Mushrooms; Evolution:Revolution, part II

On #mycelialchange and Emergence

When I wrote that my audience was everyone who cares about students, I wasn’t focused enough. I was (and remain) not-so-secretly worried that by trying to please everyone I will reach no one. 

Making nature-based learning practices¹ ‘daily bread’ teaching and classroom design strategies implemented by all teachers everywhere won’t happen without actions by teachers within and without the walls of their classrooms. 

So today’s letter is straight to teachers. More specifically, I’m writing to Good Natured Learning’s (see my @Day Job section) “Brains on Nature Fellows” (aka the “BoN BoNs”).  

Prospect & Refuge

Dear BoN-BoNs,

I miss you all. Being at Calwood immersed in days-and-nights-under-skies-capital-N-nature. At Emmelyn Hut surrounded by the forest refuge of subalpine fir, lodgepole pines, aspens, and spruce, and by the prospect of Homestake, Galena, Massive. Time together with attention and intention. “Salad bowl” laugh fests. Forest “gallerying” our way through the research about nature-based learning. Supporting each other through gut-punch statistics about children and adolescents’ poor mental health (44% of young people report they have persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, up from 26% a decade ago). “Pencil miles” in our nature journals (thanks @Anna Harrison for introducing us to @John Muir Laws’ and @Emily Lygren’s practice). July snowball fights – fears, hopes, wonders. Campfire stories. Turning over, interrogating, and action planning how nature-based learning practices can fit into your own practice. Designing case studies, setting goals. Holding in our heads and heavy in our hearts: teacher joy is an endangered species. Which matters – because how the hell can students learn if the very people who sustain them are winnowing, waning, wanting? Right now I’m juxtaposing this in a “two things are true” (@DrBecky) way with our unfettered joy shared during our Nature Retreat.

Hope; Purpose

The view from Calwood’s main lodge the last morning of our Nature Retreat made me feel hopeful. And, the view from our whole retreat made me feel resolved. Which reminded me of a quote I scribbled down when @Richard Louv shared it at the 2022 @Children and Nature Network conference in Atlanta, Georgia. 

“Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.” –David Orr

I wrote it in my bird journal purchased one evening at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens when my plain notebook didn’t feel right for capturing notes, much less a laptop where I thought I would type takeaways. 

In the stale, windowless ballroom of the Atlanta Marriott, this quote floated into the interstitial spaces of my head and heart. 

Orr is right. Hope alone isn’t enough. It has to be active. And purposeful. 

(Note, I’m pretty sure I heard @Kimberly Nicholas talking about the need for purpose on a podcast or maybe in her book about climate change…but I can’t seem to find the quote now. Kim - can you help me find it? Maybe this is a misattribution. Wherever I heard it, it resonated.)

Each of you BoN-BoNs is purpose embodied. You hold hope. You are acting. 

That’s how change will happen. Is happening.

Action

Here are rough goals a few of you set for the beginning of this school year. Big props to @Anna Harrison for her “60 minutes in Nature Challenge”² which set an example for you all to design meaningful, measurable, do-able projects. 

You have an action plan. You’ve identified the priorities of your district and school leaders, the outdoor nature-based learning assets near your schools, and your own interests and capacity. 

Since these pics were snapped, you’ve tuned your goal and plan (thanks @Lori Fisher for introducing me to the Tuning Protocol so many years ago) and no doubt made revisions. 

As the weeks continue, you’ll iterate. Scheduling snafus, smoky skies, random testing, unprepared students, too-much concrete, and other micro-, meso-, and macro-, barriers will pop up, trying to thwart your efforts. Taking a cue from nature itself and from your expertise as teachers, you will adapt. You will be responsive to your students and to learning-moments. 

I’m not worried about you all. Good teachers do this all.the.time. And you are GREAT teachers. 

#MycelialChange

Plus, we have each other.

I think you know this. I hope you feel this. You are part of a growing network of grassroots change-agent educators who are spreading nature-based learning awesomeness in your (and their) schools, districts, and beyond. As we recruit and support each other, we are forming a blossoming fractal³ of awesomeness. Which makes sense, because fractals are everywhere in nature. 

PC: Teo Miu

Maybe “grassroots” change isn’t quite right. Recently I’ve started musing about mycelial leadership (thanks to José Gonzalez and Gabbacia Moreno for introducing this to me through your work with Outdoorist Oath). Now I’m riffing on this concept and thinking about #mycelialchange. Here, I’ll quote an article in Yes magazine⁴ in which Adaku Utah shares:

The word mycelium means ‘more than one.’ The mycelium organism is a dynamic root system of mushrooms that utilizes trust as a mechanism to build and sustain a vast, reciprocal, underground network that connects the roots of trees and plants and skillfully shares nutrients and resources to support the health of the entire ecosystem with which it moves.

And, adrienne maree brown:

Emergent strategy is a way to build complex patterns and systems of justice and liberation through relatively small interactions. I am often wowed when I imagine the scale of transformation that could come from movements intentionally practicing this way of being, on our own and with others. 

Photo by hp koch on Unsplash

Let’s be emergent mushrooms together

I believe nature-based learning practices are exactly what brown is talking about. And

Sam Chaltain, 180 Studio

in The Fourth Feature of a Flourishing School. Powerful, simple, small tools for interaction. When combined in a network, these amount to tools of rEvolution in our schools.

Let’s be trusting and trustworthy mushrooms, emerging in our schools and communities, forming blossoming fractals of healing, health, learning, and joy. 

I’m here for it. Sleeves rolled up. In the soil with you all. 

-B

CTA:

1. 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.

2. Interested in learning more? Check out the 60 Minutes in Nature Challenge webinar with BQI (Big Questions Institute). The 20-minute description of the challenge starts in the recording at 10:10.

3. I loved this image — the blossoming fractal. I first heard it from Cisco Tharp who talked about the blossoming fractal of to-dos that come with childcare licensure for an outdoor summer camp program. LOL.

4. https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2018/02/01/how-the-wonder-of-nature-can-inspire-social-justice-activism