How can we use textbooks to teach our students about forests from direct observation of local ecosystems? In ​‘Teaching about forests: Interpreting curricular aims’ a government school teacher explores national curricular aims within a state’s cultural history. ​‘Teaching about forests amidst sand dunes’ shows how a teacher educator extends dense, wet forest examples to community-managed scrub forests in arid landscapes. ​‘Teaching about forests in the laboratory of the real world’ uses a journalist’s lens to reveal the uneven impacts of conservation models on forest-dependent communities. Together, these stories show how we can use the textbook to turn our surrounding environments into living, breathing science classrooms.