Nurture Learning: Root Education
We aspire to become a hub for cultivating climate leadership dedicated to exploring and implementing the paradigm shifts necessary for facing the climate crisis resiliently, equitably, and meaningfully.
Root.ED Nature School
BioEarth is developing a year round forest preschool emphasizing nature immersion, intimacy and inquiry beginning in the 2023-2024 school year and serving children ages 3-5. Our 12.5 acre campus is rooted in the Methow Valley, situated in the foothills of the North Cascades mountains of North Central Washington.
The way in which we as humans develop as individuals, community members, and creatures of the natural world depends upon how our sense of self in time and space is drawn out by the shared vision and action of the community we are raised in. Through intentional early childhood education we are fostering the growth of vibrant, beautiful humans who will hold a lasting relationship and connection with the natural world within rooted community.
A core value and outcome of our program is Sustainable Peace: the physical, material, psychological, cultural/religious, and ecological well being of all peoples.
Root.ED Nature School celebrates our children’s innate sense of wonder, vibrancy and beauty through play, exploration, and relationship-building so our children can say with confidence, “We are the ones who are from this place and who hold relationship to each other, the land, and the other beings here. We belong here. I belong among us. I am one of us” (Carter 2016), so they and we may thrive as members of our earth.
Dark Green Bible
By 2060, two-thirds of the world's population will either be Christian or Muslim and their scriptures include the Bible which has been blamed by some for being the cause of climate crisis. Our scholars wrestle with these texts in the original contexts and from a variety of audience perspectives, especially First Nations peoples, to uncover the potential for biblical text to speak positively to the environmental crisis. Our language of the dark green Bible is an homage to Bron Taylor’s classic Dark Green Religion and the work of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, as well as all of the amazing scholars who have been working already on religion and ecology.
Root.ED Center
The Root.ED Center for Religion, Spirituality, Science, and Sustainability aims to be a field-leading interdisciplinary educational hub for cultivating energized, humble, and hopeful climate leadership that asks, “What should humankind preserve from our past as we recognize with humility the blindspots that created climate change? What must we transform to survive and flourish in the short and long-term futures? How can religions such as Christianity, Islam, and indigenous lifeways motivate cultural transformation and lend meaning and hope?” At the Root.ED Center, we will curate cohorts of academics, practitioner experts, and community leaders drawn from diverse backgrounds to collaborate on research and projects shared widely to provide inspiration, resources, and strategies that build societal and ecological resilience. This will establish the Root.ED Center as a learning and leadership community generating field-leading research and public education that explores what we should preserve and transform from the past as we chart a resilient, equitable, and meaningful future.
Root.ED Workshops
Transforming human civilization so that we not only survive the climate crisis, but also flourish with purpose, will require unprecedented global cooperation, widespread scientific and cultural/religious literacy, profound theological reflection, and enduring hope. Root.ED Workshops will cultivate climate leadership dedicated to exploring and implementing the paradigm shifts necessary for facing the climate crisis resiliently, equitably, and meaningfully.
While the climate crisis is daunting, we take the approach that Local+Local+Local=Global, such that when we connect and energize the many individual efforts working towards a sustainable future, a global movement emerges that makes civilizational scale change possible. We bring diverse international climate leaders into a growing community that cultivates their leadership skills, supports them in their climate grief and anxiety, instills hope, amplifies their impacts, generates imaginative collaborative research and strategies, and communicates their insights with a public audience in order to educate, inspire, and embolden further change.