Zarya Thomas

Education & Curriculum Colloborator

I am a Canadian-Afro-Caribbean-Celtic mom of four unschoolers with deep gratitude for the traditional territories of the Quw’utsun peoples on which I currently live, work and play with my family. In addition to motherhood, as a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) at the University of Victoria, research assistant and teacher educator at Vancouver Island University, and Education & Curriculum Consultant with the Living Lab, my work aims to highlight how healing, learning and life are intricately connected to the building of more equitable and sustainable futures. As a passionate believer in the necessity of preventative, restorative and relational approaches to diverse, inclusive and decolonizing education, I feel supported by decolonial praxis and an ever-evolving unschooled worldview. I am also graciously humbled by opportunities to weave and learn from/with Indigenous ways of knowing-being-doing on/with the land and water as a non-Indigenous settler of Turtle Island.