Climate Corps Education Outside Fellow Spotlight: Julia Dunn

By Jamie Wollum

Julia Dunn is a Climate Corps Education Outside(CCEO) fellow in the 2021-22 cycle, serving students at Starr King Elementary School in San Francisco. Prior to joining CCEO, Julia studied Environmental Education at Bates College and has held various roles within the field, including working as the School Programs Coordinator at Wave Hill Public Gardens in New York, where she led efforts for STEAM-focused field trip programming. With this extensive of environmental education experience, as well as a passion for disability justice, Julia is a leader within the CCEO cohort. We caught up with her to hear more about her experience and career goals

When and how did you know you wanted to pursue a job in the environmental sphere?

I’ve wanted to work in this field since early childhood - in large part due to informal science programs like CCEO. For a long time I thought I would be a scientist, specifically a marine biologist, but then in the first year of undergrad I took a class called “Experiential Education in the Outdoors''. I remember unspooling string for young people to weave webs of life around ancient trees and feeling a sense of deep alignment. I think in The Secret Garden Frances Hodgsen Burnett refers to it as “The BIG GOOD THING.” While the field of environmental education requires a ton of shapeshifting, this feeling has remained central to my practice. It powers my commitments to kinship, celebration, and dismantling patterns which isolate people from their inherent worth and belonging. There is so much potential within the environmental sphere for communal and personal liberation -- I can’t imagine myself anywhere else.

How does your participation in the CCEO fellowship contribute to your career goals?

As my practice has matured, I’ve realized that I want to devote myself fully to the intersection between outdoor education and disability justice. I hope to begin a graduate program with this focus within the next three years. The education award provided by the CCEO fellowship is an immense tangible support in this pursuit. After graduate school, I will begin to build new programming and perhaps a new organization. As a result, this time to fine tune my facilitation skills and dig deep into my practice is invaluable. The garden is metabolizing my learned urgency into nourishing slowness. Students are teaching me how to show up mindfully and consistently. Other educators are sharing their passion and praxis in ways that break down the parts of me still invested in hierarchy and competition. Essentially this fellowship is an affirmation of my values and a challenge to live in accordance with them.

Julia working with students in the Starr King Garden

What is your favorite part of being an environmental educator?

In my experience, outdoor classroom spaces are often places in which people feel most seen -- or where relationships are held most tenderly. I am remembering conversations between folks with dementia and their caregivers about the mutual aid within a beehive. I’m thinking of a moment when students who often questioned their worth were welcomed by worms to compost and its juicy alchemical flow. We move parallel to and as part of the natural world -- I really like helping folks remember that.