What a Weed Can Teach Us

Each quarter, a group of students, faculty, and staff at WWU convene an environmental justice reading group to read and discuss recent texts. This quarter (Fall 2019) the group is reading Robin Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. The following entry reflects the group’s discussion last week.

 

What a Weed Can Teach Us

By: Avey Barbera, Marie Ytell, ans Lizzy Thompson

 

In reflection to Braiding Sweetgrass, our group decided to spend some time at the Outback Farm, pulling weeds and being immersed in nature. Spending about 30 minutes outside seemed to engage our classmates on a deeper level than a traditional classroom discussion, which was our main intention when planning to facilitate this week’s class. We wanted to bring to life Kimmerer’s notion of learning from the land, particularly from plants who continually provide for us without asking for anything in return. While we weren’t “using” the plants to learn a biological process as Kimmerer did when teaching some of her university classes, everyone seemed to be actively engaged in “learning”, nonetheless. People seemed to willingly share their “practical” knowledge about a particular plant, experience, or technique, which is often left unshared, as classroom settings prioritize “technical” knowledge that is rooted in facts, numbers, and academic peer reviews instead.

Throughout the book, Kimmerer continually emphasized that our relationship with the land was something to cherish, and not something to take for granted. In Picking Sweetgrass, she questioned how society could be so willing to harm what gives us love so as to satisfy our need for convenience, which has somehow become superior to our needs for respect and gratitude (Kimmerer, [2013:124]). By getting outside, we found that our classmate’s enthusiasm was an outward reflection of this internal feeling of responsibility and gratitude, that is often suppressed by normative social interactions. While some of us have made immersion in nature a regular part of life, others may not have the same opportunity or luxury to do so, which is why integrating outdoor “time” into classroom settings, especially in classes that would serve to benefit the students’ ability to learn while doing, seems to be a great way to transcend institutional boundaries to resonstate beyond the human realm.

One thing we should have done before getting started was to remind ourselves that our actions and intentions can help shape how we (re)establish our connection with the land. Next time, setting class intentions would encourage thoughtful reflection during our work party. If our class had been longer, there would have been more time to establish our goals before getting to work. With this limitation, we could have sent a message on Canvas to have people think about the intentions they wanted to bring to class, especially because there was no assignment for the day. Despite the critique of not setting intentions, we still believe that facilitating the class in the way we did helped serve as a reminder that education can happen anywhere and that learning does not need to be reduced to facts and memorization. Something as simple as pulling weeds can allow us to reconnect with ourselves, help build connections with those around us, and teach us how to reflect about and engage with the earth in ways that cannot be taught or replicated indoors.

 

Kimmerer, R. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass (First ed.). Minneapolis, Minnesota: Milkweed Editions.