LIVING WELL TOGETHER:
Interconnections Through Movement
Faith Abi Dawa
Morningside (SFUCCS)
Graduating Project 2020-2021

Land Acknowledgment
I acknowledge that we are on an unceded, shared, current, and traditional
territory of multiple nations.
I acknowledge the unceded Traditional Coast Salish Lands including the TsleilWaututh (səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ), Kwikwetlem (kʷikʷəƛ̓əm), Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh
Úxwumixw) and Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm) Nations where SFU Burnaby
Campus and Morningside childcare center resides on.

Dedication
I dedicate this book to the children, families, and educators at Morningside,
SFU ChildCare Society.
It has been my absolute pleasure working alongside all of you. For all your
inspiration and ongoing support, thank you for letting me be a part of a
wonderful learning journey. I look forward to seeing and experiencing more of
how this inquiry will further unfold throughout our lives.

Table of Contents
Introduction:
The Unfolding

Pedagogical Frameworks

Overlapping Relations

“Distorted” Normal

Gazing Towards Difficulties

Peering Through Research

Touching Connections

Concluding Thoughts

References

56 4

Inquiry:

Conclusion:

The Unfolding
At the heart of Burnaby Mountain sits a community filled with dedicated families who saw a need
for childcare and therefore began a family co-operative back in 1968. Through the years, this dedication has
enabled that co-operative to flourish into multiple childcare programs that work in partnerships- with one
another, with Simon Fraser University (SFU), and also the larger community. Being nestled in the east and
west sides of the SFU campus, these programs have grown into what we now know as SFU ChildCare
Society (SFUCCS).
And at Morningside, one of the three-to-five centers at SFUCCS, I have been privileged to have
worked alongside educators, children and families to rethink through inquiry and curriclum what it means for
us to live well together with the human and the more-than-human. As we are situated nearby a pathway and
also surrounded by lush forestry, we encounter various more than human bodies and entities that have
intrinsically affected our lives on the daily.
These include numerous encounters
with animals such as birds, raccoons, squirrels,
deers, and countless insects such as ants, bees,
and butterflies to name a few. Because of these
encounters, we have been more attuned to who is
with us, and to who else is moving along with us
within the localities of our unique place. Attuning
to movement has allowed for children and
educators alike to research deeper into our
similarities and differences with the more-thanhumans we encounter. It has created a concern
and ethics of responsibility for us to be actively
participating in and engaging with who else is
living with us.
And it was through this concern
5
that our inquiry on birds began.

The Unfolding
During the Fall of 2020, we experienced seeing smoke that are from the wildfires down from the
south roll into our city and envelop the entire Lower Mainland. It has already been a challenging time for us
as humans as we were living in the midst of Covid-19, navigating our way through the ‘new normal’ as one
of the effects of the pandemic. And so with the coming of the smoke it has created more difficulties and
tougher situations for us, with our own movement already been limited as we were not allowed to travel
internationally and have been repeatedly advised to stay home or stay local. With the smoke, we have been
bound more to stay indoors or risk our own health by breathing in toxic air.
As we await for the smoke to clear up, it was during this time when a new concern from one of
our educators, Taylor, began. She discovered through news articles from scientists (Lacitis, 2020) how birds’
migrations have also been heavily affected by this harsh reality. Birds who would migrate annually back to
the south around this time of the year have been seen coming back north due to the smoke. As a result, they
risk death as they fly back due to exhaustion, poor air quality, and even lack of resources as we anticipate
Canadian winter slowly creep in right around the corner. Deeply troubled by this, Taylor shared her concern
with the educators and the children. Being moved by her worries, we then felt the need to respond as a
collective, and so the next day, we decided to bring in bird seeds and bird feeders. We hung them in our
yards as an initiative to provoke more questions from the children and our families on how the smoke has
also affected birds’ lives and also to help feed birds who may be coming back during the winter.

Image credit: CityNews

The Unfolding
As we hung our feeders, we
anticipated the coming of the birds. Though
birds were seen flying all around our yard
and sitting by our fence and play areas, we
were surprised to see that the birds would
not come near our feeders. Puzzled, we
waited each day in anticipation for birds to
fly by and eat from our feeders. Until one
morning, Taylor saw that one of our feeders
was wrecked and that someone had eaten
all the seeds. Gnawed from the inside, we
concluded that this was not the works of a
bird. We were surprised to see the marks
and the residue of the leftover seeds in our
now broken feeder, but all the more became
joyfully expectant in our waiting. Who
could’ve done such a thing? What will we
see? Who else have we yet to encounter
through this unexplainable scenario?
And then came the day, as
children were playing in our yard that week,
when we had an unexpected encounter with
a squirrel. Children screamed in excitement
and delight as the squirrel made its way to
one of our trees. Though children and
educators eagerly surrounded the tree
where our feeder was at, the squirrel
proceeded to climb the tree and eat all the
seeds from the feeder in front of us.

The Unfolding
Watching the squirrel as it hung
upside down and nibbled the bird seeds, not only
were we faced with a dilemma of whether to
continue to allow the squirrel to eat from the
feeder or not, we were also encouraged to ask
why: why did the squirrel need to eat our seeds?
Why did the squirrel come but not the birds? Why
should we allow for the squirrel to eat bird seeds?
Seeing the nipples protruding from the bottom of
the squirrel, we held our breath as we quickly
realized that the squirrel was either pregnant or
had hungry babies nearby. Did the squirrel come
and eat from the seeds because, like the birds,
she or her babies were at risk of hunger too? Did
she come to find food for her babies? Did the
smoke impact them as well? As we continued to
engage with these questions, a family of
raccoons passed by our yard. ‘Mama raccoon’
and her three ‘baby’ raccoons were seen coming
down from a tree due to the ongoing construction
nearby, and had stopped on the pathway to see
what the commotion was all about. As they
continued to walk past, we asked: Were they
going to eat from the seeds too? Seeing that they
were coming down from the tree, were they afraid
of the nearby construction? What else were they
concerned about?

The Unfolding
It was in these moments that I was able to step
back and realize that we, humans, are not alone in this
world. Though my views and perspectives on curriculum
have been human-centric, I was faced with the reality of
having to re-situate and recognize myself being in the midst
of an entangled relationship with the world and with my other
co-inhabitants.
Smoke, air and virus were merely metaphors that
showcased how interconnected our lives are with the morethan-human. What affects humans also has an effect on
animals and other entities. For example, the global effects of
Covid-19 heavily affected human movement and activity as
we paused our normal way living to lessen the impacts of the
highly contagious virus. With our limited movement locally
and internationally due to the lockdowns, this has allowed for
more freedom for animals and other species as their world
became quieter and safer (“Coronavirus: Animals enjoy
freedom”, 2020). Bodies of water became cleaner, places
that once were packed with tourists have become spacious
and quieter, so as a result, animals have been seen roaming
around more freely.
But not all problems were dichotomous in results,
as in one group benefitting from the effects while the other is
in a disadvantage. Humans and more-than-humans alike
breathe in air, therefore the smoke created a problem that
negatively affected us all. With this problem, it changed the
way we moved and responded to previous ways of doing
things, having to figure out a new ‘normal’ once again.

The Unfolding
And that concern with the smoke was just the beginning. With the encounter with the squirrel
and raccoons, I was also forced to think of the need of the other living beings. Not only did we breathe air,
we needed air to be clean. With clean air, we become healthy and are able to move to have access to
resources such as food, water, and create a home. How this impacted each of us varied, and the way we
responded to these problems and changes was made visible through movement.
Since we began this inquiry, we have been continuously faced with many challenges along the
way. At some point our feeders had to be taken down due to a salmonella outbreak with birds (Thibault,
2021) which posed another problem as we learned that this virus was most likely passed on when birds
feed so closely to each other, which would result to them getting sick and die. Though brief sentiments were
made as to how similar this was to how Covid-19 is spread through humans, we were saddened to take
down our feeders as we expected lesser numbers of birds coming into our yard.
It was in moments like this that we,
educators, have felt hopelessness and defeat as
we thought this was the end of the inquiry. But
time proved that something has changed within
educators and children as we have gained a
deeper relationship with birds as we decided to
search for birds. We went into places and have
taken routes we don’t usually take in hopes of
finding where the birds lived and moved to. We
planned out and followed possible bird
movements and routes, visiting our garden, fields,
and places in the campus we haven’t visited in a
while. We went for longer walks in search of birds,
looking for more connections and allowing
ourselves to be more attuned and patient when
they do come to visit.

The Unfolding
Taylor first became concerned with birds because of the change in their annual movement as a
result of the smoke problem. And it was through this shift in the routine and annual patterns of birds that we,
humans, tried to offer hope by becoming a possible food resource when we placed our bird feeders in the
yard. As we intentionally made relational contact through the feeder, the effects of this encounter with them
(and with the squirrel and raccoons) reverberated into various questions that developed more challenges,
critiques, and dialogues with everyone at Morningside (children, educators, families, and even other
programs).
And it is through watching and engaging ourselves in research of movements that gave us an
opportunity to be more attuned to the entangled relationships of birds and humans in Morningside.

Pedagogical Frameworks
To decenter humans from the story is not to pull us and the children’s voices away from the
narrative completely. It means having to re-think about who we are excluding from the narrative when we
research from an Anthropocene viewpoint- where humans are at the top, the center of the world, therefore
giving us the authority to do what we want without bearing the consequences of our actions. The definition of
the Other for the educators at Morningside has significantly changed from the beginning as we de-center
ourselves from the narrative, through highlighting the problems and challenges birds and other beings
experience in the world we reside together in. Up to this point, we have been thinking of ourselves as
separate from the birds’ life, not a part of. And so, as we realize our entangled relationship with the birds
at Morningside, we were challenged to engage ourselves in research and within pedagogical frameworks of
other artists, authors, and educators to guide us in our journey.
Therefore, I engaged heavily within the theoretical pedagogical frameworks of common worlds
and place pedagogies, constantly referring to authors such as Iris Duhn, Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw,
Affrica Taylor, Margaret Sommerville, Peter Moss, and Anne Haraway who have been influential in guiding
my work with the children. These authors and researchers were key in repositioning and contextualizing the
inquiry with children within the land that Morningside stands, proposing a shift in perspective of what it
means to truly know a place, its inhabitants, by engaging in inclusive practices with the more-than-human,
within contact zones of difference, and ethics of care and responsibility.

Pedagogical Frameworks
Common Worlds and Place Pedagogy
Humans tend to think in categories, dominantly based on evident physical differences and
attributes. This categorical thinking has led us to believe that we are at the center of the world, if not at the
top of, therefore the most important. This brings us into a nature vs culture divide that thinks of the other
(other than ourselves) as separate from us. Since the widely known era of the Industrial Revolution and
explorations made by colonial settlers, we have done greater damage not just to the place we have altered
and exploited but also to the more-than-human beings that reside in it, ourselves including. It gives
permission for humans to alter, manipulate, dominate, and interfere greatly with the communities of the
more-than-human with very little to no moral consequence. Using the term ‘common-worlding’ (Taylor,
2013) repositions ourselves away from the notion that discourages to think beyond the divide between
humans and more-than-humans. It allows for us to shift us away from having an anthropocentric viewpoint of
living and into the perspectives of world-making and/or common-worlding, whereby we are able to open up
more possibilities of discussing in between the entangled lives of the human and more than human.
Common worlds framework is “an active and cumulative inclusive concept”, thinking with the
idea of humans being a part of this common worlds that is shared with all manner of others living, inert,
human and the more-than-human, therefore forming dynamic collectives and unexpected partnerships
(Giugni & Taylor, 2012, p. 109).
Place pedagogy as a framework is what allows for us to be involved in world-making
approaches in our works with children in relation to place rather than in globe-making approaches, which
seeks to dismantle the social in favour of the economic. World making puts a focus on the human self-inrelation-to the Other, whereby ‘the Other’ is inclusive to the human and the non-human entities who are coinhabitants of the place. This world-making approach opens up possibilities of connection or re-connection of
children and communities, disrupting stereotypes and stigma that can potentially turn down the possibility of
such connections from happening (Duhn, 2012).
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Pedagogical Frameworks
Engaging with Contact Zones of Difference, Discomfort and Responsibility
With the multiplicity of stories, histories, responses, and experiences that humans and the morethan-human encounter, we find ourselves engaging with these contact zones of difference that are uneasy
and messy “but also productive spaces” (Pacini-Ketchabaw & Taylor, 2019, p. 26). By engaging in these
contact zones of difference, we participate in collaborative dialogue filled with difficult questions, ones that
push against personal comfort and demands for tension, dissonance, and refuses an easy answer. This
transformative exchange that recognizes and responds to the wonders of the more-than-human difference is
one of the key features of living in common worlds.
Knowing how deeply intertwined we are with the place we are situated on and with the coinhabitants within it is merely the beginning point of action. Through involving ourselves in learning more
about the human in relation with the more-than-human, we see and experience the interconnectedness and
entanglements in a broader, more global affect, realizing that “what we do to the planet, we do to ourselves”
(Davies et al., 2011, p. 2; Duhn, 2012). To care for oneself and to care for the other cannot be seen as
separate responsibilities or processes anymore, as common worlding pushes beyond the singular care for
the self. Promoting an ethics of care and taking responsibility is not something we can choose to have when
we want it as it should come with having this realization and with our potentialities of affecting and becoming
affected.
Thinking with these ideas in engaging with my inquiry with the children at Morningside, these
common worlds and world-making perspectives create a shift our understanding of ‘living well’ from an
individualized personal, social, or economic success, to flourishing as a collective with the more-than-human
(Davies et al., 2011; Taylor, 2013; Giugni & Taylor, 2012; Moss, 2019; Pacini-Ketchabaw & Taylor, 2019;
Sommerville 2010).
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To Live Well Within Common
Worlds
Through these frameworks, we are
able to understand that common worlds are
relational worlds; meaning we are not alone in
this world therefore we need to rethink about our
response to conceptualized ideas on what it
means to live well. We need to begin to
reconsider the nature of our relations with and
responsibilities towards all of the earth others
that we share it with. When we shift away from
an anthropocentric viewpoint of living and into
the perspectives of common-worlding and worldmaking that goes beyond the human/nonhuman,
nature vs culture divide, we understand our
existence as co-existence, therefore we affect
and are affected by what happens around us, to
be in constant becoming, and experiencing the
urgency to care for and take responsibility for the
other.
To live well is to not just to flourish
individually as a human, but to flourish with the
collective, in a holistic idea that recognizes their
interconnectedness.
15

Overlapping Movements
“As we are of this world, we do not merely co-exist with other humans and non-humans, rather our
lives are enmeshment with theirs. We, humans, are not at the center of this web of relations rather
it is “relations that are central to everything”
(Moss, 2019, p.152)

Animals have been an integral part of Morningside’s
life. As we our surrounded by forestry, we encounter
various beings from the moment we make our way up
to Burnaby Mountain, take our first steps in the parkade
and walk to our center. Even so, in our yard animals
greet us as we play in our playground and when we
make our walks to the different places on campus. But
although they have always been a part of Morningside
life, it was only through the concern from the smoke that
occurred Fall of 2020 that we have started paying
closer attention to them. Especially to the birds that we
encounter on the daily, their voices and singing have
been magnified even more as we attuned ourselves to
their presence and seek for it when it is not there.
When we had to take our feeders down due to the
Salmonella outbreak that was happening with the birds,
we found ourselves going further from our center in
search of birds outside Morningside. We theorised
about different invisible roads that the birds may have
taken en route to Morningside and would then search
for them through these routes.
Our relationship with birds have deepened throughout
the inquiry as we now find excitement in our search for
birds while also hoping for them to come back. As birds’
movements were affected by the smoke and the taking
away of the feeders, we find that our own movements
have also been moving in response to theirs, in
response to our relationship with them.
17

Revisiting the ‘Invisible Roads’
Although birds have not been visiting Morningside
as often in comparison to when the feeders were
out, we have continued to search for birds by
going for walks and taking routes we don’t usually
take in search for them.
Through this, different theories of the ‘invisible
roads’ and maps came about as we collectively
wondered about how the birds came to
Morningside in the first place. As I continued to ask
the question of ”how did the birds come to
Morningside”, one particular group mentioned that
somehow only the birds can see what this road
looks like.

Alder: Only the daddy big bird up there knows
what it looks like. He’s the one who shows it to
other birds.
Meroux: We can’t know what it looks like.
We’re not birds.
Luna: They came from very far away, and they
had to drive a car with GPS.
Alder: My daddy uses GPS too!
Soon our conversations led to the different
‘invisible’ arrows, ‘invisible’ maps, cars and roads
that were invisible to people but visible to birds
and other animals.

But being troubled on how to further the
conversations and discussions with the
invisible, I then asked about what is visible
to us as humans- that which is
movement. As it was through movement
that allowed for us to pay more attention the
the lives of the birds, I rephrased my
question:

“How did the birds move to
Morningside?”
was then asked as a more
generative question.
Soon, roads were no longer mentioned as
instead this invited children to stand up and
move their bodies in certain waysmovements that spoke of flight, jumps and
hops.

Seeking the Visible
Children began to notice and seek to pay attention to the different ways birds moved. Initially, they
collectively said that the way birds moved was only through flight until Luna pointed out that although
most birds can fly to Morningside, some choose to jump.

Luna: Juncos like to jump like this! They jumped all the way from their home.
Meroux: They also beep, beep and chirp, chirp (as she crouched forward with
her hands folded in front of her mouth)
As we looked out our window, we realized like humans, birds bodies move in different and complex
ways. Intrigued by this, I invited the same group of children back to the studio the next day. Thinking
about another way that we could engage with this question more in depth, I asked the children to draw
the movements.

Drawing our movements was one way to visually
document our motions. Every stroke of the material
on the paper is caused by a movement that leaves
traces of speed, thought, pause, and wondering
stamped almost permanently on the paper. For this
inquiry, I intentionally invited the children to work
with the material pastel because of its delicate
texture and tone.
After introducing pastel, I asked the children the
same questions:

“How did the birds move to Morningside?
How are they moving here at Morningside?”
21

Luna: This is a junco. Juncos like to
jump, jump and they jump from their
belly.
Luna brushed her finger up and down on the
‘belly’ of the bird to show the movement. As her
finger smudges the pastel, the traces left
expressed the steady yet quick pace juncos
jump.

Through the children’s drawings, there seems to
be an emphasis on the parts of the birds’ bodies
that had the most range of movement. Wings,
legs, heads and bellies were drawn, with the
material aiding in showing and documenting the
range of movement, direction, and speed. As I
watched the children draw, I notice a connection
between their bodies as well. The same bird parts
that moved the most were also the same parts of
their bodies that were moving along.

As children continued to trace and smudge and circle, soon their movements and drawings overlapped,
as if metaphorically expressing the entangled movements of birds and children.
As we humans live in, live with and are of the world together, we are co-inhabitants of this place with the
more-than-humans: meaning we live in this web of relations that is so knotted and intertwined that we
may or may not have realized how interconnected we are.

“Distorted” Normal
“Being open, and being vulnerable to being affected by the other, is how we accomplish our
humanity; it is how the communities, of which we are part, create and re-create themselves. We are
not separate from the encounters that make up the community but, rather, emergent with them”
(Davies, 2014, p. 10)
24

Revisitation
To be able to continue the process in a more
reflective way, I revisited previous
conversation with the children. Revisitation
not only allows for us to collectively ‘pick up’
where we left off, it also allowed for reinterpretation as we relived past experiences
through sharing of documentation such as
previous pedagogical narrations and their art.

Alder: There was a daddy big bird but
now we don’t see them anymore.
Meroux: Birds don’t take roads like us
because they can fly. They use their wings
to fly
Tina: I remember the juncos hopping.
They hop and hop
Luna: I remember drawing about the
junco. We all drew juncos together, and I
drew a junco with a belly.
As they reflected on previous processes, new
interpretations came about. And as children
continued to listened to one another, they
noticed key elements that are missing in their
drawings and in our discussions which were
their body parts.

Like our bodies, birds’ bodies consist of different parts that enable them to move in various, complex ways.
Our focus took shape through paying particular attention to bodily movements that was not our own. Our coconstructed questions began to formulate as we ponder upon the question of where does movement come
from?
As children and educator continued to dialogue with this question, I noticed that through conversations
children were being drawn to particular parts of bird bodies that allowed for big movements: the birds’ bellies
and legs.
26

Researching Movement
Captivated by this hypothesis of movement coming from the bellies and legs, I decided to take more notice of
the birds that come to Morningside. I took videos of birds that would come to our playground in order for us to
have a closer and clearer look at what moves birds.
Videos taken and shown were of birds hopping on the ground, flying to the feeder, and standing on some
branches. After observing the way birds moved, children were invited to move along with the birds. Not only
did we move with the birds, we became the birds. And it was through this embodiment that we felt certain
weaknesses that our own bodies have.
27

Meroux: I can’t hop too fast like the
juncos. It hurts my legs
Daniel noticed another part of the
birds’ body that was used to hop
Daniel: You have to put your bum
up like this, like the bird
Meroux: I did but I’m still too slow
Faith: Why do you think we can’t
hop that fast?
Luna: Because birds are smaller
and they don’t hop like us. They
need their bums up.

This new idea of attuning to the bums of the birds sparked a different way of moving through the room.
Alder went on to the floor and tried to lift himself up using his bum.

Alder: I can’t do it Luna. I have to use my legs and my arms.
Meroux: But birds only use their arms to fly not to hop.
We realized that what seems like a simple method of hopping done by birds proved to be quite difficult if done
by our bodies. We had to find ways that distorted our “normal” ways of moving through jumping, hopping,
lifting, sitting… in order to imitate the movements of the birds.
28

Meroux and
Alex
consistently
hopped by
putting up
their bums
first and then
extending
their legs for
a big junco
hop!

Through focusing, observing and attuning to bird movements, we ended up distorting our own. The key
difference between humans and the more-than-human is the physical body, and due to the biological
aspects of our bodies in comparison to the birds’, we have the ability to move in distinct and complex…
though not entirely different ways.
As we distorted our bodies, being frustrated by not being able to fully imitate the movements, it has
encouraged children to be more attuned to the process of how birds move. When a bird comes, we
watch in silence. We gaze carefully, seeking the in between detail of how else we can echo the motion
30
of a bird’s hop, a bird’s stance, a bird’s posture.

Humans move, birds move.
To invite the children to intentionally focus on the movements of birds is not simply to imitate and be inspired
by their motions, rather it encourages me to take notice of how different yet similar we are with the morethan-human, therefore being challenged to think within common worlds perspectives. We come to know
ourselves more not in separation but in relation to the human and non-human that coinhabit the places we
live in.
And so I ask:
“What does it mean then to be a part of this entangled relationship? How can we be moved to care for and
take responsibility for the more-than- human… to be moved to respond… to live well together?
31

Gazing Towards Difficulties
To say that living well is to be in harmonious living with the other and not face dissimilarity is to be
ignorant of what it means to be of this world by not giving full account to who else lives in this world
with us (Taguchi, 2010)

Co-existence & Co-dependency
Though we differ in the way our bodies move,
our basic needs remain the same: we all require
food and water for survival, shelter, and care.
Therefore, as we are of this world, we recognize
that we do not merely co-exist, rather our lives
are in enmeshment with theirs (Moss, 2019).
Realizing this enmeshment is enough to open
up questions and critique the idea of living well
as individualized- something divorced from the
collective (Moss, 2014). According to Davies, de
Carteret, Gannon, and Sommerville (2011), it is
“through focusing on the relationships and
connections we have with other beings (the
human and the more-than-human) in the place
we live in, [that] we come to know more about
ourselves” (p.1), and not the other way around.
To engage deeper with the idea of our living
with the other, educators have created
conditions for questions and wonderings about
living together to be explored with the children
through our classroom space.
33

A ‘Living’ Space
At Morningside, we are constantly thinking about
the environment as our third teacher- with the way
it presents itself to us, affecting the way we think,
the pace that we move, and even how we interact
with one another.
Our classroom space evolves with us, reflecting
our curriculum, pedagogical intentions, and also
how we evolve in our thoughts, movements,
relationship dynamics during our time in
Morningside. It evolves with intentions of creating
more questions, challenging the current ‘logic’,
and invites for collaborative dialogue.
Our naproom is a space that we use daily, with
different purposes throughout the day. It
transforms as a way to respond to the needs and
wants of children during certain times of the day
such as naptime, free play, morning meeting time,
and so on.
But today, the naproom was manipulated to invite
for dialogues around movement, specifically
movement with birds.
34

Running, jumping, chasing, flying, building, twirling,
passing, dancing, swaying, throwing, swinging,
pushing, pulling, seeking, searching…

The list goes on as children moved with the birds.

From walking in wonder and awe, admiring the space that was supposedly for ‘naptime’, children’s pace
began to swiften as one chased after the other. Laughter, screams, and sounds of feet scuffling against the
carpet filled the room. Running in circles, children would occasionally stop to look at the birds through the
video of birds in the background. It was evident that the call to move in big movements was loud and inviting.
It was interesting to note that while children were surrounded by images of birds, they were initially not
inclined to embody or pretend to be the birds. Although there’s the occasional want to become a bird because
of their abilities to fly, we’ve been thinking of the birds more as the Other. When we become more aware of
the Other, we encounter differences and problems that we wouldn’t have otherwise experienced.
35

Engaging with Problems and
Differences

Meroux, Zoey, and Luna were building houses in a
corner of the room. It was initially understood that Luna
and Meroux were to live together while Zoey lives in a
home beside them. This was the agreement until they
were faced with a problem…

Zoey: I want to live here too
Meroux: HEY! We won’t fit in here, all three of us
Luna: You have your own home, this is too squishy
Zoey: But I want to live in this home too
Frustrated, Meroux and Zoey exchanged glares. After a
few more verbal exchanges, I asked if there was
another way the children can still stay together.

Luna: But the house is already done and it cannot
be changed anymore
Meroux: And I don’t want to change it
Zoey: Me too, but I want to live together with Luna
and Meroux
Faith: So then what can we do? We don’t have to
change the home if you don’t want to but let’s think
of another way we can still have our homes
together without having to squish in one
Meroux: Oh I know! We can just have our own
homes attached to one another like this. That way
we can still live together
36

The three children proceeded to create their
own individual homes, but attached it to one
another with a block that became their
boundaries.
The problem began as a space and
inclusion problem, which created a bigger
question.
Why was there a need for them to be doing
it together? And what happens to us when
we listen to other? shifting the way we
initially choose to do things for the sake of
the other?

Through that small encounter, I wondered
and became curious on
“what does it mean to live together”, but
more importantly
“what does it mean to live well together”?

Through the years, the question of ‘how can we live well together’ has
become a more pressing political and ethical question whereby the future of our world
has become dependent on the way we will respond to this question (Giugni & Taylor,
2012, p. 301). A common understanding of the term ‘living well’ is in particular
reference to personal or social, environmental and economic success. But because of
the multiplicities of species and stories in the world we habituate, it is impossible to ‘live
well’ as an individual without living well with the other (inclusion).
And so this idea of living together but not having to be in the same space
together was profound. According to Taylor (2013), “recognizing and responding to the
wonders of more-than-human difference is one of the key features of living in common
worlds- but so is ‘staying with the trouble’” (p. 77). When we participate and ”stay
with the trouble” we become transformed in our thinking as we become affected by the
other.
This transformation exudes through our actions, forcing us to think of the
other within our routines and play. It encourages us to want to more in order to know
how else to respond.

Peering Through Research
Being open, and being vulnerable to being affected by the other, is how we accomplish our
humanity; it is how the communities, of which we are part, create and re-create themselves. We
are not separate from the encounters that make up the community but, rather, emergent with them
(Davies, 2014, p. 10)

Collaboration and Research
It was important for us as educators
to acknowledge that although we
were increasingly becoming more
knowledgeable about birds, we
were not experts. As knowledge is
socially co-constructed, in our
processes we continuously
collaborate with other researchers
and artists to guide us in our inquiry.
Bo Sun Kim, our pedagogista at
SFU ChildCare Society, has been
fundamental in guiding, critiquing,
and sharing valuable feedback and
resources that continue to challenge
us in our thinking which has been
reflected in our curriculum. We’ve
also reached out to “bird experts”
and artists such as Elizabeth
Butterworth whose thoughtprovoking illustrations have been
insightful and useful in our
discussions.

And it was through these reflective and collaborative dialogues that I was inspired to explore movement in
relation to wings. Birds’ wings are what sets them apart from other species and it seemed impossible to
think of movement of birds without mentioning its recognizable, distinctive, unique quality.
40

Winging in our Differences
My initial thoughts on engaging with wings seemed cliché and redundant to say the least, as humans
throughout history and in art have been heavily drawn to wings, particularly with its movement and shape.
Through various dialogues with co-educators and our pedagogista, I was encouraged to linger with the
following questions: why are we drawn to the wings? how do wings move? what movements can wings
make? what do I know about wings and what else have I yet to find out?

The Six Red Feathers (Batterworth, E. 2015)

Buzzard’s Wing (Batterworth, E. 2015)

As the challenge to living well is learning to focus more on dwelling with difference of the self and the other
(Haraway, 2008), I began to engage with movement in relation to wings.
41

How do wings move? What are the
movements for?

Luna: These wings are covering the
bird. They need it to keep them warm
Alex: Wings make birds fly higher and
higher. To go above the mountains some
birds need to extend their wings longer
Zoya: When birds peck with their beaks
on the ground, the wings go up on the
sides. It helps them to balance
Samaya: The wings help them fly
around in circles or straight lines

Lucy: The wings
first move like this,
then like this, then
like this! When it
goes up then that’s
when it flies.
Faith: What about
when its folded?
Lucy: It can’t fly like
that. They’re doing
something else
42

Angela: There are 26 feathers in a wing
Squinting, Angela has taken notice of the
feathers that make up a wing. She insists that
there has to be 26 feathers, no more no less. In
between squints as her her peered through the
paper, she made sure she was still counting the
right amount of feathers in one side of the wing.

Faith: What happens when there are less
feathers? What if there are no feathers?

Zahran: Without feathers, birds die.
They need feathers

It was this attunement to
the feathers sparked for
more conversations and
curiosities between
children and educators
alike.

How many feathers does
a bird wing need to
have? What are feathers
made out of? Why do
birds lose feathers? And
can they grow back?

In order to further discuss what it means to ‘live
well’ with others, we must contextualize and
intimately know the place that we are situated in. It
is important to localize research as “without the
intimate knowledge of local places… there is no
beginning point. Without a concern of the local,
action is not possible… [though] it is possible to
understand the embodied effects of the global at a
local level” (Duhn, 2012, pp. 6-7). Yet it is nearly
not enough that humans obtain surface level
knowledge of the place they are situated in for
intimate knowledge to occur unless we take notice
of and include dialoguing with and listening to the
more-than-human beings that live in the place with
us (Duhn, 2012; Davies, 2014).

Paying closer attention to the birds’
wings and feathers has allowed for us to
gain a form of intimacy with the birds, as
we deconstruct former ways of knowing
wings. Wings allow for flight, but they
are also for warmth, a hiding place,
stability, and also... life.
As we direct our focus on the feathers,
we ask ourselves:

What are other ways of knowing?
of researching? What happens
when we allow for ourselves to
challenge what we already know
and open up other possibilities of
searching for the unknown, the
unfamiliar?

Touching Connections
“just as ripples and waves and drops of foam do not exist without the body of water, or the wind, or the
other matter they encounter (stones, sand, rocks, human bodies . . .), we,…. are part of, and
encounter, already entangled matter and meanings that affect us, and that we affect, in an ongoing,
always changing set of movements”
(Davies, 2014, p. 3)
47

Throughout this inquiry, we’ve been
confronted by a series of encounters.
Pacini-Ketchabaw and Taylor (2019) talks
about “repeated patterns of encounters” (p.
26) with which children, educators, and
animals both encounter one another on a
daily basis in certain places. With the
evident mutual affecting and affected that
occurs between these encounters, it offers
a glimpse into “the kind of ordinary
everyday interspecies relations that
reshape worlds together in ways that
exceed paramount human actions and
interests” (Pacini-Ketchabaw & Taylor,
2019, p. 26). This transformative exchange
that recognizes and responds to the
wonders of the more-than-human
difference is one of the key features of
living in common worlds.

As we encounter birds on a daily basis, we
have also been encountering feathers. This
bird-Morningside-child-feather assemblage
stirred excitement to search for more
relations and more ways of knowing birds
outside our childcare center.
48

Throughout the weeks, children have been finding feathers in our playground. As we collectively wonder
about what happens when birds lose feathers, I invited the children to search for feathers further away
from the classroom.

Zahran: Lots of birds live in the forest. There might be lots of feathers in the forest
Meroux: But they could also be up in the sky flying! Maybe the feathers will fall off from the
sky
Faith: We can go for a walk, but how will we see the feathers?
Joshua: Maybe the binoculars.
49
Meroux: Yeah and the glasses. We can see them with the (magnifying) glasses

We searched for feathers in the sky, on the ground
and into the forest.

Joshua: I found a feather! It’s brown so
it must have come from a chickadee
50

Meroux: I
found a
feather too!
See… it must
have come
from a really
big bird
Looking closely,
the dried leaves of
fern had a very
close
resemblance to
the feathers
previously drawn
by the children. As
we touched and
felt the soft
prickles of the
fern, we set forth
to find more that
echoed feather.
51

Putting it into the test, Meroux and Tina tried
jumping from the edge of a big rock and
flapped with their feathers.

Meroux: This is not going to work. I only
have two feathers
Tina: We need more! (she exclaimed as
they took turns jumping and flapping with
their feathers)

Gilbert and Joshua then
found some sticks and
exclaimed that they too
were going to fly. They
joyfully ran and ‘flew’
imitating a flapping motion.
As I reflected more on their
choice of sticks, I noticed
that the sticks we curved as
if to echo wings. Sticks
were not chosen at a
random as there was
particular attention to the
shape and length that would
best resemble a feather

Our search for more encounters with
feathers and differences created linkages
and connections that would have otherwise
not have been brought into being if we didn’t
venture out
Feathers in connection with the ferns,
in connection with the sticks,
in connection with place,
in connection with our own movement.

Closing Thoughts
It was through watching and engaging ourselves in research of different bird movements that
gave us an opportunity to be more attuned to the entangled relationships of birds and humans in
Morningside. It all began when we were moved by and shared the concern of Taylor in regards to the birds
being affected by the smoke. Through their shift in annual movement, we realized we share similar worries
as we were living in the times of Covid-19, which directly limits and has shifted our ‘normal’ ways of
moving.
Through this inquiry, movements were showcased in big, overlapping, distorted motions that
clearly made visible learning and thought processes.
Excited and moved by our entangled connections that were made visible through drawings, we distorted
our bodies to imitate their motions realizing key differences between us that were biological. Through
distortions, we become more curious about the details and the in-between process of moving, that we
sought for more and different ways of attuning to birds’ movements.
But movement was also presented in smaller scales of a stare, a squint, a touch that represented
inner dissonance and tensions that have led to newer or another way of responding to the other.
Not all differences give initial excitement as some moments have even pushed us educators up to the
brink of utter frustration. But as we committed ourselves to keep going, shifting perspectives and slowing
down through paying attention to the small, minute, and seemingly insignificant movements of birds and of
children, we have become more curious and excited. We became open to disagreements that have
enabled us to ask challenging questions with each the other, as it was in times of tension and analyzing
between differences that led to gaining deeper understanding of the other.

Closing Thoughts
We are not alone in this world. We live in a
relational world whereby what we do to the
planet we do (or have already done) to
ourselves.
Within early childhood education and my
inquiry with the children at Morningside and
engaging with common worlds and worldmaking perspectives, we have created a shift
in our understanding of ‘living well’: from an
individualized personal, social, or economic
success, to flourishing as a collective with the
more-than-human that reconsiders the nature
of our relations with and responsibilities
towards not just the birds, but all of the earth
others that we co-inhabit with. We have began
to understand our existence as co-existence,
therefore we affect and are affected by what
happens around us, in constant becoming, and
experience the urgency to care for and take
responsibility for the other.
To live well is to not just to flourish individually
as a human, but to flourish with the collective,
in a holistic idea that recognizes their
interconnectedness.

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