Dear People Who Care About Students,
I have a drawer full of snowballs. They haven’t melted, despite being stored indoors at room temperature.
These snowballs contain educators’ hopes, concerns, and wonders when they think about including nature in their core teaching practices. They come from educators across two continents working with students of all ages across the PK-12 (PP-12) spectrum. They represent teachers of a huge variety of subjects. They originate in schools in the informal settlements of Nairobi and outdoorsy Colorado mountain towns. They come from public, private, and charter schools in rural, suburban, and urban settings. The snowballs represent the thoughts of classroom teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, principals and district administrators, social emotional learning specialists, and other formal education professionals. They capture thoughts from educators fresh on the job and from 30-year teaching veterans.
Tl;dr
Educators’ nature-based learning hope-concern-wonder snowballs bear striking similarities even when they come from vastly different contexts. Patterns are emerging.
Today: I’m sharing how I gathered these snowballs and a list of the patterns. There are valid concerns and worry wonders with which we must contend. There is also cause for hope: apple-a-day nature-based learning WORKS on the ground.
Coming up in future posts: unpacking these thematic snowballs.
Gathering Snowballs
My snowball collection started with a ritual I learned from English faculty @Josh Alford back when we both taught at the High Mountain Institute, a quirky semester school blending wilderness expeditions, residential life, and academics on a rustic campus located high in the mountains of Colorado. HMI’s tagline was: “Where nature and minds meet.” It was the perfect place for me for some really good years.
The ritual is called a “snowball fight” and its goal is to gather and share important information in an anonymous way to develop a sense of commonalities and community among learners. It also helps me – as a teacher – gain valuable insights into what’s going on for my learners and adjust accordingly.
Here’s the protocol (you can skim this part if you’re not a teacher! 😉):
❄️Hand out x* slips of scrap paper. (*Can adjust this number based on your prompts)
❄️Tell students NOT to write their name on the pieces of paper.
❄️Post/State your questions/prompts.
❄️Ask each student to write a response to each prompt/question on the slips of paper, using one paper per prompt.
❄️Have each person crumple their papers into balls (“snowballs”). These should not be excessively wadded though…
❄️Gather in a circle, tell them you’re going to have a “snowball fight,”
❄️Set out the rules of engagement: no beaming at people with force, keep the snowballs below the neck…you know…
❄️On my count of 3, I want you to throw your snowballs; then pick up x* snowballs off the ground. 1…2…3…
❄️Now, uncrumple the snowballs you’ve gathered
❄️Take turns reading them out loud around the circle
I’ve found this works with participants of a variety of ages so long as they are able to write. I suppose it could also work with younger kids with some modifications like drawing or selecting from pictures to answer the questions. But I taught middle, high school, and college students — and now adult professionals — so I’ve never made this modification.
I originally used this activity with students to suss out hopes, questions, and fears for a backpacking expedition. Then, I started using snowball fights with educators regarding nature-based learning.
NB: for the teachers out there: I imagine there are hundreds of possible applications for this like checking for understanding in a low-stakes way or establishing classroom values. Anyhow…
Hopes, Concerns, and Wonders Across Oceans
Lately, my snowball fights have been amongst educators in professional development workshops. Most of them have taken place in the summer in Colorado. Recently, I led one in Nairobi, Kenya (where I suspect there has never before been a snowball fight!).
Each time, I ask educators to write…
1 hope,
1 concern, and
1 “wonder”
about integrating apple-a-day (modest, do-able) nature-based learning into their routine/daily teaching practices.
Snowballing Snowballs
Their answers, penned on the clean side of tiny slips of scrap paper opposite Leadville Safeway receipts, junk mail, and some of my two daughters’ prolific artwork, are starting to pile up.
Sifting through these paper snowballs and gathering wisdom from countless conversations on the subject, I am starting to see them snowball into patterns of hope, concern, and wonder.
Hopes:
Become a better educator (skills)
Feel better; more joyful
Support students (wellbeing, learning, joy)
Instill a love for nature amongst learners
Concerns:
“One more thing”/too much work
Unsupportive colleagues/administrators/community
It won’t work (students going bananas, wasting time, undermining learning goals, etc.)
Risk (students will get hurt)
Wonders:
How does apple-a-day nature-based learning actually work on the ground?
How can nature-based learning fit within real world constraints (e.g., curriculum, standards, schedules, facilities, weather, all.the.things)?
What would school (or the world!) be like if everyone practiced nature-based learning?
Actionable Hope
For six years, I’ve been officially collecting these snowballs from educators who have come together to gain the knowledge (why), skills (how), and will (capacity + motivation)1 to bring apple-a-day nature-based learning into their instructional and classroom design practices. These educators are professionals with LIVED experience of what school is like on-the-ground where they are.
The similarities across vastly different schools, geographies, students, disciplines, curricula, ages, resources, environments, and cultures are keeping me up at night. I have had a first grade teacher in a rural, outdoorsy, mountain town in Colorado voice the SAME CONCERN – administrator buy-in – that was raised by a middle school teacher working in an urban, informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya.
This concern and others are valid. They were raised by educators who are deeply familiar with how change happens in school. They know because they are DOING THE WORK on the ground.
In addition to valid concerns, they share wonders that are worries wrapped in questions:
If we have any hope of mainstreaming nature-based learning in formal education, we must contend with the concerns and the worry-wonders.
At the same time, we get to grapple with wonders that are question-dream-hopes. Like this…
We get to bear witness when educators are making positive change happen with apple-a-day nature-based learning on the ground.
With their students, they are practicing hope.
We need more educators to join in.
We need everyone who cares about students to watch, celebrate, share, and support this actionable hope.
More soon.
❤️,
Becca
Credit and gratitude to Elena Aguilar for her work on gaps that can get in the way of adults changing their behaviors.
I’m excited to play Snowball with educators students and community members in the next few weeks. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Because I love alliteration I’m planning to use
I wish, I wonder, I worry