Suzanne Simpson

Rooted in Place: Suzanne’s Journey in Environmental Education

Suzanne, a Teacher-Librarian at École Provencher and École Varennes in Winnipeg, Manitoba, has dedicated her teaching career to helping students develop meaningful relationships with the natural world. As a Forest and Nature School Practitioner, Master Composter, Master Gardener, and co-founder of (ECAEN-MB) Environmental and Climate Action Education Network of Manitoba, Suzanne brings a deep commitment to environmental education, place-based learning, and community action to her work.

Her journey began in Lac du Bonnet, a small community about an hour outside Winnipeg, where she spent her childhood exploring the forests, creeks, and fields around her home. These early experiences fostered a sense of belonging to the natural world and shaped her understanding of how people learn through relationships with the places they inhabit.

When Suzanne became a teacher in the city, she noticed that many of her students had few positive connections with nature. For them, the outdoors was often associated with fear of ticks, bees, and bears rather than curiosity and wonder. This realization inspired her to create opportunities for students to experience nature in meaningful ways, discovering the wild spaces that exist within the urban landscape.

For Suzanne, time spent in nature is one of the greatest gifts educators can offer students and one of the most powerful pedagogical tools available. As a Teacher-Librarian, she collaborates with classroom teachers to create school-wide experiences grounded in authentic inquiry, outdoor exploration, and environmental stewardship.

Her work has included making maple syrup with students, naturalizing areas of Lagimodière-Gaboury Park with native trees, removing invasive species, and establishing a thriving bike bus at École Provencher. Through these experiences, Suzanne demonstrates that environmental education is not simply about learning facts about nature. It is about developing a rootedness to place, nurturing relationships with local ecosystems, and inspiring meaningful climate action.

Her commitment was recognized when she was named runner-up for the Susan Langley Earth Steward Teaching Award through Learning for a Sustainable Future.

Branch 1: Inquiry and Engagement / Lighting the Fire

Curiosity is the starting point for Suzanne’s environmental education practice. As a Teacher-Librarian, she embraces the inquiry process and trusts that time spent in nature will create opportunities for students to notice, wonder, question, and explore.

Rather than directing every moment of learning, Suzanne positions herself alongside students as a guide and fellow observer. She introduces them to the natural world, pays attention to what captures their interest, and asks questions that encourage deeper investigation.

This approach has become part of the culture of her school communities. Students frequently make a detour to the library to share a particularly beautiful flower they discovered at recess or a dead insect they found among the leaves beside the school. These spontaneous visits reveal how students are beginning to notice the living world around them and recognize the library as a place where their discoveries are welcomed.

Suzanne consciously models a positive, curiosity-driven relationship with nature. She demonstrates that being outdoors can be enjoyable in every season and that insects, plants, and other living things are worthy of interest rather than fear.

Monthly outdoor education walks provide another opportunity for inquiry and connection. Grade One students revisit an adopted tree in Parc Provencher, Grade Three students explore Parc Lagimodière-Gaboury, and Kindergarten students participate in seasonal community walks. Returning to familiar places allows students to notice changes over time, recognize local species, and develop a lasting sense of belonging.

Suzanne also brings nature into the library through a collection of shells, rocks, fossils, taxidermy, live plants, and a closed-loop aquarium. These materials invite students to observe, ask questions, and make connections between classroom learning and the world beyond the school walls.

When students want to investigate their discoveries, Suzanne helps them find answers through library books, online research, and conversations with local experts. Curiosity becomes the beginning of an inquiry process in which students learn to seek evidence and deepen their understanding of the living systems around them.

Branch 2: Experiential Learning / Sending Out Roots

Suzanne believes that environmental learning must engage both hands and hearts. Students develop meaningful relationships with nature when they observe living things, participate in seasonal cycles, care for plants and animals, and experience the emotional connections that grow through these encounters.

Sometimes these experiences begin inside the library. Suzanne once brought chicken eggs into the learning space so students could observe the process of hatching. Another year, a house finch built its nest in the wreath on Suzanne’s front door. She photographed the nest daily, documenting the journey from nest-building to the fledging of the young birds. Sharing these images allowed students to follow the lives of their winged neighbours and develop an emotional connection with them.

Other experiences take students outdoors. After learning about native plants, students made seed bombs and distributed them in areas suited to their growth. Revisiting these locations over subsequent school years gives students opportunities to observe changes, recognize the effects of their actions, and develop an attachment to the places they call home. 

Suzanne also creates opportunities for students to experience the generosity of nature by sharing its gifts with others.

At École Provencher, students made cuttings from the library’s collection of houseplants and distributed them free of charge to teachers and families. At École Varennes, students transform their Free Little Library into a Free Little Seed Library each May, sharing seeds collected from the school’s fall garden with the community.

These projects extend environmental learning into homes and neighbourhoods. Students experience firsthand how plants can be shared, cultivated, and cared for collectively. They begin to understand nature not as a commodity to be owned, but as a source of shared abundance and responsibility.

For Suzanne, sending out roots means creating experiences that connect students to the places they inhabit and help them discover how those relationships can continue to grow long after a lesson has ended.

Branch 3: Integrated Learning / The Flow of Knowledge

Environmental education flows across Suzanne’s teaching practice, connecting science, literacy, mathematics, the arts, language, and community learning. She believes that meaningful learning cannot be confined to individual subjects or the four walls of a classroom. Authentic questions about the natural world can become starting points for rich, interdisciplinary investigations.

One such project emerged from students’ curiosity about trees they encountered during their monthly walks through Parc Lagimodière-Gaboury Park. Recognizing an opportunity to build on their questions, Suzanne reached out to Anders Swanson, CEO of Winnipeg Trails, to explore a possible collaboration.

Their successful grant application enabled students to learn how to identify native Manitoba tree species, visit four locations to observe a variety of local trees, and naturalize an area of the park with species that would have been present before its establishment.

The learning continued the following year. With support from Tree Winnipeg and an A.P.E. Project Grant, students planted twelve new trees on their school playground to increase shade and help alleviate standing water. They explored the different species and learned their names in French, English, and Anishinaabemowin, discovering how language offers different ways of engaging with the natural world.

More recently, Suzanne noticed students taking a particular interest in the burdock burrs growing along a trail. Their observations prompted conversations about invasive plant species and their impacts on local ecosystems. Suzanne approached Save Our Seine, an organization working to restore the Seine River, which runs through Parc Lagimodière-Gaboury. Together, they planned a collaboration to remove invasive plants in May and plant native species in June.

Through these projects, students investigate real-world environmental questions while

contributing to the places they study. They learn to identify local species, consider the effects of human activity, and understand how community partnerships can support ecological restoration.

The projects also connect curriculum areas naturally. Students read informational texts, develop vocabulary, write observations, create artwork, classify species, and use mathematical thinking to plan and carry out planting activities.

As students move between the library, schoolyard, neighbourhood parks, and community restoration sites, learning becomes connected to experience. Knowledge is not simply something to remember; it becomes a way of understanding the world and participating in its care.

Branch 4: Moving Towards Sustainability / Breathing with the World

For Suzanne, sustainability begins with modelling a respectful relationship with nature and helping students recognize that their everyday choices can contribute to the wellbeing of their communities.

At École Varennes, Suzanne leads Club Vert-ennes, where students have taken an active role in the school’s composting program. Their video about diverting organic waste from landfills and transforming it into nutrient-rich soil for the school garden earned third prize in the Youth Video Challenge.

Through this project, students became both environmental stewards and communicators. They took pride in sharing their understanding of composting with the wider community and showing how everyday actions can reduce waste and support healthy soil.

At École Provencher, Suzanne’s commitment to sustainable transportation has grown into another powerful example of collective action.

What began as the simple act of riding her bicycle to school sparked conversations with parents and eventually led to the creation of a school bike bus. Now in its fourth year, the bike bus brings together more than sixty riders each week, including local politicians, Winnipeg’s Bike Mayor Patty Wiens, and school board trustees.

As the initiative grew, a second school joined, and a parent committee formed to help organize the annual rides. The project also inspired creative partnerships. An environmental musician wrote a Bike Bus Safety Song to help students remember the rules at each stop. With support from graphic designer Carley Dupuis and an A.P.E. Fund grant, the bike bus also gained its own logo, safety flags, and signs.

The bike bus demonstrates how sustainability can become part of everyday life rather than an abstract concept discussed only in lessons. Students experience active transportation as a practical choice, a social activity, and a way to build stronger connections with their neighbourhood.

Both the composting program and the bike bus reflect Suzanne’s belief that environmental action grows through relationships. A student project can inspire others, a personal choice can become a community initiative, and a small idea can gather momentum as more people become involved.

For Suzanne, moving towards sustainability means helping students understand that they can make a difference. Through meaningful environmental action, they develop a sense of agency, responsibility, and hope for the future.

Putting It Back Together

The four branches of Suzanne’s environmental education practice come together through her commitment to place-based learning, authentic inquiry, and the belief that people develop a deeper understanding of the world when they experience it as a community of relationships.

Her approach is rooted in the lessons she received from her own parents. Growing up in Lac du Bonnet, Suzanne spent time exploring the forest behind her home with them. They answered her questions when they could and considered them thoughtfully when they did not know the answers. Through these experiences, she learned that education begins with curiosity, patience, and a willingness to explore the world together.

As a Teacher-Librarian, Suzanne strives to recreate these conditions for her students. She introduces the natural world as she might introduce a friend, inviting children to learn the names of trees in French, English, and Anishinaabemowin, notice flowers appearing before leaves, and discover the remarkable shapes of maple seeds as they twirl through the air.

She makes room for students’ questions, helps them find resources and experts, and encourages them to observe the natural world with attention and care. She supports sustainable choices, challenges human-centred assumptions, and strives to model what it means to live lightly on the Earth.

This year, Suzanne’s work extended beyond her two school communities into divisional professional learning. She helped co-plan five professional development days, two student workshops, and a large Learning with the Land gathering for the school division at The Forks.

These opportunities allowed her to share her educational philosophy with a broader audience, support environmental projects across the division, and encourage other educators to begin or deepen their own environmental education practices.

Whether supporting a classroom inquiry, organizing an outdoor learning experience, or connecting a school with a community organization, Suzanne emphasizes the importance of developing relationships with the natural world.

Innovation and Community Impact

Suzanne’s innovation lies in connecting everyday encounters with nature to larger questions of environmental responsibility and community wellbeing.

A walk through a neighbourhood park becomes an opportunity to identify native trees. A student’s fascination with burdock burrs opens a conversation about invasive species. A school garden becomes a place to explore composting, while a bicycle ride to school grows into a community-wide initiative for sustainable transportation.

These experiences are deeply local, but their impact extends further. Students learn that environmental challenges can be investigated close to home and that meaningful action often begins with understanding the places where they live, learn, and play.

Her partnerships with Winnipeg Trails, Tree Winnipeg, Save Our Seine, and other community members and organizations have helped transform student questions into projects with tangible outcomes. Families, teachers, local experts, and community leaders contribute to a network of shared learning and action.

As co-founder of Educators for Climate Action, Suzanne’s commitment extends beyond individual classrooms. She recognizes the important role educators play in helping young people develop the knowledge, relationships, and confidence needed to respond to environmental challenges.

At the heart of her work is a belief that meaningful environmental change grows from a sense of belonging. When students come to know the trees along a familiar path, watch birds raise their young, plant native species, share seeds with neighbours, or travel together by bicycle, nature becomes part of their lived experience and their understanding of community.

Suzanne’s journey continues through her relationships with students, colleagues, families, and the living landscapes around her schools. By bringing together curiosity, experiential learning, integrated curriculum, community partnerships, and sustainable action, she is helping students put down roots in the places they call home.

Through these roots, students begin to understand that they are not separate from nature, but part of a much larger community of life — one in which their curiosity, choices, and actions can help shape a more sustainable future.