F19 EDU-VT Residency
Choosing Joy over Despair: The Educator’s Task in Troubled Times
Quote from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass:
Kimmer speaks of an outlook I wished my teacher would have shared with me as a child.
"I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift. --We are deluged by information regarding our destruction of the world and hear almost nothing about how to nurture it. It is no surprise then that environmentalism becomes synonymous with dire predictions and powerless feelings. Our natural world inclination to do right by the world is stifled, breeding despair when it should be inspiring action. The participatory role of people in the well-being of the land has been lost, our reciprocal relations reduced to a KEEP OUT sign" (Kimmer 2013, p.327).
