Belly Voices

Trusting our guts to make nature connections part of school.

Dear People Who Care About Students (warning to my teacher-readers – much of this will be review for you),

It has probably been a minute since you have been in a classroom other than your child’s for parent-teacher conferences (or similar such event). During those visits, the focus is your child so you might not pay attention to much else. 

I’m going to try to refresh your memory about what it’s like in many schools because context matters in the quest to mainstream nature-based learning in schools everywhere. And then I’m going to make a case for us to all trust our guts.  

First:

Tl;dr (cliff notes for people on-the-go)

1)    A teacher sent me a picture of a nature scene glued to a privacy shield.

2)    It unleashed in me a wave of emotions. First: warmth at the tenderness of this teacher’s attention to detail. Next: utter despair at the context in which teachers are operating.

3)    And then inspiration at this teacher who is doing what she knows is good for her students (connecting them with nature) in whatever ways she can control.

4)    And finally: a call to trust our guts to make routine nature connections part of all schools everywhere.

Privacy Shields

Recently, a teacher-collaborator-friend shared this picture: 

In case it’s not familiar, this is a photo of a “privacy shield.” These shields are typically plain cardboard dividers erected on test-taking days to inhibit wandering eyes from copying neighbors’ answers. My friend has added a nature image to hers.

How does this picture make you feel?

It takes me back to elementary school. Head down, tight and precise pencil grip, sweaty palms, test in front of me. Teacher pacing the room between the desks. Heels clicking on linoleum (we didn’t have carpet). My own trained or innate obliviousness to other students around me, each behind their own cardboard blinder just feet away from me. 30 individual desks in 5 neat files, spaced within walking distance of the next column. A wave of nerves and excitement. I was a “good test taker.” Whatever that says about me.  

This desk is tidier than mine. Same trappings: notebook, folder, workbook. There’s stuff written on the whiteboards. Those would have been chalkboards for me. Makes me feel dinosaury. This classroom has a TV or Smart Board no doubt connected to Wi-Fi. Mine had an overhead projector and TV on a cart with a VHS player. The upper part of a globe’s northern hemisphere peeks out over the TV. Same-same – except the globe in the photo might have some new countries like South Sudan that weren’t on mine.

This picture makes time travel seem real. Or maybe like time stands still. Though my classrooms at Lowes Creek Elementary School and South Middle School mostly had hard floors, I even remember this same universal carpet pattern. It was in our library. 

My First Reaction

I have had waves of reactions to this photo.

First: a welling of gratitude for the incredible human behind this small change – adding a nature scene inside the shield. We’ll call her Teacher K. I love Teacher K’s unabashed hope and commitment to her students. I know she’s already teaching her students outdoors so they get the recommended 120-minute dose of nature time each week to support their mental health and general wellbeing. And, as she did with the testing shields, she’s adding nature indoors, too. I love the tenderness of this specific intervention – infusing one of the darkest parts of school with what biophilic designers¹ call “prospect” — our “inborn desire” to “see things from a safe place without being overlooked by others.” 

Will students behind these nature-scene testing shields feel better while taking tests? Will they do better?

If the research is correct, students will both feel and perform better relative to how they would have felt and performed in the simple cardboard counterfactual. 

We’ll probably never know because a classroom and each student in it is an ecosystem of infinite variables. Still, I wonder.

*If you know an education researcher looking for some interesting stuff to study, please put them in touch with me. I’d love to pair them up with one of the Good Natured Learning Fellows. 

Different Tears

Then I looked at the image again. My eyes welled with different tears. I felt the walls closing in and the futility of it all.

Lest you think Teacher K is uniquely holding onto outdated ways, let me assure you the “privacy shield” industry is alive and well. There is, in fact, a company called privacyshields.com. And a quick visit to Amazon revealed that now 24 of these shields can be purchased for $35.95 (!).

Per the JASVIC advertisement, “Privacy shields keep students focused and distractions out, and encourage independent learning.” 

What’s more, they are:

【Colorful and Inspiring】: The unique design of cartoon elements can stimulate the interest and vitality of students, and each privacy board has the motivational sentence "TRY YOUR BEST" - to encourage every student!

These ones are also, “safe and eco-friendly!” Safe because of rounded corners (are we really worried about cardboard’s otherwise “sharp” corners?!). Unclear why they’re “eco-friendly.” 

Somewhere between motivational sentences and rounded corners, privacy shields became a symbol of all that’s wrong in our education system:

An outsized influence of testing in the daily operations of schools. External, top-down, bureaucratic, and out-of-touch reform initiatives. Arbitrary accountability. Massive systemic injustices.

If we are buying blinders for our students, how can learning be about healing, health, and joy? About empathy and love for others and for the planet? About justice? About community, curiosity, creativity, imagination, improvisation, problem solving, collaboration, initiative, belonging, fun (wrote about that here in reference to my daughter’s forest school). About education as a source of hope and purpose in the context of global catastrophes and day-to-day life?

Belly Voices

Amidst my hyperbolic fixation on symbolism, I felt overcome by the ‘lipstick-on-a-pigness’ of adding a nature scene to a privacy shield.

Photo by Forest Simon on Unsplash

Then I thought about it some more. I think lipstick makes a pig feel better². Feeling better might be the entry point for all kinds of other positive change. Maybe next the pig will start exercising and meeting new pigs and learning and growing? Maybe the pig will start being kinder to her neighbors?  

My point is not about pigs. Rather, we all know feeling better matters. And we know how to put on lipstick. So we should start there.

I’ll drop the metaphor now and just say it:

We KNOW nature connections make people feel better. We know how to make nature connections part of school. So we should start there.

The stakes for Teacher K are high. Her school is currently on Colorado’s “turnaround clock.” “Turnaround” is a euphemistic branding of top-down accountability wherein students in this school must show a certain degree of progress by a certain date as measured by standardized tests or else the state will intervene. That intervention may be firing all the current staff and taking over the school, mandating specific curricula or policies, or shutting down the school.

It is in this context – walls closing in around her and her students – that Teacher K is stepping across a threshold. She is acting within her locus of control. She is teaching her students outdoors and adding nature indoors – including gluing nature scenes to cardboard privacy shields. She is trusting the data that says her students will feel and learn better outdoors; feel and learn better when they have access to views of nature while they take tests. More important, she is trusting herself and what her “belly voice³” tells her is good for her students.

Imagine what happens when all teachers listen to their belly voices and feel skilled and supported to connect their students with nature.

Imagine when we ALL listen to our belly voices.

We’ll get rid of the privacy shields and the tests they hide. Students will venture outside into nature and into their communities for learning that matters.

❤️, Becca

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biophilic_design

2. I have no research to support this claim. Conversely, I have lots of research supporting the claim that nature makes people feel better.

3. Thanks @Maleka ❤️ for introducing me to the “belly voice” term.