ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

In her inspiring book, Heart-Centered Teaching Inspired by Nature, Nancy Rosenow makes this observation:

"Working with children (or supporting educators) takes great reserves of strength; finding a way to renew those reserves is crucial.  Time spent enjoying nature helps me renew not only my physical energy, but my emotional outlook as well.  It's what helps me bring a heart-centered focus to my work.  I haven't always remembered to use this wonderful tool, though.  I had it with me constantly as a child, but lost it somewhere along the way on my journey to adulthood.

"As a young girl I wanted to spend as much time as I could exploring the natural world.  I've been told one of my first words was 'ousside' — spoken very emphatically as I stood by the front door.  I lived in a time (the 1960s) when I was surrounded by opportunities to wander happily through fields and forests and meadows all over town.  No one worried about my roaming far from home on a long, lazy Saturday;  I truly enjoyed a 'free range' childhood.  Not only has that reality changed for most children, it changed for me as I became an adult.  Time constraints, technology, and an overblown sense of 'needing to be productive' often kept me from pursuing any nature time.  And, as 'progress' changed meadows to shopping malls, much of the nature-out-my-door went away.  It wasn't until my work opened my eyes to children's disconnection from nature that I saw my own.  I began to realize how much my soul had missed deeply experiencing the reassuring rhythms and cycles of the changing seasons.  I hadn't jumped in a pile of leaves for years, or made snow angels when the first flakes began to cover the ground....  As Rachel Carson wrote:  'It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.'"

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