Teaching alongside the ultimate teacher: Mother Nature

I grew up gardening with my grandmother. Looking back at it I now recognize just how much it shaped me. I learned how to design space under many constraints (different plants like different amounts of room). I learned that dirty hands are something to be respected, not disgusted by. I learned that plants need love just like any of us. I learned that much of what we take for granted are actually just socially decided upon norms (what is a "weed"?). I learned the power of one of the oldest, most foundational forms of education (family matriarch as teacher). I learned to be comfortable in discomfort. Without these lessons I do not know who I would be today. The idea of integrating some of these learnings into my own teaching makes me very excited, especially knowing how few youth get these sorts of experiences.

While reading through the article, I noticed the term "greater-than-human ecologies" pop up several times. I had never heard this term before, but I have very quickly grown quite fond of it. Western society has anthropocentrism so deeply ingrained into it that the term "ecology" doesn't even evoke the necessary ideas and feelings in most people and I can quickly see that this term "greater-than-human ecologies" likely helps remedy this. 

The comments on neo-liberalism being an obstacle in multiple different ways also struck me. Neo-liberalism is such a new system yet it dominates nearly every element of society, especially the decision making processes of so many things. Despite this, so many people can't even name it or say what it is. It is then further obfuscated by the term "liberal" being embedded in it, which is often wrongly associated with left-wing politic. The statement "where land is viewed as equivalent to money..." especially hit me.

The statement that the CLN approach is "egalitarian, inclusive, multidisciplinary, multicultural, intergenerational, and community-oriented" had me thinking that everything should have this approach. If I can implement such an approach in my classroom I will be over the moon.

Finally, I found the conversation on biophilia and empathy for all living things being at the heart of creating a sustainable and anti-human-centric world view very powerful and something I have tried to embody for a number of years. I hope to be able to bring this to my classroom(s).

As for the actual practice of integrating the garden into my (hopefully) future high school classes and teaching alongside the ultimate teacher, Mother Nature, I get wisps of ideas. Teaching life and human skills through the garden is easier to imagine than teaching specific math or physics based curriculum goals (junior science is easier to picture). I certainly want to explore this concept a lot more and come up with more tangible ideas. I'm sure they will come with time - I can already feel them forming, they're just not quite there.

Now for the benefits and difficulties teaching in the garden may bring. The hands on, life skill building elements of working in a garden are the most obvious benefits that come to mind. Also, when one gets into a flow state in the garden, the brain is capable of processing things in otherwise difficult to attain and magical ways, sometimes resulting in unrelated, but profound epiphanies. I do imagine that classroom management may be difficult in a garden, especially with 20-30 teenagers, but I'm sure with the correct expectations and attitude, it could be manageable. I think also convincing the people teachers are accountable to (parents, admin, students, etc.) that math and physics are truly being learned in the garden may not always be a straightforward sell, but hopefully with time the results will speak for themselves.

Ultimately, I am just so excited to get my hands dirty, commune with nature, and do some math & science along the way.

Snapdragons. My favourite flower.
My grandma always made sure there were some in her garden for me to admire and play with <3

sit spot sit spot sit spot (17/9/26 exit ticket)

I'm going to try something a bit different for this post. Below you will see my raw handwritten reflection which is much more indicative of how I actually reflect on things, as opposed to a nice typed out and edited composition. Please let me know if this is OK. I don't see myself doing it super often, but for certain things, especially the more open-ended reflections, I may be inclined to.

My sit spot sketch :)

Let's reflect on being reflective (17/9/26 entrance ticket)

Despite being 40 years old, Grant and Zeichner's "On Becoming a Reflective Teacher" still feels very relevant. This timelessness mostly feels like a product of the generality with which they speak though. Open-mindedness, responsibility, and wholeheartedness are essential to every walk of life in every era, so it does not feel possible for those to become outdated. A little more surprisingly, whenever the authors referred to the teacher education system, it was a little shocking how the current system appears to be almost identical, with some comments about the situations we will face in practicum mirroring what we've been told in many of our classes. One thing that maybe felt a little outdated was the way in which they speak about curriculum. In particular, the modern open-ended BC curriculum contrasts the type of more rigid curriculum they refer to, but that could be more of a regional difference than a temporal difference (or a mix of the two). There were a number of skills and approaches mentioned that I have tried to incorporate into my life for as long as I can remember, in particular open-mindedness and rational (critical) analysis. These drive much of how I engage with ideas, so it is nice for it to be re-affirmed that they are beneficial to teaching as well (something I already knew, but still nice to hear). The comment on some teachers not fitting the "bureaucratic mold" was also nice to have acknowledged because a dislike of bureaucracy was one of the main things that made me hesitate to become a teacher for many years. In contrast, their apparent dislike of intuition based approaches was hard to read as someone who does enjoy doing things intuitively. I did take a lot away from their discussion on the specific ways a teacher can be reflective and what towards, which I think will help me in my teacher inquiry journey. 

One thing that I struggled with was the implication that to be a "good teacher" you have to perform a lot of extra labour questioning and analyzing everything you do and are told. During teacher's college this seems like an obvious practice because we're learning, and obviously the learning should never stop, but with a burn out crisis plaguing the profession, it did feel a little detached from the on-the-ground realities (though that could be due to the difference in era). I've been rewatching Abbott Elementary as my little dinner time show and in one of the first episodes the main character Janine, who is unquestionably a very reflective teacher, asks a couple of the older teachers why they don't seem to care about all the little things, to which they responded that they care so much that they refuse to burn out. This really struck me and as I was reading the paper it kept popping up in the back of my mind. Just like with everything, it is about finding a balance. Yes it is important to be reflective, especially with respect to the "big" things, but there is also something to be said for taking some things for granted and just letting intuition take the wheel in order to save what little extra energy we have.

The different paths to becoming a teacher (10/9/26 exit slip)

The concept of a high school teacher who never attended high school themselves is something that never even crossed my mind as a possibility. Intuitively one may think this to be a detrimental thing (and I'm sure in some ways it is), but my mind immediately jumped to potential positive implications. The main positive implication I believe would be that such a teacher would have no one to mimic, which can be good because it is so easy to fall into copying the techniques of the teachers you had. This mimicking of past teachers can quickly result in stagnancy and the recycling of stale pedagogies. Also, without these internalized expectations of how a teacher behaves, the imagination has room to flourish. A consequence of this which Frank focused a lot on in the video is the constant inquiry a teacher should engage with, which is something that is easiest when one doesn't have a rigid relationship with the past (though obviously still possible for every teacher). Additionally, I believe the more life experiences outside of school a teacher has to pull from, the more well rounded an educator will be. By skipping out on high school and living in abject poverty much of his life, Frank was able to acquire a lot of "life experience" quite early which I feel can be seen in his teaching style and philosophy. Sometimes life experience can complicate things though, like with his perception on war being oddly positive because he benefited from its repercussions. There were also some teaching techniques he outlined, which while fun, would maybe not be acceptable in the modern context like having students write ruthless obituaries for teachers they don't like. Ultimately, what I got out of the video and discussion is that there are many paths to becoming a teacher, all of which shape what type of teacher we will be, and as long as we stay open to analyzing ourselves, the education world is our oyster.

hello world :)

heyheyy!!

Welcome to my EDUC 450 blog :)

I am excited to do an inquire 🤓