Dr. Dilafruz Williams – Living Soil as Poetic and Critical Text: Pedagogy Underground for Regenerative Hope
As thousands of learning gardens have sprouted on school grounds across countries and continents, soil provides an exquisite pedagogical entry point for poetic and critical text in nurturing students’ connection with the more-than-human world. Normally out-of-sight and out-of-mind, direct hands-on interaction with living soil in gardens provides children and youth with regenerative hope beyond gloom and doom of environmental issues. Using photo-essay of students’ poems, art, class murals, and scientific and critical engagement with soil in several learning gardens, we will collectively explore: what can adults learn from the young whose emotive engagement in gardens captures both the biology of soil and affective awakenings?