Instructors and Course Developers

Director of Learning, Outdoor Learning Store

Jade is a Physical Geographer (BSc), Award-Winning Environmental Educator, Outdoor Instructor and Interpretative Guide based in Revelstoke, BC.

Jade has been designing & delivering environmental and nature based programs for over fifteen years, across four continents and seven countries. She is the Director of Learning for the Columbia Basin Environmental Education Network (CBEEN) & The Outdoor Learning Store alongside her own educational consultancy ‘Stoked on Science’. In 2023 she hosted online and in person outdoor learning professional development workshops that reached over 50,000 educators across Canada and the US.

Helping to support educators to take their learning outside brings her the greatest joy, alongside showing people her rock collection, learning the languages of the Sinixt, Secwepemc and Ktunaxa First Nations, nature time with her husband and Jack Russell and talking to the trees on her walks.

Lifelong Naturalist

Ian holds a BEd through the University of Toronto and is an Ontario Certified Teacher. Ian just completed a 5-year stint as General Editor of Green Teacher magazine, and enjoyed 13 seasons with Ontario Parks.

Outdoor and environmental learning aren’t just what Ian does; they’re who he is. A lifelong naturalist with a deep passion for wild spaces, Ian is based in Ontario and supports the outdoor learning community through course design, outreach, editing, and podcast production.

Off the corner of his desk, Ian works as a voice actor, nature artist, writer, editor, environmental consultant, and nature guide.

Alyson (she/her) is of Mushkego (Swampy Cree), Irish and French ancestry. She is an educator (RECE, OCT) whose work is centered around decolonizing education through land centered inquiry based practice. Alyson is a graduate of the Waaban Indigenous Teacher Education Program at York University. She has worked as a passionate educator in the public school system, committed to transformative education goals that re-centre the needs, stories and perspectives of the underserved and underrepresented.

Alysse is a teacher and researcher who graduated from OISE with her PhD in environmental & sustainability education and climate justice. As a guest on Turtle Island she believes that environmental education can’t be done in a good way without understanding and integrating Indigenous perspectives on land. Over the last seven years she’s had incredible experiences teaching, researching and organizing programming specific to environmental and sustainability education and climate action.

Jenna is on a learning expedition which involves her culture, traditional teachings, languages and Knowledge of nature. She believes Indigenous perspectives connect effortlessly with outdoor, hands-on and place-based learning. Her goal is to provide learners of all ages opportunities to explore, learn and immerse themselves in the outdoors and outdoor education alongside Indigenous perspectives and Knowledge.

Jenna lives at the headwaters of the Columbia River which runs through and is the unceded territories of her ancestors, the Secwépemc and Ktunaxa people.

Faye O’Neil was born on her homelands of ?ama?kis Ktunaxa at the beginning of the headwaters of the micqaqas akinmituk (Chickadee River/Columbia River) where she played in the water and on the land.

She is a community member of the ?aqam and resides in Cranbrook, BC. Faye is an Aboriginal Education Coordinator in School District #5 (Southeast Kootenay) and has been working in the public education sector for 21 years promoting and braiding Indigenous worldviews and perspectives into the classrooms.

When not volunteering sitting on committees and boards for ?aqam, the Columbia Basin Environmental Education Network and the Ktunaxa Nation, you can find her out on the land exploring and following the footprints of her ancestors, kayaking the many lakes in the area and gathering plants and berries. Recently Faye was awarded an EE Award of Excellence from CBEEN.

Executive Director, Take Me Outside

Colin Harris holds a Master’s of Environmental Education and Communication through Royal Roads University and is currently pursuing a PhD in Educational Research with a focus on curriculum and learning through the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. He has been immersed in the field of outdoor learning for almost 20 years, including being the Director of Outdoor Education at an Ontario-based Centre, instructing canoe trips for Outward Bound Canada, working with Indigenous students in the Western Arctic Leadership Program in the Northwest Territories, and teaching grades K-8 in the classroom.

He is the founder and Executive Director of Take Me Outside and initiated the organization by running across Canada, going into 80 schools across the country and engaging 20,000 students in the conversation of their time spent in front of screens compared to their time spent outside, being active and connecting to nature.

The updates to these two bios will bump some info to the front on the Cert page.

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