Middle school students fight for nature in their education.

Following eco-artist, Shimshon Obadia’s experience coming into École K.L.O. Middle School and working with its passionate environment students, this documentary focuses on their tireless efforts to restore their natural environment. Seeing a school community’s reaction to finding crushed turtle eggs in their long jump pits to attempting to recreate the lost ecosystem those Western Painted Turtles rely on, this documentary watches a long ignored wetland see daylight through art and the discovery of the educational resource goldmine that is the natural world when creatively embodied.

This will tell the story of British Columbia Canada’s École K.L.O. Middle School students, in partnership with their teacher, Michelle Hamilton and artist Shimshon Obadia, a student in UBC’s Interdisciplinary Performance program, who are trying to restore a wetland habitat on their school grounds. The beautiful Fascieux creek that runs beside their school has  been covered with concrete pads. These grade eight students were told to raise $100 000 if they wanted the creek restored.  seven years of grade eight students later and the price tag sits at half a million dollars and still they work on: for their environment, for their education, and for their right to stewart this planet. 

Daylighting Fascieux Creek is a documentary film about learning beyond the walls of the classroom in the more than human world we so often chose to ignore. This first person shooter takes the camera around the École K.L.O. Middle School community’s lives striving for nature in their education. In the hands of artist, Shimshon Obadia, this documentary sits in on Environmental Education classes; has conversations with students and faculty on the overly anthropocentric approach presently in this education system; and watches a year of collaboration between 30 middle school students, their teacher, and an artist as they build bonds with each other and the more-than-human natural world around them to fight for a more holistic, 21st century education. a 21st century learning that utilizes the most beneficial technology of all, nature. 

For more from Shimshon Obadia, visit www.ShimshonObadia.com