The Children will save our Nature

My capstone service learning project involves me being present in an elementary school garden and helping teach garden class to kids K-6. Brainstorming interactive activities, allowing chaos with limited disciplinary action, and inspiring love for the garden is what my job comes down to. I had no idea how I would affect the kids or how the kids would affect me through this job but I have come to realize we affect each other in funny ways through the smallest of interactions.

These kids show excitement over the funniest things like who will find the first snail in the garden, who will pick out the most worms in the compost, and who will make the largest fava bean burrito out of fava bean leaves. They squeal with excitement when they pull out salad turnips from the ground, and repeatedly wander into the garden asking for a garden job during their recess.

I was waiting for my first garden class to start this Wednesday when a little girl wandered into the garden and asked if she could pick a salad turnip, I said “of course you can”, and then she asked me if I want one too. I surely did want one too. She picked us both salad turnips, squealing with excitement when they came out large, then proceeded to wash them in the sink. The sink had yet to be turned on so she decided to wipe them off with baby wipes. After she washed my turnip with a baby wipe she handed it to me who noticed it smelled rather like perfume and a baby’s bottom. I giggled and told her she had just put chemicals from a plastic sheet onto our turnips so now it was less safe to eat than when it had come out of the ground. She turned a little pink and took the baby wipe out of the compost she had just thrown it into, suddenly realizing what she had done. Then we wiped off our turnips, laughed, and ate them gladly.

It’s in moments like these where I realize I am not just sharing joy with these kids, but also taking part in growing practical wisdom. This girl comes alone to the garden because it’s a place she feels joy. To play alone in school and not be a sheep to what others want to do is to pursue one’s own “convictions without hesitation and, equally important, without fear of judgement” which is not often the case in school (208). Not only does the child take pride in her joy, she pursues it without anyone needing to be with her, to guide her or push her to pursue what she wishes to do. With these little interactions, there comes the hope that these kids will not just grow up to be computer-washed robots. There comes the hope that the next generation will love and care for them and the earth, our home as much as I do. There comes the “possibility of living with the dignity, the bravery, and the gladness that befits a human being” which is enough to inspire the work I continue to do in their school garden (210).

While the world is surrounded with many computer-washed kids that scare me because of what that could mean for our future, the world is still full of beautiful children who love and care for life. Computer- washed meaning, addictions to fast paced stimuli, hours wasted on television, weeks of videogames and a fear of books and the outdoors. Computer- washing scares me because it is a means to disconnect people from other forms of life. This fear can be hurtful not just to myself, but others because  “when you’re hurting, it feels good to hurt somebody else. But you have to be careful. If you get addicted to the pain causing then you start hurting people that don’t need hurting” (196). Truly, once you see a downfall, everything in turn starts looking down, and “If you turn into a pain delivering robot, then you start thinking everybody looks like Mr. Grief and everybody deserves a beating” (196). Not all humans are bad, in fact I believe all people are good, though many times we do bad things.

Children are the acceptation to bad deeds because they do what they can within their very limited power and with the little information they are given. We have to be careful what information we feed them for that very reason. This does not mean we hide the horrors of climate change, but we must teach climate change in a way that does not build apathy, but agency to be the change they wish to see in the world. Children are capable of agency, I have seen it grow in the garden when they realize they can grow plants from seeds and grow their own food. Their confidence grows from the fruits of their physical labor and so does their empathy for living things.

Three boys had just found 2 snails in the garden eating the Kale which they care for by watering and weeding when they come to the garden. These snails are understood as bad for the garden so they should be removed. One child threw the snails over the garden fence to save his Kale plant. The other two screamed while one screamed “You are hurting nature!” I couldn’t help but laugh at the urgency and panic of the child while they went to save the snails. These kids have shown me that “everything is stuffed to the brim with ideas and love and hope and magic and dreams” from care I have seen them show for the garden and all things within it (199).

Loeb, Paul Rogat. The Impossible Will Take A While. Basic Books