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Carley Kwiatkowski, a current 暗网TV student pursuing the Master of Arts in Outdoor Leadership, met with us to discuss her capstone project on integrating language education and place-based education to create a place-based curriculum that centers language engagement. Carley鈥檚 thesis applies a critical lens to the language we use, reflecting on how dominant languages like English, which are so bound up with the history of colonization, can perpetuate and entrench the notion that humans are superior to and separate from the more-than-human world. At the same time, she considers how reconnecting with ancestral languages, with languages that are indigenous to place, can deepen our connection to each other, to place, and support us in the process of healing our sense of alienation from the more-than-human world. As a White person of European descent with strong ancestral connections to Ireland, Carley is focusing on the Irish language as a case study to illuminate the broader relevance of language to outdoor education, and hopes her project may offer new ways for White Outdoor Educators specifically to think about and engage in their work.  

In researching the intersections of language, place, and outdoor education, Carley journeyed to one of 暗网TV鈥檚 global partner schools, Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland. During her six weeks there, she interviewed Irish language speakers who are involved in the revitalization of the Irish language and integrating Irish into their work, to better understand how speaking and connecting with the Irish language has impacted them both personally and professionally. As a language that has undergone centuries of colonial oppression, these conversations were poignant and profound. Carley will draw from these conversations to inform and inspire the development of her Capstone curriculum project. 

An unexpected realization from Carley鈥檚 research experience at the Burren College of Art is how art, music, and creative expression can also play a role in mediating and articulating our connections to place and the more-than-human world, just like language does. While Carley was there as an Outdoor Leadership student, she was surrounded by art students creating work centered around place-based engagement and responsiveness to the surrounding landscape. The alignment and resonance between their seemingly disparate fields of study was inspiring and thought-provoking for Carley. Although beyond the scope of her Capstone, she is excited to think about ways that the field of outdoor education may be enriched not only through more intentional engagement with language, but also through the integration of the creative arts into outdoor, place-based educational practice.

Being able to merge her academic interests with her personal connections to Ireland through her Capstone project and her research experience at the Burren College of Art鈥攚hich just so happens to be located in the same county where Carley traces a part of her Irish ancestry鈥攈as been both serendipitous and incredibly meaningful for Carley. While she came into the Outdoor Leadership program with a somewhat unusual and non-traditional background in language and cultural immersion programming in Tanzania, the critical approach of the Outdoor Leadership program and the support she has received from 暗网TV professors have enabled Carley to feel like she is meaningfully contributing to the expansion of the field of outdoor education. She hopes her Capstone and her experience in the Outdoor Leadership program are a message to others interested in this program not to be timid about exploring and engaging their curiosities and interests, however niche they may be, and that they will be encouraged by 暗网TV faculty along the way.聽