As I have mentioned, this summer is my final quarter at Evergreen EVER, and so in picking my classes I am keeping very concious of which classes I will need to apply to Elementary Education teaching programs, which I plan on doing in the future. What this means for me is that for the first time in years, I am going to have to take math and science. But, as is quite different than of the years past, I am not afraid.

The thing is that I think I hated math and science so much when I went to traditional public high school ( and middle school, and elementary school) because it really didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything. I didn’t care about the big biological terms in the textbook, or the pages and pages of numbers and signs. I didn’t want to memorize these things so that I could spit them out later on a test and then never think about them again. It just seemed so very very pointless.

Evergreen, on the other hand, is very good at making things relevant. Last summer I took a class called Plant Medicine Traditions, and this foray into the world of botanicals and biology was so much FUN! Everything I learned about plants was from the days we spent at local farms, nature centers, and the Evergreen teaching gardens (which are all over campus). We drew pictures, talked about the spirituality surrounding plants, and learned how to make medicinal preperations. It was wonderful. Not only did I learn so much about “science” but I put it to real live use, right away!

With this experience in mind, I am excited for the remainder of credits I have left. This is especially true of math, which I know will take on a profoundly deeper meaning to me when I learn in class this summer about the ways that children understand and process numbers, and what the logic underneath mathematical functions is all about. Because of all the opportunity I have to actually work in an elementary school setting, I will probably get to see this in real live action also. Hopefully if I maintain this enthusiasm than children learning math with me will maintain it too..maybe this is the beginning of changing the world forever and making math and science supremely UN-scary things…(!)