Recounting the moment when she first looked at a snowflake in detail, scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer kicks off her surprisingly beautiful book all about mosses, one part science, one part gentle sermon. "Gathering Moss" is a wakeup call to take notice of that which has otherwise been ignored.
That theme translates nicely to a school building, where the din of testing and timelines can distract us from the truly important work that we are called to do--namely, connecting with each young life that moves through this space.
In the school library, where the adults are freed up from the grind of the gradebook, we are given a gift--the chance to meet kids where they are, no standards-based strings attached. Here, in this buffer zone, a refreshing cross section of students gathers, their needs and intentions ranging from the academic to the maternal. They are, in surprising ways, reminiscent of moss.
Easy to overlook, mosses are rootless, primitive, low-lying plants. They also are incredibly diverse, with 22,000 species inhabiting virtually every landscape on earth. Mosses, unlike their more sophisticated cousins, have a resilience that is enviable. While they seem to shut down in the absence of water, they have simply gone quiet. These mosses then bounce back within minutes when water is reintroduced to them, even after waiting years to slake their thirst.
It is water, then, that educators should seek to provide. And in the school library, that water takes all kinds of forms. Just yesterday, a student left the library with a book he'd requested, one we bought just for him. The same happened last week, proof that their voices, however small, have been heard. Yet another student came to the library Monday to report that he'd gotten a Learn to Dream scholarship. I have no doubt that my workmate Helen played a part in this. It was Helen who'd been watering his primitive ideas about a future he could not quite imagine. He had the tools and she took the time to notice and encourage them.
Kimmerer, who works and lives in the Appalachian Mountains, talks of finding mosses even in the stripped, brutal landscape of an orphaned iron mine, a long, ugly scar that runs through an otherwise rich landscape. There, she and her student study a patch of moss that somehow has made its home in a dead zone. And there, underneath the protective shadows of its tiny, primitive forest, they note that the land seems to be healing, new life emerging from a place of hopelessness.
I am heartened by her find, filled with a renewed commitment to take note of the small things, to honor the quiet, young lives of my students who--like all of us--have a thirst and a deep desire to make a good life for themselves.
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