Joe Phillips

Articles

Why We Send Students Into Nature to Spot Hawks and Coyotes on Class Time

Teachers need to learn more about nature in order to share knowledge with children. It's even better if adults and kids learn about nature together.


When folks argue over how best to solve our national public education crisis, we often hear about what schools lack. And yet if we simply look beyond the school walls, we can discover that kids need a reconnection with nature to help them care about learning in the first place.

Recently I turned to one of the gurus on nature education, Richard Louv, as I prepared to lead groups of students to their second of three seasonal field trips at a forest preserve just outside of Chicago. Grabbing my dog-eared copy of Louv’s seminal book Last Child In The Woods, I randomly flipped to one of the many pages marked as noteworthy. The following quote was underlined:

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