Welcome to my internal monologue (a fraction of which is routinely, audibly externalized to those in my earthly orbit 😉and here in writing)!
Tl;dr
I like BIG, heady ideas.
I like tangible, on-the-ground actions.
Implementing apple-a-day nature-based learning presents A do-able next right step to connect actions with ideas — and then another next right step. And another.
And, this:
If more-than-human nature is outdoors and the students are all in buildings…… presents a long list of existential questions far more consequential than whether a tree in a forest makes a sound.
Binging Words
In August of 2022 when my family relocated to Kenya, I had some newfound time that was previously filled with friends and volunteer commitments and work. As a deep extrovert, my coping mechanism was to binge words – podcasts, Substacks, blogs. I imbibed thoughts and ideas from educators, thought leaders in education and other fields, facilities designers, education reformers, social justice changemakers, philanthropists, non-profit warriors, scientists, innovators, climate change activists, and more. My list was long.
Today I’m not going to share my list (though my regular readers will already know some of my fan-girling tendencies). Please feel free to reach out for recommendations!
This was a heady, uprooted, and unrooted time for me.
Most days I walked with Arty (our very friendly dog who doubled as my security guard due to the prevailing cultural fear of dogs) to my outdoor (!) coworking space, dodging matatus and cows and people, trying to maintain situational awareness. I wore just one airpod tuned to a podcast replayed at 1.5 speed (LOVE this feature!).
More often than not, I arrived sweaty and ready, fired up about some idea I had just listened to or ready to implement a tangible change for Good Natured Learning (my Colorado-based non-profit that I co-founded right before we moved here). I was generally fired up!
Now that it’s February 2024, I still listen to lots of pods, though decidedly fewer since friends, volunteer commitments, and work have appeared in my world here. At the moment, my listening is relegated to my jogs in Karura Forest or walks in my neighborhood. Or doing dishes.
And lately, as I’ve been listening to big ideas, I’ve gotten to do some cloud-level thinking. Which I love.
And then the next hour, I find myself cutting out pieces of cardboard for outdoor learning, sourcing and procuring 400 clipboards, buying brushes, tape, primer, and glossy black paint to convert clipboards to individual chalkboards, rescuing tree stumps for outdoor classrooms, or loading bamboo onto my truck. On the ground with soil under my fingernails and paint on my flip-flopped toes.
Kwa ground
The juxtaposition of my cloud-word habit and grounded actions has gotten me thinking about where clouds meet the soil (much nicer than where the rubber hits the road!).
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the teachers I am collaborating with in Kenya shared a fear:
“I am concerned that on the ground ‘kwa ground’ things zitakuu different.”
…on the ground, things will be different.
She was worried that implementing apple-a-day nature-based learning might not work “in real life.”
I know this fear well. It is expansive and enveloping. It has emerged in my work on two continents. It makes sense. It is human nature to be intimidated by change, especially when that change involves doing things differently from the way everyone else does things. And from the way we have always done things.
Although this Swahilish (Kiswahili + English) name is new, the “kwa ground” concept has always been core to my philosophy. It is the main reason why I’ve gravitated to apple-a-day nature-based learning as a solution worth doing.
It’s about identifying A next right step – a simple action within reach that feels familiar enough to be safe and do-able but has a tiny new twist. And begets more next right steps. Here’s an example.
Does it make a sound?
A 7th grade math teacher decides to take her students outside on a blue-sky day to the trees immediately next to the school building for a simple apple-a-day nature-based learning exercise. In pairs, students carry a tape measure (previously only used on plastic cylinders and cubes indoors), a pencil, and a clipboard loaded with a data recording chart. They travel amongst the dozen-or-so parking lot trees, measuring circumference and recording measurements on their data chart. After 10 minutes, they return indoors to calculate the diameters of the trees they measured. They represent this data on a bar graph. One single bar rises high above the rest. They determine what percentage of trees has the same diameter.
“Why are most of the trees the same size?”
one student wonders silently to himself.
A few days later, they go out again to a tiny grove of trees a 3-minute walk from the building. They do the same exercise. The trees are different sizes. A crow noisily caws at them while they take their measurements. A girl looks up and tilts her head at the bird.
“What’s all that noise about?”
she thinks.
Back inside, the data is processed accordingly. No single bar dominates this new graph.
“Why are these trees so many different sizes when the ones in the parking lot are all so similar?”
the same student wonders, out loud this time.
“Interesting question! Does anyone have a hypothesis as to why that would be the case?”
From a single, tiny next right step – an apple-a-day nature-based learning exercise well within reach of any 7th grade math teacher with a few trees in her school’s parking lot – the teacher has grown her comfort, confidence, and competence. And the students have started to think and ask questions and look up and look out. To notice and to wonder.
Students don’t wonder about birds that caw while they are in their classroom. They don’t ask about forest composition or learn about even-aged tree stands when they measure plastic forms. They don’t hypothesize about observations they’ve never made or inquire about why things are the way they are. Why would they?
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Does it matter?
If more-than-human nature is outdoors and the students are all in buildings…
I don’t like any of the answers to the infinite questions that could follow this ellipsis.
This matters.
So let’s do something about it. Take a next right step. And then another.
From small actions kwa ground, things sprout. Eventually, some of those little sprouts grow into tall trees. Some of those trees touch the clouds where BIG ideas reside.
So I’ll stay firmly rooted here on earth, working with real teachers on-the-ground on apple-a-day nature-based learning, embodying a “hope-is-a-verb-with-its-sleeves-rolled-up”1-pragmatic optimism where soil meets sky.
❤️,
Becca
“Hope is a verb with the sleeves rolled up” is a quote from David Orr.