Hands-on root harvesting reliably quiets students into a hum of contented singing

Evidence

I stay at my patch, working my roots and listening to the chatter slowly subside. I hear an occasional grunt of frustration nearby. A splutter when soil flies up in someone’s face. I know what their hands are doing and sense where their minds are as well. Digging spruce roots takes you someplace else. … Before long all the chatter ceases and a mossy hush befalls us. There is just the ssshhhh of wind in the spruce, and a calling winter wren. Time goes by. Way longer than the fifty-minute classes they’re used to. Still, no one speaks. I’m waiting for it, hoping. There is a certain energy in the air, a hum. And then I hear it, someone singing, low and contented. I feel the smile spread across my face and breathe a sigh of relief. It happens every time. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 849

Categorization

• XREF: Provides concrete evidence for the polyad’s eco-justice and land-based education thread: sustained manual work in place produces the listening state classrooms cannot. — connects to: Learning paths must engage students’ hearts, minds, and hands to end apathy — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1910; Readiness and quietness are prerequisites to hearing what the land teaches — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 803
• SEED: An angle for an essay on how slow, tactile fieldwork produces the ‘mossy hush’ of genuine attention that lectures fail to summon.

Broader Connections

• Learning paths must engage students’ hearts, minds, and hands to end apathy #exemplifies (0.82) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1910
• Readiness and quietness are prerequisites to hearing what the land teaches #corroborates (0.78) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 803