Arboretum
Arboretum-A garden with a large collection of trees and shrubs cultivated for scientific or educational purposes.
It sometimes seems that we as a nation have gotten into a mindset of compartmentalizing our and our children's education. We relegate our learning times from the hours of around 9-3, the moments we spend within the walls of the school building. But we would do well to remember that the whole world is our "arboretum"; that education does not just take place in some specialized location of learning. I do not like it when my nephews ask me if "school time is over." More often than not, they end up playing what we have been learning, further internalizing it and perhaps making their "play time" more of a "learning time" than we sometimes realize or they would ever admit. Another example is the student who says during the summer that they don't have to think, since they are out of school. That is not the way the world functions! Our minds are open to thinking, learning and functioning at any time. Again I say, this whole world is our and our children's arboretum, a vast garden of learning and growing, no matter where we are.
It sometimes seems that we as a nation have gotten into a mindset of compartmentalizing our and our children's education. We relegate our learning times from the hours of around 9-3, the moments we spend within the walls of the school building. But we would do well to remember that the whole world is our "arboretum"; that education does not just take place in some specialized location of learning. I do not like it when my nephews ask me if "school time is over." More often than not, they end up playing what we have been learning, further internalizing it and perhaps making their "play time" more of a "learning time" than we sometimes realize or they would ever admit. Another example is the student who says during the summer that they don't have to think, since they are out of school. That is not the way the world functions! Our minds are open to thinking, learning and functioning at any time. Again I say, this whole world is our and our children's arboretum, a vast garden of learning and growing, no matter where we are.
