It's all connected. I watched our children's performance in the Missoula Children's Theater at Hardin Middle School this evening, January 10, 2014. It was an awesome performance, well done in every way. This play illustrated the importance of interconnections between all living things and the natural world. As a career educator, it also got me thinking about the concept of holistic learning and integrated instruction, educators' jargon for learning that occurs naturally among the young.
During the performance, children were turned into flowers, bugs, fireflies, geese, and squirrels. Three characters, portrayed as human, illustrated how illness and dysfunction come about when we are disconnected from the earth, sea or sky. Each of the three learned to be reconnected with life and others of their kind. The secret garden held, and holds for children everywhere, the secret power of learning how to learn through honing those connections.
I began learning this lesson sixty years ago, roaming the timbered hills of my childhood Iowa farm acreage, armed with a .22 squirrel rifle. I was honing my marksmanship in the nutted tops of hickory trees. I prided myself in dropping my prey straight to the ground, using a clean headshot. My brothers and sister competed with each other for proof of this skill. I liked to think I came out on top consistently.
One Friday evening, arguing over our respective marksmanship while the last cows were milking, I made the claim that tomorrow I would take our Benjamin BB gun and bring home at least one squirrel, maybe two. I knew, with four pumps, I had the power to penetrate and kill. I stuck a few dozen BB's in my pocket the next morning and headed out. Not far over the fence into the deep timber a young squirrel sat on a snag of a hickory tree barely ten yards away and barked at me. He was my first victim. I found that I needed to use three shots instead of just one because my first headshot was not fatal.
I should have stopped right there, lesson learned. However, I was ignoring the carefully instilled teachings of my father about taking wild game with as little suffering as possible. In my family we hunted to eat, not to torture animals.
My next opportunity was a squirrel burying acorns under an oak. I was either not seen, or ignored, because I could get close enough for a fatal BB shot, or so I thought. But the squirrel was not stationary. My shot broke his back, a painful injury that disabled his back legs. I watched and desperately tried to reload my single shot BB gun and pump it for a fatal shot. He crawled up that hollow oak with his hind legs dragging, and dropped into a hole as I shot wildly and missed. That's when my father's training rose up to my awareness. I went home with one squirrel, gave the meat to my mother who placed it in a saltwater bowl in the icebox, and said nothing about it to my siblings.
That night I had nightmares. I was the one shot in the back, screaming like that squirrel, struggling to climb and scratching my fingernails on my headboard instead of a tree trunk. My brother shook me awake and asked what I was screaming about. Confused and in pain, I said it was a crazy dream.
The children who performed tonight will not need an event like mine to bring them into respect for life. They had the chance to use all their senses in learning, as they sang, danced, and acted. They were able to synchronize and attune with others around a theme of connections. In our rush for academic attainment, this approach to learning is one that we must not forget.
How much better to structure classrooms around relationship-building and activity, rather than sedentary bubbling of test answer sheets. Learning through peer connections and integrated instruction can still invite district disapproval. But this proven teaching approach is not about watering down or sugar-coating education in order to make it easier for kids. It's about creating natural and powerful experiences that change perceptions for life. When learning is meaningful and enjoyable there's no need to fight the drudgery and motivational lags that defeat the goals of schooling.
The pain of experiencing that squirrel's scream in my dream long ago returned to my memory while watching the children tonight. But the joy of learning I saw on their faces, as they connected with the animal world, defeated it. Their enthusiastic synchronized gestures, singing and acting together made the Secret Garden's lesson a more powerful tool for education than the plot itself.
David Graber
graberdb@gmail.com
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