good, progressive, cutting-edge work on this relative to the U.S. Can you just tease us a little bit for our US listeners? What's possible out there?
Maria Vamvalis: Yeah, actually, I was just in Toronto this week, and Environment and Climate Change Canada had a learning arm. Unfortunately, they've removed the funding from that, but before they did, they actually had a national consultation and developed an environmental learning framework. Now, in Canada, similar to the U.S., education is not actually a federal responsibility. It is the responsibility of provinces and territories. So this is, you know, we have this framework, it's a vision, and now we're going to have to figure out ways to implement this vision across a federated system. It's not going to come through right now, a legal, federal, to provincial and territorial because that can't happen.
But I think through motivated educators, through, for example, I work with a not-for-profit, the Critical Thinking Consortium, and we work with ministries, school districts, leaders, educators across the country, I think there's so many opportunities that we can advance this. And we also really want to, I think, connect the pedagogy to what we know statistically, and there's a growing evidence base, and I know you're aware of this, Sarah, of a growing mental health crisis in young people.
That's, you know, the roots of which are a whole series of things, not only climate, but many things. And I think that if we focus on how transformative pedagogy is actually something that supports collective well-being, individual and collective well-being, we can think about this and get it beyond just the tree huggers who care about the environment and recognize that the state of our environment, it really does affect all of our health and well being, everybody's, our communities. And so how do we take that up educationally? And I think we're doing that. And I think also one other point I wanted to make in our context is: we've been engaged in truth and reconciliation with First Nations and Indigenous communities. There's so much work that needs to be done.
But as that work continues, we're also getting at the Indigenous ways of knowing that are more holistic, that are more relational, that actually connect all of us back to our own ancestral roots, of being connected to land, of being connected to that magic of interconnectedness. And as we continue that work of truth and reconciliation, that also flows into how we're educating in these times. So I think Canada is advancing on that. But of course, we know that when it comes to issues of structural justice, of actually like giving land back, of actually entrenching these things legally, of actually redistributing resources, we know that's where we meet resistance.
And so we also want to be building that collective agency in order to move towards structural justice as we're healing the planet. You know, that doing those things is not separate. Structural injustice, increasing our sense of relationality and interconnectedness and engaging in regenerative actions is the work, right? All three of those things is the magic that we can start bringing back into the world.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: When you describe it that way, it does make me think of the folly and the ridiculousness of thinking that we're just going to give young people climate education in a science or geography class. It's like, wow, that's a lot of responsibility for a climate educator.
Maria Vamvalis: Yes. So it really has to be much broader than that. And in fact, it really goes against the grain of the way that pedagogy and education as a system overall in the U.S. and I'm guessing in Canada as well has been created really very much by kind of a colonial capitalist system, right?
Sarah Jaquette Ray: So I imagine that this vision, this radical, bold vision, as you describe it, which I want to talk about a little bit more and pause on some of those words like pedagogy and regeneration. I really want us to make sure we know what you're talking about.
But you know, what does that look like in a classroom? What does relationality look like? I really -- this is where I'm like, how do I do this in my classroom? And how do, you know, listeners who are educators or even just thinking about whatever space they're in, we could all show up in the ways that we do our work, wherever we are, in more relational ways, in more ways that take on this epistemology or way of knowing that you just described that connects us to the land more, et cetera, et cetera.
So, I want to talk about that more. But I sort of -- but like before we even go there, right, like I just asked you: what is the responsibility of the educator to meet young people in this moment? And we, so far, the mainstream has been to say we're going to sprinkle a little bit of climate change into some science class. At best, at best, that's what we're going to do. You're suggesting something much bigger. You're talking about the mental health of young people. Can you go there a little bit? Like, why -- where does that -- why is climate education, transformative climate education, responsible for the mental health of young people? And I'm putting that in a tricky -- I'm framing that question a little bit tricky, right? Like, obviously, that's [inaudible].
Maria Vamvalis: Of course.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: That's not the right question, but you know what I mean?
Maria Vamvalis: Yeah, like, so we need to get real. We all know; we've read the IPCC reports. We know that there's the International Panel on Climate Change. So, you know, you and I have been, you know, I'm sure read the summaries of those reports. A lot of people interested in climate are aware of the trajectory we are on. We are heading towards not 1.5 right now, we are heading towards 3. We have not done enough to draw down the carbon. We are heading towards 3. We know that 3 degrees of temperature, global average temperature rise.
Maria Vamvalis: And what will that feel like? Just bring us there just a little bit. Don't take us too far. I can't take it. But what's that going to feel like? A little bit. Give me a little bit. Imagination for that is impossible, you know. How do we imagine that?
We are talking about extreme heat waves. So, some of the heat waves that you are already experiencing in the United States, those are going to increase. We are talking about increased wildfires. We already had in Ontario about three years ago significant wildfires, where, for example, kids' track events that they train for, for weeks and weeks are canceled. These are the highlight of the season for those kids. They are not able to do that.
We are talking about wildfires that destroyed, for example, one of the jewels in the Canadian context, a pristine place, you know, in Banff, Alberta, that was just scorched to the ground? We're talking about an increase at that level. We're talking about droughts. We're talking about lack of access to water. A lot of the things that we are already experiencing are going to increase, and our capacity to respond is going to be compromised as the temperature gets hotter, because it is going to really decrease resilience in communities. The more the temperature increases, the direct impact on our capacity to respond and be resilient. So, I mean, that is the reality.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Just the flavor there. Thank you.
Maria Vamvalis: Yes. And so, and these are contexts where kids are going to school. So in Australia, when they had the intense fires about, I guess, five years ago, kids weren't out of school. You know, this is impacting education directly of kids being in school, of their communities, of places that they love. This is not theoretical. This is lived. This is embodied.
And so, if you really think of this disconnect, that we think about in a certain way almost the privilege of teaching that this is happening or could happen, versus it is happening. It is happening and it is already impacting well-being. It is already impacting our communities. And so if we do not find a way to respond to this robustly, collectively, with some agency, it's really hard for folks to sit with this uncomfortable truth, but we are essentially foreclosing a livable future. That's the reality.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm taking that in. And, you know, I'm quite happy to leave an uncomfortable pause when we have to take in heavy things. Yeah. So we're thinking about young people in particular with their developmental stages of their brains, where their -- what kinds of things their brains are actually capable of handling at different ages and such.
And we're talking about, for the most part, but not all young people, growing up swimming in -- I often use the metaphor of swimming in this water of this fishbowl that we're in -- that is telling them more or less all the wrong things to prepare for this. Just to be really gross and straightforward about it, but maybe polemical too. That they're swimming in water that is telling them about individualism. They're swimming in water that's telling them about not caring about what the wisdom of their elders tells them. That all the information that's important is new and exciting and young.
That amnesia about cultural history is really part of our water that we're swimming in. A fetish for money and esteem and ego is part of the water that most of us are swimming in. There's individualist society versus a collectivist society, very ill-prepared to deal with and to be educated, to come even into the classroom with anything that you just described.
So, given this sort of larger context of this water we're swimming in, can you describe a little bit about what you think is needed as opposed to what it is that we're already imbibing, what our way of knowing already is telling us to be like, young people in particular, and why that's going to fail to meet this moment. What we need instead.
Maria Vamvalis: Yeah, thank you. And I'm going to really go to the heart of it with my -- what I'm going to say.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Love it. Don't let me stop you.
Maria Vamvalis: I think we need to be really clear and sober that what we are in is -- and it's contextual, and yet I think there's an aspect of it that is shared, that we are living with a deep civilizational wound that has to do with what has disconnected us from our love of the Earth, from our love of the natural world, and that this forgetting of that knowing is structural, it is historical, it is structural, it is by design.
And so it's really hard to recognize that we are in a forgetting because we don't -- because every -- it's all around us, as you say, this water that we're swimming in. And so what we have to have the maturity and the courage to do in this moment is start to remember. And as we remember, let's be clear that there is grief because it's like remembering how alive we actually are, how alive this Earth actually is, how loving it is to hear bird song, how gorgeous it is to swim in crystal clear water.
And we have created systems that have created real harm, profound harm, to the point that we are condemning present and future generations not to feel and experience that aliveness. And so education has to be a site for remembering and healing that. It's not just about now content, it is about coming back to remembering that we belong to this Earth, that it is our home, that it is the place that sustains us, that nurtures us, that loves us by giving us what we need to exist and to live.
And anything that does not allow us to feel that in the depths of our being is something that is a delusion actually. It is a delusion because we are of this Earth; we are not separate from it. We are it. And so education actually has to take on this civilizational wound. And I really am putting it out there, because I don't think we -- I've said it before, the hour is getting very, very late. And this is the moment to start remembering, and people are remembering. And there's been those who have never forgotten, and we also need their leadership, you know, Indigenous ways of knowing that have not forgotten, despite colonization attempting to induce that forgetting.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: I love this idea of a civilizational wound that -- the responsibility and the courage and the maturity to take that on as an educator. I'm sort of you know, I'm very interested to imagine a big room full of educators and sort of putting this out. What would that look like and feel like for you, each of you in this room, you know? And then I love this idea you've offered here about that it's about remembering that it's a profound act of love, right? So, you went right from wound to love, you know, in one sentence there.
And I think that's one of those "water we're swimming in" types of things where mainstream education, at least especially in the U.S., where this sort of idea of we only can look at the positive progress that American history has made. We can't look at the wounds because somehow that's unpatriotic or evil to students or harms young people, harms the nation. That framing that this wound background is somehow anathema to love is a binary, a false binary, that we don't need in education, right? That we don't need in culture, right?
It's part of the cultural healing to figure out how you can have recognition and remembering of the wound and the healing and the love all come together. They're all part of this story. So I just love what you're offering here. All kinds of ways that you're teasing apart and pulling apart the water we're swimming in and the binary thinking and the inner work of that, the courage and the love and the healing that is possible there.
So, thank you for that. I am sort of curious thinking about this room full of educators hearing that. You know, imagining as I'm with these educators, and you are all the time. When you offer this, when you get to the heart of it, like you just offered, and you say, This is what is at stake right now. What kinds of responses did you get from educators? Where is the pushback? Where is the embrace? And what are the kinds of ways that you see, you know, concrete things you see educators doing to try to integrate this?
Maria Vamvalis: Yeah, oh, great question. And I just want to say as well, like, when we're thinking about the wound, to reframe it as the wound is really the symptom that the love has not gotten through. And when we try to bypass the wound to get to love, we can't get to the love because the love has to get to the wound. You know, that's what we have to do. The love has to get to the wound. So I think when working with educators, I mean, what my experience has been is that when we create the conditions for what is truly in the room to be held with love, I find there's a lot of relief to start. Because educators, through their professionalism, feel that their responsibility is to provide hope for students and to help them feel optimistic about the future.
And of course, you know, in that sense, like they want their students to feel a sense of possibility. But if they're bypassing their own deep concerns, we are not getting to the transformative place. And what is also also, what I've learned through my own research with youth activists, is they say that when we don't actually have the space to be real about what's happening, they feel less trust in educational spaces.
And let's remember that having those high-trust connections with their teachers is so important. It's so important to the quality of education. It's so important to mental health and well-being. So, if they sense we're not being real and we're not actually -- we have not done our own inner work to be able to hold them and walk with them, we are just kicking things down, and we're not actually supporting them to develop the kind of transformative agency that they need to move through what it's going to look like as we -- as the planet continues to warm. So I do find that teachers appreciate when we hold the space.
And that it does take some skill, and it certainly takes us out of traditional professional learning approaches, you know, or things where we're just delivering content to educators. We're talking about a more holistic approach to the work that we're doing. I also think that, you know, for example, we've had a national climate education course that we've taught online in Canada, and that was co-facilitated with a Haudenosaunee educator. And so we're also modeling what it means to walk and unlearn as we're doing this work, and also really create the space for the leadership that does exist to really, you know, again, help to lead. And through that create more structural justice for the harms that have been caused by land dispossession and colonization.
Again, more manifestations of this wound. So that's part of the healing, you know, is how we're doing this work. And again, I recognize all the complexity. Like, I am so aware of the complexity. I've worked in education for decades. I am so aware of curricula and context and political restraint and all of it, right? So, as I'm saying these things, know that I am so steeped and so aware, and yet, we do have to keep finding ways of coming together and doing this work because, I would like to say that you know, regardless of, you know, what that we are seeing, I know that for myself, one of my forms of resistance is that I am going to love until my last breath, that that will not be taken away from me, that that capacity of who I am is not taken away from me.
And if we develop that at scale, like genuine love in action with discernment, that to me is where the fragile place of hope continues to live. Because love is magic. Like, love is the medicine. It is the magic of who we are as human beings. And that is something I don't think we should be surrendering in this moment. I think we should be doubling down on it.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: It sounds so idealistic, but I think, you know, there's lots of beautiful, complex debates and theories over this concept of love. And so I sort of, you know, what are you talking about? Because I realize that when I talk about love, people may hear me saying sort of unconditional forgiveness to the oppressor, or turning the other cheek to the people in the room who deserve some vengeance, you know, some revenge, not satisfaction of winning. And, you know, there's what you said was discernment. You said love with discernment. And I'm sort of -- I would like to push you to explain what you mean by that a little bit, because I think it's very hard to convince people to go to love unless they understand that this is a fierce power that you're just [inaudible].
Maria Vamvalis: Yes, I'm speaking about that like, that sovereignty of our own spirits, really, like our capacity to bring our love forward with discernment. And I'm also talking about love as that ungovernable, that ultimate ungovernable force in the world, which is that feeling of absolute rapture and devotion that we feel, you know, like when we -- and this is like, this is the force, that force of love is actually what that attraction and connection is what causes seeds to crack open under the soil.
You know, it is really the draw for connection, for that reverence and devotion. That is so ungovernable, and that is again, something that has been systematically targeted as something we shouldn't be feeling. So when we feel that deep, deep reverence for life, you know, that kind of love for life, I just want to, you know, imagine -- like, I'm sure people listening to this are imagining where their even sense of climate action and agency comes from. If they really go deep, it comes from that love, right?
It comes from this draw for life and connection and relational vitality, I call it. Like, you know, to be in connection, you know, that aliveness that we feel, that love is aliveness. You know, that's really what I'm talking about: is bringing, like, regenerating that within ourselves so that we can stay with these really, really complex and challenging times.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Thank you for that. I think one of the things that you're making me think about is that there are so many forces at play, dominant forces that are easy to surrender to unknowingly, that would have us not think of love at all as a drawing force or as even a powerful force, you know, as on the contrary, a soft, weak thing. And you're right, right?
Like, can we make caring cool again, right? Sort of this, you know, how -- you know -- and then also this idea that there's that love is at the root of all of that concern and how to tap that as kind of the source that is ungovernable. No one can take that away from me. I can practice resistance by protecting that and cultivating that and regenerating that in myself. You said that.
There's a sense to me of what you're offering as well that you know, when I'm again, I sort of want to push this to like, what does this look like in a classroom, you know, like or in a workspace, or like -- I love this stuff in theory, but then I walk into my room, my classroom, and my students are just like, I don't want to listen to how bad things are, I can't, you know? Or the people I'm working with, it's clear that they are very far from touching anything resembling love when they're showing up to work, you know?
So you're walking around in this space, even though you might have these lofty, beautiful insights, and then you go into your daily life. So I'm a little bit like, okay, what does this look like in a classroom? Just as one example, when you see -- work with these educators, what do you see? What are they experimenting with? What are you experimenting with? What is -- how do we kind of -- you talked about this. It isn't about content. How are we -- why -- what do we do to put to take content out and put this stuff in? What is this other stuff?
Maria Vamvalis: Yeah. Well, I think that one of the ways that we do it is that we have as many opportunities as we can to remember our connections, so that we, for example, even the simple act of going outside and just listening, just recognizing that we are a part of the natural world, that we are nature, that we are connected, just that act alone. And we, the studies tell us this, right?
The studies tell us that just being outside, like, we've got doctors across Canada prescribing, you know, time in nature, like literally giving nature prescriptions. So that is one really simple thing. Like just remembering that we are part, we are nature, we're not just on a screen, we are not just these automatized individuals. That's one really simple thing. Getting students to start to think relationally, start to remember.
So, even for example, you know, starting to trace the impact of an AI system and really get them to go deep, like from the cobalt that's in the Earth to where the data centers are being created to the water sources to the impacts, and that we actually start to practice thinking relationally and systemically is one way that we start to remember that we are interconnected.
As teachers do more of their own inner work, you know, for example, you know, teachers who we had -- gosh, it was over 10 years ago now, but there was a group of teachers. Thich Nhat Hanh came and led teachers through a whole series of days of embodiment and meditation. And we know that when we are attending to our own inner life, we show up differently. We have a different presence, and people feel our presence. And it's not to discount the power of our presence as educators.
And the more that we are addressing our own emotions and, you know, as the Gesturing Toward Decolonial Futures advises us, so this is a group, we're composting our own emotions, we're metabolizing our own grief. The more we do that inner work, the more capacity we have to hold others and to walk with others. So, the inner work of the educator matters. And in terms of what you're saying, too, to say how that cynicism -- and I want you to think about how effective a political strategy it is to dispirit us and disempower us like that, and how much courage it takes to be open-hearted and loving, how we do that to each other, how we essentially police and surveil each other's expression of the deepest medicine that we each carry as human beings. What an effective political strategy that actually is.
We've done -- you know, we do it to each other. So you know, we don't know how to be loving. We've forgotten how to be loving with each other, because that's where the wounds are, right? That's where the biggest wounds are really in our capacity to give and receive love. Yeah, I know that sounds simple, but it's true.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: No, I was going to say, I can imagine my students connecting to nature because they're environmental studies students, that taking them on a walk and having them hear birdsong, I can imagine them jiving with that.
But it's when people who oftentimes love nature and want to do something to protect nature. One of the things that comes with that is this colonial binary of humans being the ones doing evil to nature. And so the people who want to protect nature oftentimes also have a lot of misanthropy, you know? Like a lot of humans suck, and I don't really want to have relationships with these nasty humans. You know, so there's -- it's harder. It's a harder ask to get my students to think about repairing their relationships with each other as a necessary medicine.
You know, the love for each other, the vulnerability with each other, the forgiveness of each other, the not canceling each other, the not being threatened by each other, the not finding disgust in the other.
That is harder, a bigger ask, I find, than to get them to recognize interrelationship with nature. That said, I imagine that other classrooms and other spaces have very different sets of problems. But you know, and I'm glad my students want to connect with birdsong. But I don't -- I think it's interesting that we -- it's a harder sell to get my students to think that repairing relationships with each other, much less their own selves, their own healing you described, their own [inaudible] is worthwhile work, you know, is really essential to saving the planet. It's harder, it's harder to get them there.
So, what's your -- how would you make the case and how would you support teachers trying to do that?
Maria Vamvalis: Well, let's look at American history as an entry point to this. You know, in the 1950s, a memo had gone to Richard Nixon -- this is very well-documented --that outlined very, very clearly that were the oil and gas projects to proceed, we would be in this situation that we would see global temperatures rise. [note: see shownotes for correction on this]. The memo literally says, Goodbye, Miami; goodbye, New York. Right? Like, it literally outlines in the 1950s that this is where we would be.
Sarah Jaquette Rae: I did not actually know that. So have you been shocked?
Maria Vamvalis: Yes, you can look this up.
Sarah Jaquette Rae: I'll put it in the show notes [inaudible].
Maria Vamvalis: You can also look up that the first Earth Day was started by a young person. It involved millions of people. It was Denis Hayes. It involved millions of people across the United States of America. It's where some of your most robust environmental policy, including the development of the EPA, came into being. So, I want you to also think about that, at that very same time that this memo was going, there was a huge, unbelievable collective uprising within the United States to protect the environment. I want us to think about the kind of education that the folks who got that memo and proceeded nonetheless had, that enabled them to make the decisions that they did.
And I want you to think about what happened to the collective agency and how it was systematically targeted by creating epistemic doubt, literally the denial of the problem, huge amounts of resources as those projects proceeded and created a lot of money for a small group of people and did trickle down in different ways to community, but at what cost are we seeing now?
Right, like, let's really now look at what was promised and what has been the actual cost. That'd be a great mathematical activity to do, actually. That resources were put into place to get people to doubt their reality of the global temperatures rising because they proceeded with these projects.
And I want you to think about that again: like the human being that was capable of doing that, and how clearly they were not connected to love of the Earth or other people or future generations, because you cannot possibly make a decision like that if you were rooted in love. You could never make a decision like that. And so, if we actually want to change things, we have to become the human beings who are not capable of making those decisions. That is the only way. We have to interrupt the intergenerational harm of not being human beings who would do that.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: To the point of the cynicism, I think one of the ways young people are disempowered is because the forces in play have designed that, right? Like they've designed that to be the case. And I notice, especially around something like AI and just social media too in general, starting to happen too, that 2026, the year of the analog and all that sort of thing, I do think young people, their awareness of what AI is about and how harmful AI is, their motivation to disinvest in AI is really activated, I notice, less so by being aware of the, as you beautifully described, the kind of relational structural harms that AI does and becoming aware of that. That does really help, and that's awesome intellectual activity and connects them to that work, right? Like, oh my body is connected to that cobalt, right?
That's beautiful. But the thing that really gets them going is thinking, oh the powers that be who are making money off of my negligence, my ignorance, my consent to do this. And I refuse that. The kind of like anger, and you're taking power away from me, and I'm going to stick it to the man by not participating in this consent. I think it's interesting how you just described that, right? Like, we often surrender a lot of our power. I should speak about myself. I surrender a lot of my power when I think to myself, there's nothing I can personally do, I'm not connected to any of this, I'm kind of off the hook, right? It's a sort of easy thing to say, it is the cognitively easy way out.
And the people who are in power are designing a world where that's where the easiest flow for me to go is. And to say to me, if you want to change the world, you have to become the kind of person for whom that decision that was made could never happen for you, is to squarely put the responsibility, the onus, the power, the agency, maybe I should say, into the individual. And is, I think, interestingly paradoxical that in order to have this massive collective movement that you're describing that is deeply rooted in relationality, the recognition of our deep interconnection, as Thich Nhat Hanh would have said, interbeing, right?
If we are really going to have this great awakening around relationality we actually have to, ironically, maybe, maybe you can speak to this. Maybe I can end on this next sentence and you can take it from here. But we have to sort of almost recognize how much power we as individuals have. What am I missing here? Is that a paradox? What's going on here?
Maria Vamvalis: Well, I think the paradox is that what we have to come back to as human beings, is that relationality is our true nature. Because then it's not just about me as the individual and what I do, but as I recognize relationality, I am already within a collective.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yes.
Maria Vamvalis: That's the paradox.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: It's an ontology. It's not a choice.
Maria Vamvalis: Yeah. It's like you and I having this conversation and the folks listening, like, we are in a relationship right now. So it's not about I'm saying these things, but I'm not saying these things now just as this individual that is separate. I mean, you and I are already in relationship, and we're in relationship with the listeners right now. And the listeners are in relationship--
Sarah Jaquette Ray: With cobalt.
Maria Vamvalis: Yes, yes, we're in relationship with the cobalt, and we're in relationship -- and the folks listening are in relationship with their loved ones and their communities. And so, as you think about it, if we imagine, you know like mycelium, you know, mycelium is like, you know, the rhizomes that sort of go underground and are so interconnected and like, can extend very far.
If I am in tune with love and bringing my love forward in this moment -- again, my discerning love. It's not a naïve love, it's an informed solidarity, it's discernment, it's a recognition of history and context, and that's part of love, right? Part of love is to try to love someone well. It's not just, you know, if I'm going to love someone well who's had a different lived experience than me, then that means I have to understand their lived experience, not just enough to love them. I have to learn how to love them well. I have to learn how to love this Earth well. You know, it's not just my notions of love. That also comes through relationship. And as we do that, as we love each other well, and as we love the planet well, and we really commit to that, you know, we are part of a collective. Like our forms of loving are in relationship with each other.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: That's what resolves the paradox. Yes.
Maria Vamvalis: Yeah. Yeah. They're in relationship, and it's like the question is not just that I love you, it's how do I love you well? That's -- you know, that's the dynamic. How do I love you well? What do you need? And what's your lived experience? And what do I need to attend to? And that's the work. That's the work. That's why intersectional work is complex, because what we're trying to do is learn how to love each other well, given the inequities of these histories.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yeah, and on the hurt everyone's carrying, all the wounds everyone's carrying around.
Maria Vamvalis: Yeah.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yeah, yeah. It's been a real journey for me to think about how to teach that, right? And I sometimes think that these silos of education say that you do the love and intersectional work and interpersonal communication and interpersonal healing, and recognize your own privileges, and figure out humility, and all these grand ideas happen over in these classes.
And then the climate stuff and the environmental stuff all happens over in these classes. And depending on what kind of student you are, you identify very quickly: I like that stuff or I like that stuff. I don't want to do both. You know, that's too much. And so I really, you know, given the lay of the land of how people kind of either go into the quote-unquote sciences or they go into the quote-unquote humanities because they want one or the other of those approaches.
That's the mainstream way of doing education still, and it certainly is in K through 12. In the US, the people who do the climate work are definitely squarely in the sciences, and they're definitely not usually thinking about, and I don't want to exclude the people who really are valiantly trying to do this, usually aren't thinking about actually, if we don't repair these wounds around race and gender and colonialism and harm done to land, if we don't repair these wounds right here in this class, right now, not at scale in some other future structural thing where we have, you know -- where we've achieved some sort of like telos in the end, that's this beautiful everybody kumbaya holding hands. I'm not suggesting that we have to wait, right?
That it happens right here in this very moment. That those people who are teaching how to do that, you know, are not necessarily teaching the climate stuff. And maybe that's okay, right? I'm sort of curious, you know, is the siloing of these different skill sets okay? Or do we need, is there some reason we need to bring them together, and the teachers who are doing the one really need to be able to do the other, too?
Maria Vamvalis: Yeah. Oh, such a great question. So, here's what we know as we're in this climate crisis and as it is continuing to intensify. What is the data telling us? Scientists are having major mental health issues. They're looking at this data, they're working with it, they are in it, and they are grieving, and they are scared, and they can't sleep. And journalists who are reporting on this, the journalists who are to be objective and just the facts, they are having the same issues. So that is false. We need to recognize that the grief that we are feeling at our losses is the ground upon which we are going to remake this world.
So, grief, our grief is the sign of how much love that we actually have in us. We grieve what we love. And scientists are grieving, and journalists are grieving, and parents are grieving, and grandparents are grieving, and we are grieving. And this is again contextually different, but we are -- there is a shared grief for where we are and what is unfolding if we do not interrupt that trajectory. So you cannot silo this because scientists cannot keep their hearts out of what they are looking at.
They have loved ones; they are understanding what this means. Journalists are reporting on this. It's the same for them. They are witnessing and having to witness increased harm, increased violence, increased vulnerability, increased terror. So, how are we going to keep this separate when to truly have deep resilience and a capacity for adaptation, we are going to have to become more human? More human. I mean, we could numb ourselves, but I think that's just going to increase the rate at which things go awry.
The greatest thing that we can do is, you know, as we're seeing in folks in Minnesota who came and came together as a community rooted in love, we see what the power of connection can do.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yeah, yes, absolutely. And I think under the current political structures, the awakening around this is up to us. Is really high time. And there -- I don't want to dismiss the many communities that have never really trusted anyone in power to be helpful, and so have been building those relationships and those networks since time immemorial. You just said we have to become more human. I want to push a little bit on that, because that made me pause. Most environmental folks and climate folks, I often hear a mantra coming out of even my students and even my kids that say humans are terrible, humans are terrible, humans are terrible. So, why become more human if humans are so terrible? Surely we need to be something else.
Maria Vamvalis: [laughs] Yeah, I mean, it becomes, I guess, a philosophical question, and maybe it's the Greek in me, you know, really exploring the ancient roots of philosophy, which literally means love of wisdom. And that, you know, this notion of anthropos, like the human, is actually conceptualized as the lover of wisdom. And so for me, it's returning to that, you know, that the deep wisdom of interconnectedness, of reverence, of devotion, that these are also these unbelievable capacities as human beings that, again, we are unpracticed in, because structural forms of oppression target our capacity to enact them, to be that, to live that. We become something less than human, actually.
So I would say that when we are despairing of the human, what we're despairing of is how much we've been socialized and structurally sort of -- it's been structurally demanded of us to be less than human. And so reclaiming and remembering what it means to be that lover of wisdom, that lover of life, the lover, right? To be the lover of all that is, you know, of those connections, that is what it means to be a human, to be fully human, to be fully human.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: I really want to underscore what you're saying because I truly believe, and I hope listeners are getting this, picking up what you're dropping here, which is that in order to do this challenge, to meet this challenge courageously with loving discernment, discerning love I think, actually is what I meant there. Or discerning -- loving discernment, too.
We actually really do need to think of other humans as having this capacity and manifesting it to be so by showing up in the world, expecting that, anticipating that, and also teaching ourselves, training ourselves to assume that that's actually what is possible all around us at all the time. Instead of what most people are walking around with, which is other humans suck, I'm going to go back into my iPhone.
You know, that kind of easy -- that ease, and COVID didn't help us, right? Like that easy, sort of, I'm going to isolate because others suck, or it's too scary or too difficult to engage them, or I'm worried that I'm going to not like them, or they're not going to like me, or all the, all the, all the the reasons that we all know, that on a daily basis we make a decision here, here, there, and everywhere, these little tiny touch points to pull away from relationship, because we make the excuse that other people suck. So I just, I kind of want to, you know, like at the collective level, it is only perpetuating these wounds, and the intervention is on a very, very micro level in your every day to make a different decision, right?
Maria Vamvalis: Absolutely. Absolutely [inaudible].
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yeah, your brain. Yeah, yeah.
Maria Vamvalis: And mirror our capacity because it is within us. Like when we think about what brings that out in us? Well, when we're in the presence of that, right? When people talk about being in the presence of someone who is rooted in that, it brings it out in us. So, the more of us who are rooted in this, and there's nothing easy about this, let me just say, like to heal our wounds and to show up again and again, to sort of get hurt -- I always talk about like dry your eyes, feel it, you know, feel it all, feel the pain, and get up again. You know, that's what it is. It's not like you're in some loving state of bliss all the time.
This is work. Love is work. You know, like really loving is work. It is -- it is -- you know, having to show up again and again, to show up again and again with love. There is nothing easy about it. And yet, when we think about life, you know, and we think about truly, like, the moments -- the moments that we felt most alive. There's something about connection, I'm sure, that is there in that -- like the true joy, the true joy is, as I've said, you know, in other contexts, the joy of life is in the loving, it's in the connecting. And so -- and so that is to me like the most powerful form of resistance.
You will not deny my capacity to have this joy and this freedom of loving. You know, that is where my freedom lives. And I will protect that, and I will resist, and I will have the courage to keep loving, as hard as it is and as hurt as I get. That's one of my forms of resistance, and then putting it in action in as many ways as I can.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Thank you. Wonderful. It's so wonderful to listen to you, Maria. Thank you.
Maria Vamvalis: Oh, thank you. So, so great to be with you, Sarah. And thank you so much for all the incredible work that you're doing and helping all of us remember our magic, right? Our magic together. And yeah, we definitely need to remember that we can be quite magical, even in these really dark and complex times.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: Yes, that is absolutely the spirit of this show, but I wanted to just share lastly that when you show up this way, it brings it out in me. So, thank you.
Maria Vamvalis: Amazing. Well, thanks for creating the space.
Sarah Jaquette Ray: That was my conversation with climate justice educator and transformational culture worker, Maria Vamvalis. You can find this and more episodes of Climate Magic, as well as show notes, at khsu.org. If you like this show, please submit a review of Climate Magic wherever you find your podcasts and follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn. I'm Sarah Jaquette Ray, and thanks for listening to Climate Magic.
Produced at Cal Poly Humboldt.
