Interconnected

Your children are always teaching me, reminding me and supporting me as we investigate together the research questions of the year.  As most of you know by now, my primary question has been: How can tools of representation and creative expression be utilized to foster depth connections with the natural world.  The children have already begun to show me that the question itself is flawed by my adult bias toward disconnection.  Adult brains tend to compartmentalize.  It's the nature of our efficient brains.  We see things in separate parts.  Children do not.  For children life remains fluid and although they experiment with abstractions, it is not their primary construct for approaching life in all its complexity.  Over the past weeks I have watched the children form relationships: working together with dramatic play, block building, drawing, painting, investigations and more.  I see these same relationships emerging and developing on: playgrounds, around the snack table, in classrooms and at pick up and drop off. 

As I watched the children working together in this way I wondered how this might relate to the basic research question for the year and then, as is often the humbling case, it occurred to me that perhaps I was beginning from a misconception.  I already see the world as separate and imagine nature and childhood need my help in some way to connect.  The children wordlessly reminded me that, for them, everything is a relationship.  How they relate to the environment, their peers, adults, the breeze, the materials, the weather...everything is an interplay of interconnection.  I will continue to watch them form relationships and build connections and in so doing they will continue to teach me how children learn and remind me how we as adults, might benefit from their wisdom. This insight into interconnection will no doubt inform my future work with the children around seasons, nature, creative expression and belonging.