We Must Nurture This Also

In her wonderful book, The Goodness of Rain, Ann Pelo reminds us all that:

“We teach children to write and to read and to navigate mathematical systems so that they can access the world of ideas and questions and intellectual exchange. We teach children how to behave with other people so that they can grow joyful and nourishing relationships. We teach children history, so that they know where they come from, and we teach them art, so that they can imagine what might be, and we teach them science so that they understand the intricate workings of the physical world. This teaching honors and strengthens children’s innate social, intellectual, cultural, and aesthetic identities, identities we value as a society. We don’t just leave their development to happenstance or luck.

Just so, we must nurture children’s intrinsic ecological identities with intentional and attentive action. This is our work…to braid their identities together with the place where they live by calling their attention to the air, the sky, the cracks in the sidewalk and where the earth bursts out of its cement cage.” 

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