Professor Sharon

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41and nature

April 22nd, 2014 · No Comments · 100 Days Project, Children, College students, Education, Musings, Reading, retirement

It really struck me today that I’m six classes away from the end of my adult teacher education teaching career.

I walked the two miles to work on a beautiful spring day enjoying the college’s many marshes and ducks coming to spend their spring with us. In early childhood curriculum class we talked about one of our texts: Last Child in the Woods.  I had been on a hike this past weekend and enjoyed the thrill of the frogs singing in a vernal pool.  It was Earth Day, and I remembered that I’d been among the millions who had joined protests that day (I was a sophomore in high school and it was my first activist moment).

As I tied all of these thoughts, events and ideas together in our class discussion of Louv’s fourth frontier, it occurred to me that these were the rich moments of learning I really love.  One student thought Earth Day was a Hallmark event (oh, dear).  A few had fond memories of planting trees at their elementary schools in honor of Earth Day.  All had something to say about nature and its importance in the early care and education environment.

It was a great discussion.  This time of the semester students enjoy each others’ opinions, push each others’ thinking, and are even willing to say, “oops, I didn’t read all three assigned chapters, but I’d like to say something about the two I did read?”

Without a doubt, I know my moments of good conversations with good people struggling to grapple with important ideas are not over.  I did feel today that they are over in this way: in my own classroom with people I’ve formed learning relationships with for ten weeks and I’m pushing to push themselves to learn even more, and to see its importance to their work with our youngest citizens.

I really shall miss that.

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