Hot Mess
This letter is a hot mess. In that way, I suppose it’s more letter-like than some of my posts.
As you know, this letter is to you. It’s also to a LOT of yous. As I try to reach more yous, 2 favors:
2) Share a post (maybe a good starting sharing option is my recent piece, The Cashia and the Ahkiaologist, a letter to my 5-year-old daughter, Clara)
Tl;dr (summary if you’re feeling busy)
Nature has lots of benefits for learners. I usually talk about equity, mental and physical health, academics (performance, engagement, etc.), and social-emotional/ “21st Century” skills like collaboration, problem-solving, curiosity.
I haven’t talked much about this: nature connections for young people are a key driver for developing adults who care about the planet and take action.
Mainstreaming nature connections in school is imperative for making learning relevant in the context of the climate emergency and its derivative catastrophes AND for growing a generation of humans who can and do care for our planet.
Hot Mess
Until now, I’ve mostly avoided the planetary imperative of nature connections in school (which, as you know unless you’re a new reader, we can integrate into any school anywhere with simple nature-based learning practices like teaching students outdoors in nearby nature spaces or even playing birdsong from your laptop while teaching or while students work).
Speaking of bird song, this letter comes with a soundtrack. Please press play and carry on.
Up to now, I’ve mostly danced around the environmental motivation for nature-based learning in schools. Per research compiled by the Children & Nature Network in an awesome infographic,
“Time in nature during childhood and role models who care for nature are the two biggest factors that contribute to environmental stewardship in adulthood.”
It’s more than a motivation, then.
Mainstreaming nature connections in schools is a planetary imperative.
Nature-based learning practices1 and design2 are immediate and medium-to-long-term strategies to do this. We MUST use them (and others – since we’re pulling out all the stops) to address the climate emergency.
Thinking about why I’ve not yet talked about climate catastrophes I feel sheepish. I suppose it’s because in the face of so many education catastrophes I’ve felt like climate was “out there.” I was “reading the room.” Teachers and school administrators in that room (who I’m encouraging to move out of it to nearby nature) are facing visceral challenges — kids in duress without mental health professionals to support them, top-down accountability pressures and external constraints that myopically focus on short term results like those captured in the Nation’s Report Card (mostly failing, but still being advanced to the next grade because…)
Anyhow, depending on who I’m talking to, I lead with equity (it’s looking like nature access in school can *narrow* inequalities, reducing housing, education, and health disparities by disproportionately positively impacting the learners who have the least access to nature and its benefits). Or I speak about mental health and nature’s ability to reduce stress and anxiety, improve mood, support self-regulation. I share about social-emotional skills like increased collaboration, better problem-solving, and improved behavior. I also focus on academics – improved student engagement; more student-centered, relevant, hands-on, authentic teaching and learning; improved understanding. Better test scores (barf).
More nature sounds (Relaxing Thunderstorm by Alexander)
I’ve suggested (accused?) education thought leaders of “hand waving” about a future redesigned educational utopia while 50+ million students and educators (in the U.S. alone) are on a sinking ship. I’ve made the case for how nature-based learning is a life jacket useful now, between, and next as our education system hopefully revolutionizes.
Still, in some ways, by not talking about the planetary imperative, I’m guilty of the same hand waving. I’m busy talking about lots of important stuff – equity, mental health, social emotional skills, academics while the building PLANET 🌍 is BURNING 🔥. Or flooding.
In response to a letter I sent a few weeks ago ( “Kasserian Injera? And How Are the Children?”),
wrote:I believe the most serious issue--the life-threatening issue--is the 56% of youth experiencing trauma from the prospect of a failed planet in 2050. Imagine thinking ahead to adulthood under that threat. Imagine being told daily to do your Algebra homework so you can get into a good college so you can get a job that may not exist. Unless 'the children' have an opportunity for action to shift the future, the trauma will increase.
In other words, a life threat facing our students is the massive irrelevance of so much of what’s happening in schools.
We’ve moved from a space in which many students were already traumatized to a situation in which the majority of students are living in trauma.
I was listening to Bill Milliken talk with Ulcca Joshi Hansen on the Future of Smart podcast the other day. Bill reminded me of a lesson gained from his lived experience: some students don’t have a chance to learn because they haven’t eaten. Or slept. Or they are rightfully afraid they will be shot.
Putting this together with what Thom said made me think of a powerful image – students sitting in a classroom that’s too hot, looking out at a sky turned orange and opaque from wildfire smoke, “learning” about the quadratic formula. I don’t remember this formula – just its name. And I don’t have any beef with any formula or with teaching higher-level mathematical thinking. I am thinking of this one because I never use it. I am imagining how pissed off or abandoned or resentful or all-of-the-above I would feel if I were a student right now in anything but a very hands-on, authentic, give-me-agency-and-ownership, let me design – and let it be nature-community-centered-design (rather than just human-centered design which still centers people at the expense of more-than-human-nature) classroom. A listen-to-my-voice-and-ideas-and-support-me school. A do-something-now school.
Nature-based learning is part of the answer. It is salve helping treat some educational life threats. We must do that. And I think nature-based learning can help with climate doom among youth by nudging teaching and learning obsolescence toward relevance. Not enough. But something.
Heavy ❤️,
Becca
P.S. I know this argument is at best half-baked. I’m still metabolizing how all of these pieces fit together. So I’m publishing before I know where this needs to go. In the spirit of doing something.
Nature-based learning practices are instructional (pedagogical) and classroom design actions to implement nature-based learning.
They can be employed by any educator, anywhere, at any grade level, in any content area, in any curriculum or school design model.
They can be applied in formal (i.e., in schools, during the school day) and informal (i.e., in everyday life) educational settings.
They are within an individual educator’s locus of control to implement.
Nature-based learning design is a systems-change framework that applies nature-based learning principles and priorities (like access to nature) to the systems that directly and indirectly impact education so more students and educators experience nature’s benefits.