{"id":199,"date":"2019-01-22T09:55:11","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T09:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/?p=199"},"modified":"2019-02-13T18:02:43","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T18:02:43","slug":"trees-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/index.php\/2019\/01\/22\/trees-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Trees of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A colleague this week reminded me of being a child. She reminded me to\nthink about how I learned about trees as a young girl in school. She remembered\nlearning about trees in a way that was all about what the tree does for us\nhumans. She suggested it was a silly example of thinking about how we centre\nchildren and, by extension, the rest of humanity. I was reminded about how I\nwas taught about trees and it was similar to her experience. Trees give US\nlife. Trees give off oxygen for US to breathe; they remove CO<sub>2 <\/sub>from\nthe air WE breathe. They clear pollutants for US to have a more comfortable\nexistence. They provide shade and cool the earth, again for US to have a\ncomfortable existence. I realize that though this may seem like a silly\nexample, it is a good example of how we centre the child with very little\nthought that we are doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What I have noticed working with toddlers and preschoolers, however,\nis that they have not been contaminated by these conventional educational ideas\naround trees yet. The young children I walk in the forest with are filled with\nwonder and questions about trees. They ask questions: \u201cWhy is that tree so\nbendy?\u201d They have theories: \u201cThe leaves are hiding under the snow.\u201d \u201cSomeone is\ngoing to fix them, they will bring stools out and fix them.\u201d \u201cThey all blowed\naway, but someone will sweep them up and put them back soon.\u201d They wonder if\nthis is the tree the owls live in. They notice some trees have \u201ctoes\u201d (exposed\nroots). Maybe they are making sense of the world we walk with in a less\negotistical way than we sometimes assume this age group to be. They wonder\nabout the trees in ways that do in fact include humans, but I\u2019ve noticed that\nsometimes it is about what WE as humans can do for the trees (sweep the leaves\nand put them back; bring out stools and fix them), which I find interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A colleague this week reminded me of being a child. She reminded me to think about how I learned about trees as a young girl in school. She remembered learning about trees in a way that was all about what the tree does for us humans. She suggested it was a silly example of thinking about how we centre children and, by extension, the rest of humanity. I was reminded about how I was taught about trees and it was similar to her experience. Trees give US life. Trees give off oxygen for US to breathe; they remove CO2 from the air WE breathe. They clear pollutants for US to have a more comfortable existence. They provide shade and cool the earth, again for US to have a comfortable existence. I realize that though this may seem like a silly example, it is a good example of how we centre the child with very little thought that we are doing so. What I have noticed working with toddlers and preschoolers, however, is that they have not been contaminated by these conventional educational ideas around trees yet. The young children I walk in the forest with are filled with wonder and questions about trees. They ask questions: \u201cWhy is that tree so bendy?\u201d They have theories: \u201cThe leaves are hiding under the snow.\u201d \u201cSomeone is going to fix them, they will bring stools out and fix them.\u201d \u201cThey all blowed away, but someone will sweep them up and put them back soon.\u201d They wonder if this is the tree the owls live in. They notice some trees have \u201ctoes\u201d (exposed roots). Maybe they are making sense of the world we walk with in a less egotistical way than we sometimes assume this age group to be. They wonder about the trees in ways that do in fact include humans, but I\u2019ve noticed that sometimes it is about what WE as humans can do for the trees (sweep the leaves and put them back; bring out stools and fix them), which I find interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fooding-and-foraging","tag-multispecies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/witnessingruinsofprogress.climateactionchildhood.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}