Kailee Hirsche

Kailee is a white settler from rural Alberta/Treaty 7 territory who loved singing silly campfire songs as a teenager. They moved to Vancouver, BC in 2009 for a B. Sc. In Global Resource Systems and then worked with the children’s programs at the UBC Farm for seven years, where they eventually coordinated the field trip program for students from Pre-K to Grade 12 and summer day camps for 6–14-year-old children. They taught with Saplings Outdoor Program’s farm and forest program for 2.5-5-year-old children; supported a garden-based program called Landed Learning that partnered with four elementary school classes each year; supervised many cohorts of teacher candidates from the UBC B.Ed. program; and completed courses on beekeeping and Leadership and Management in ECE.

In early 2020, they began working with the BC Nature-Based Child Care Advisory Committee and graduated with an M.Ed. in Health, Outdoor, Physical, and Experiential (HOPE) Education in 2021. They have completed the in-person portion of the Forest and Nature School Practitioners Course run by the Child and Nature Alliance of Canada and are working toward certification. They wrote the Land and Young Learners course for UBC in 2022 and enjoy connecting with students to foster collaborative online learning communities together.