Unfettered

Why I use the term “nature-based learning”

Two bicycles

I’ve been feeling wobbly lately. Too many changes in too little time. Zero routine.

I wrote last week of biking with my family through the Belgian countryside during our now-annual migration from the U.S. to Kenya. What I didn’t explain was that the tandem bike (pictured below) we rented had handlebars that were so long that I was controlling the front wheel – about a meter in front of me – nearly from behind my back. This set-up – probably the product of mix-and-match bike part replacement at the rental shop – meant I had almost no leverage to steer the bike.

The geometry was further compromised by the fact that the mechanism attaching the front wheel to the “steering column” (handlebars) was loose, so it didn’t respond very quickly.

The good news is that aside from sore triceps the next day, we weren’t in a hurry and this bike generated lots of laughter, especially for me and Clara. I would try to start only to veer off the side of the road. Once we got going it was ok, but it took several failed attempts and lots of “Clara, hold-on-tights” to get the wheels in motion. The fact that we couldn’t stop giggling made our flywheel pursuits even more elusive.

Since landing in Kenya, Clara has taken every opportunity to share the story of when “Mom couldn’t get the bike started and kept veering off the road.” She tells this while laughing so uncontrollably it is difficult for others to understand her. But I do and it makes me laugh every time.

This tandem was a fitting craft for the liminal space in which we found ourselves en route from one home to another. Embodied wobble.

When we got to Amsterdam (why we decided to add more transitions to our summer is a question for another day), we rented bikes again. This time, we rented a cargo bike. And, although I’d seen Dutch parents blissfully biking around with two children far bigger than Nora and Clara while chatting on a cell phone, eating stroopwafels, and drinking coffee (kidding, but barely), I was super intimidated.

Shockingly, unlike the tandem, the cargo bucket full of kids and stuff creates a super low center of gravity – and is remarkably stable. Go physics!

Clara’s American flag helmet — from the Dutch rental shop — tipped off anyone who was still wondering if we were from around there…

I’m hoping the cargo bike is a metaphor for where I’m headed now.  

Words, Language

I love words – written, spoken, sung, recited, performed, spelled…most of all strung together as language.

My logophilia and linguaphilia (respectively love of words and love of language — just learned those ironically!) mean I can get all caught up in what seems semantic, that for me is anything but. Words matter. Language matters.

The other day I was listening to Brené Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart (recommend!) and she quotes Ludwig Wittgenstein:

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

I feel gripped by that quote and the timeliness of its arrival in my conscience. About how language can be limiting…and the corollary that expanding my (or your or anyone’s) language can expand my (or your or anyone’s) world. And the massive implications for the words we choose and how we wield them as language.

Naturally (pun intended), for me this relates a huge amount to my word choice here and with Good Natured Learning, my non-profit. Specifically, this relates to my choice to use the term nature-based learning.

Welcoming, Inclusive, Empowered, Unfettered

I recently wrote a piece for Edutopia — “Nature-based learning routines for teachers and students” and posted about it on LinkedIn. I received some feedback from Benjamin Freud, a respected thought-leader in the “ecosystemic learning” space. He wrote:

“nature-based learning perpetuates the nature-culture divide. We are nature. There is no divide.

And continued,

By saying nature-based, it signals that there is a no-nature-based. It keeps us fettered to the idea that nature is an add on, or at worst that there is a hierarchy to learning.”

I’m so grateful for this comment. First, YES! We are nature. Yes, the nature-culture divide is harmful and I have zero interest in perpetuating it. I believe integrating more-than-human nature with learning is existential and essential for our species’ and other species’ survival and flourishing.

And now, because we know that language has the power to limit or liberate, I want to take a moment to same-page-it with some of my working (excessively, obsessively iterated) definitions:

I’m sure I’ll continue to seek and tweak here — because. Just because. And bear in mind that these definitions are contextualized to Good Natured Learning’s scope working with teachers in schools (so-called “formal learning”). But it feels good (if a bit intimidating) to just lay those out there for clarity’s sake.

So, to pick up from Benjamin’s comments, YES…AND, at end of the day, it is my own identity and lived experiences that have led me to use the term nature-based learning and put me on a path to mainstream apple-a-day nature-based learning in schools everywhere. I am an inclusive-pragmatic-optimist who fiercely loves people and more-than-human nature. I have worked with hundreds of teachers in schools from Nairobi’s informal settlements to the mountains of Colorado. From these predilections and experiences,

I can say beyond a shred of a doubt that nature-based learning is a path (certainly not the only!) to liberate us from the nature-culture divide.

Nature-based teaching practices are tools for unfettered educators – teachers who have been welcomed, included, and empowered to own their expertise and responsibility to support their own, their students’, and the more-than-human-Earth’s flourishing through the way they teach.   

❤️, B