You can listen to this post:
Acorn shoe context; skip to “Imagine a Wolf” if you’ve already read about acorn shoes.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about “acorn shoes,” a lesson from my daughter Nora (age 4) that the most obvious answer is not always the correct one.
“Acorn shoes” came about when, all within a 36-hour period, Nora fell, screamed dramatically (average for her), developed a pronounced limp, got (apparently) better, and then started limping again. The obvious answer was that she had hurt herself. And then Eric (my husband) did a physical exam. He found her feet and ankles both quite intact…and her right shoe full of acorns.
Since thinking about this lesson, I’ve noticed my life is full of acorn shoes — and it’s best when I just put them on, even when they’re uncomfortable.
Imagine a Wolf
My kids have a book called Imagine a Wolf. On the opening page, the reader is compelled: “Close your eyes and imagine a wolf.”
I try to get Clara (6) and Nora (4) to close their eyes and describe what they see. This is hard, especially now that they know the “answer.” Clara plays along a bit. Nora wiggles her noggin like a bobble-head doll and makes goofy faces, her eyes squeezed dramatically shut and then popping wide open with a laugh. Then she will get out of bed and start playing with Legos or stacking coins into neat piles or organizing beads or acting out scenes with her stretchy dinosaur and troll pencil topper (the latter two objects being gifts that came in “party-favor” bags from birthdays – a phenomenon we can discuss another time).
When you turn the page in Imagine a Wolf, you meet the book's protagonist: a grandma-like wolf wearing an apron and wedges.
This wolf’s primary pastime is knitting sweaters for chilly shorn sheep. Yes, she has shiny teeth (better for holding yarn) and big ears (for hearing sheep cry for help when they’re cold). She is no Grimm’s fairy tale wolf.
Acorn Shoe #2
My second “acorn shoe” is like this story, but delivered by ladybugs across continents.
Acorn shoe #2 is: When we turn to stereotypes limited by our experiences, we can get it wrong. We must remain curious.
One of the many, many reasons I love connecting (and connections) with more-than-human nature is because nature provokes wonder. And wonder finds voice in people as curiosity which is an essential ingredient in empathy.
“We need to dispel the myth that empathy is ‘walking in someone else’s shoes.’ Rather than walking in your shoes, I need to learn how to listen to the story you tell about what it’s like in your shoes and believe you even when it doesn’t match my experiences.”
-Brené Brown
Acorn shoe #2 — avoid stereotypes and remain curious — is critical for developing emotional connections with more-than-human nature to foster the interspecies empathy I keep writing about (here, here), which is probably the most fundamental reason I’m obsessed with fostering human connections with more-than-human nature in schools (where, across-the-globe, 1.5 billion students spend 20% of their waking hours with 81 million teachers).
As hard as I squint, I don’t see a path toward a better planetary reality without all humans forging emotional connections with the non-human parts of our planet.
And the most surefire way I know to form these emotional — HEART ❤️ — connections with our non-human planet is through frequent, positive experiences with nature. Through getting to know nature.
For my part, I’ve put a lot of eggs in the foster-heart-connections-with-nature-in-schools basket (the focus of my work with Good Natured Learning) because I can see a path by which these emotional bonds – and the empathy they birth – proliferate “at scale” (to use a term people love or loathe or love to loathe) when those aforementioned 81 million teachers integrate nature into the way they teach in schools everywhere.
If that just got too out there for you, consider this: a simple walk around a building noticing objects that start with N-N-N…like Nests led 3 year old students to care for a dying bird fallen from his nest, covering him with leaves for a dignified departure. This was a bird they wouldn’t have even seen if they were cooped up in their classroom.
Ladybugs
Anyhow, I told you this acorn shoe about resisting stereotypes and remaining curious comes from ladybugs. So on with it.
The other day Ellah – one of Good Natured Learning’s Kenyan teaching fellows – sent a picture to our cohort’s WhatsApp group of a student’s hand. In his hand was a ladybug unlike any I had ever seen.
I mean, look at it!
Instead of being a red insect with little black dots (perfect for counting exercises with little learners!), this ladybug was black with reddish splotches.
I sat there staring at the picture wondering if this ladybug was a mutant or just what ladybugs look like in Kenya. I marveled at her patterns. How was it possible this was the first ladybug I had seen in my two years living here? Was this even a ladybug?
And then, after my brief reverie, I gave the photo a little heart reaction ❤️emoji feeling pleased Ellah’s students were noticing and wondering and delighting in something as small as a ladybug, and I officiously carried on with my to-do list.
Later, I returned to the ladybug on Ellah’s student’s hand and I thought of the other ladybugs I’ve seen during more than 4 decades on the planet.
I remembered a photo I took of a ladybug on a purple aster while hiking with some Colorado Good Natured Learning Fellows in the mountains north of Paonia, Colorado this past July. I sent it to the Kenyan Fellows.
Pretty different, no?
Ladybug Stereotypes
In mid-August, I reunited in-real-life with the Good Natured Learning fellows in Kenya – our familia (side note: familia is the actual Kiswahili word for family and also the Spanish word for family which makes me v. happy) of nature-based learning practitioners. These 14 teachers from schools in and near Nairobi have been implementing, innovating, and iterating apple-a-day nature-based learning with their students for the past 8 months. They are working in wildly different schools with the most divergent possible conditions – from teaching 70 students in one class (!) in an under-resourced government school in an informal settlement with a small patch of grass under a few trees to teaching just a dozen students at a time in a British curriculum International school located on a breathtaking 11-acre campus complete with indigenous forest in the heart of Nairobi.
This isn’t exactly the focus of this post – and even so, I can’t say this enough - although nature-based learning looks profoundly different in these extremes – not to mention in the suburban, urban, and rural schools of Colorado – the impacts on students – and teachers – have been stunningly similar and positive: more engagement and attention, calmer demeanor and improved behavior, better learning, more joy – and this: demonstrable heart connections with more-than-human nature.
Their students notice ladybugs now. And they wonder about them. They are curious and they are building heart connections with more-than-human nature, often delivered in lady-bug-sized-and-shaped packages and moments.
Back at our familia reunion, between sips of uji (a millet porridge I was compelled to drink by Sophia and Jackson even though I had already eaten breakfast – silly me!) and bites of arrowroot (sooooooo starchy, and still tasty with enough salt!), I mentioned these photos.
“That ladybug was cool, Ellah. It was a ladybug, right? It looked so different from the ladybugs I have seen!”
“Ndio. Yes, it was a ladybug.” Ellah confirmed.
Ruth spoke next.
“I know! Now it makes so much more sense why all the ladybug drawings and costumes and things look the way they do. Like American ladybugs.”
Ruth – also Kenyan – grew up knowing ladybugs like the one in Ellah’s photo (which also apparently come in many different colors including yellow, orange, and even pink!). Commercialized ladybug products didn’t match what she’d seen.
She had previously shrugged off this inconsistency and hadn’t revisited it until our photo exchange!
Wonder-and-Curiosity Built Empathy
So going back to our acorn shoe – about resisting stereotypes, staying curious, and developing empathy, I wonder:
How often do we (do I) assume that our (my) experiences explain the whole of reality when reality is so big and so diverse?
More-than-human nature pushes back on this tendency with gentle-yet-firm invitations to be curious.
So I’m on the lookout for my first Kenyan ladybug.
I bet if I wear around a shoe full of acorns it will slow me down enough to notice ladybug invitations to wonder, be curious, and connect.
❤️,
B