***Next week I get to present a Ted-style talk at the Children & Nature Network’s Nature Everywhere conference. Today’s post includes some meandering thinking that happened as I prepared my talk: An Apple a Day: The Case for Nature-based Learning in Schools. I’ll share more here after I give the talk. Please reach out if you’re going to be at the conference. ❤️***
Once, in a staff meeting when I was up to my eyeballs in frustration with some completely unhelpful post-event litigation, I interrupted the conversation with this:
“Ok. Enough of this eleventh inning quarterbacking.”
Everyone stopped, looked at me, tilted their heads and furrowed their brows like golden retrievers and burst out laughing.
For those of you not familiar with American football and baseball, perhaps the humor is lost on you. Essentially, I had mixed up the following ideas:
11th hour = last minute
Innings = there are 9 of these in a baseball game (though I just looked that up because I was second guessing myself)
“Armchair quarterbacking” = a reference to sitting in a Lazy-Boy recliner watching a game of American football (in which there are four quarters or two halves but exactly zero innings) and yelling at the television about what the players should be doing, if only you were in charge.
Anyhow, suffice it to say, sports metaphors are not my A-game. But now I’m proudly claiming my “eleventh-inning quarterbacking” concept (you read it here first, folks!) as a perfect phrase to get a point across while dispelling tension when people are behaving really badly, especially at work. Try it and let me know how it goes!
Today I’ll be exploring a few more on-brand metaphors. And one pop-culture reference as well (but it’s from the late 90s when I was in high school so I actually knew a bit about pop culture then).
Pop-quiz:
An apple a day keeps the….
An apple for your _______
Low-hanging ____
(Answer Key: 1. doctor away 2. teacher 3. fruit)
So let’s tackle an apple-heavy fruit salad and go back to the basics on what I mean by apple-a-day nature-based learning. I’m doing this because my thinking has evolved and some of you have joined me since I first started writing about apple-a-day nature-based learning.
Turf and Poison Ivy
I grew up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin in a house on a forested plot on Goldridge Road Back then, the houses were few and the trees were many. My dad, a surgeon, still chopped firewood to partially heat our home. We were technically in a suburban subdivision, but I still got scratches on my legs and arms picking wild raspberries along our driveway and road. My brother (Ben) and I routinely contracted poison ivy even though we were experts at that plant’s identification. One time Ben’s face actually swelled so much he looked like a balloon. He had unknowingly dug in not yet sprouted poison ivy, touching the plant’s potent roots. Having used a trowel, I escaped Ben’s fate.
Through the forest we could catch small glimpses of the Leavitt’s house, but other neighbors were completely out of sight.
My mom saw to it that we had a segment of soft grass, planted from uniform, lush rolls of turf – not seed – to keep the poison ivy at bay and for my brother and the neighbors and I to play 500 or baseball on an oblong “diamond” or for my dad to play catch with us. And for our Shih Tzu, Dottie, and Bichon, Kelev, to run around without coming back full of deer ticks and burs.
As the seasons changed, and the days turned from hot and sticky to cool, crisp sweater-and-jeans weather (my fave – though for years I refused to wear anything but sweatpants and stretchy leggings – a story for another time!), our turf backyard demanded we rake the maple and oak leaves that blanketed it. My brother and I would do this willingly, I think. At least I don’t remember complaining about this chore (Mom, is my memory deceiving me?). I felt satisfied watching swaths of seemingly evergreen lawn reappear as the brown leaves gathered in piles. I liked the smell of the moist soil and cold decomposing leaves. And, I loved jumping in the leaves when we were done.
Apple picking
Around the same time as we raked leaves, we would go on an annual visit to the apple orchards about twelve minutes from our home. I loved apple picking. Having my head stuck in the leaves, the smell of hay and damp soil in a cool barn. The reward of a crisp, tart Cortland apple wrapped in sweet gooey caramel and the warm smack of fresh pressed cider. I also liked it because it was candy corn season, but I hesitate to admit that because candy corn is a polarizing treat (and also a U.S. cultural reference).
Anyhow, today we’re focused on apples and their metaphors to explain my mission to mainstream apple-a-day nature-based learning in schools everywhere.
Let’s start with 3 definitions.
First, we have nature-based learning (NBL) which is learning outdoors or bringing elements of nature indoors for learning.
This definition is distilled from the much more detailed and nuanced definition in the canon1.
Importantly, nature-based learning is content, age, school model, curriculum, and environment/place AGNOSTIC. NBL can be done – and localized and customized – by any teacher anywhere within any constraints. I’ve seen it work at a well-resourced private school in the mountains of Colorado and a government school in the informal settlements2 of Nairobi.
To put it forcefully: NBL can and must be practiced by EVERY TEACHER, EVERYWHERE.
Next, we have the modifier apple-a-day which connotes modest actions that become part of the (daily) routine.
Rolled up together, Apple-a-Day Nature-Based Learning = routine, modest actions incorporating nature in learning.
To quote my wise friend, Mildred, I want nature-based learning to “become part of the DNA of teaching and learning.” Yes.
Side note: Why so many words when Mildred managed this all in so few?
Now for the metaphors
Apples are a tantalizing symbol for integrating nature in education.
Remember our pop quiz?
An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
An apple for your teacher
Low-hanging fruit
First, apples “keep the doctor away” because they are nutritious and thus a beautiful symbol of health. With nature’s proven health benefits – from lowered stress to improved mood and physical wellbeing associated with time in nature – it stands to reason that we include routine doses of apple-a-day NBL in schools for the good of students and educators alike.
Next, we have the apple as a symbol for schools across the U.S.. Ever wonder why that’s the case? Trusty ChatGPT provided some explanations. With respect to the separation of church and state, there’s a potential biblical reference here: the forbidden fruit Eve plucked from the tree of knowledge is often depicted as an apple in western cultures. Also, I learned that apples are also connected to Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. And that in 17th century Europe underpaid teachers (!) received apples as tokens of appreciation. And apparently out on the U.S. frontier families paid teachers in the form of goods – including apples. On a practical level, apples are an easy symbol to render so they work well for branding (sound familiar?).
Whatever the reasons or blend of reasons, I like apple-a-day nature-based learning for how it conjures all the stuff of formal education – schools and teachers and students and desks and chairs and pencils and chalkboards and the like.
Lastly, I’ll take up the hit-us-over-the-head metaphor of low-hanging fruit – referring to actions that are obviously good and we would be silly not to do them (I shout-wrote about this last week).
In apple-a-day nature-based learning we have delicious apples ripe for the plucking. Apple-a-day NBL is a low-cost, attainable, immediate, and proven solution to gain traction on the world’s most vexing problems from the global mental health state of emergency among children and adolescents to improving educational outcomes to growing a generation of nature champions with both the will and the wherewithal to tackle the climate crisis to making teachers feel joy and calm in their jobs! Why the hell wouldn’t we do it?!
Standing at round up to 5’2” (157cm) tall – and as someone a bit uncomfortable on ladders – my apple picking has always been restricted to low-hanging fruit. I guess it makes sense that I spend my days trying to get people to consume an apple-a-day to keep the doctor away, to pluck the juiciest apples from the tree of knowledge, and — for goodness sake — to pick and eat — the delicious apples in front of our faces.
To finish with a late 90s pop-culture reference (which apparently is also a reference to grenades in WWI and, in my usage meant to refute any argument anyone might make as to why we wouldn’t do apple-a-day NBL in schools): How do you like them apples?
🍎,
Becca
The appropriate term is informal settlement. Many people around the globe know these areas as “slums.”