What if Teaching Went Wild?

Abstract

Almost by necessity, school cuts us off from the experience of a larger world: from natural rhythms, natural beings, more-than-human flows of knowledge and inspiration. In fact, we could hardly design a worse setting for environmental education! The problem is that, at least for now, we're stuck with it. Part of our challenge is to find ways to work toward and embody a radically different practice and philosophy of (environmental) education within schools as we know them. This paper suggests that even in a traditional classroom it is still possible to unsettle our deeply-felt sense of disconnection from the world, and to begin to reconnect. It may even be possible to make use of school's hyperhumanized and academic setting to this very end. The required pedagogy, however, is rather wild. It is much more personally demanding and unnerving than the usual sorts of pedagogical innovations. The latter part of this paper suggests a series of "everyday and practical" classroom strategies in this new key.