Kimmerer’s chapter nudged me to look at the language we teach with, not just the ideas. In math and physics I rely on technical terms because precision matters; they keep us from talking past each other. I can also see how a nouns-only register can flatten experience—everything becomes a labeled thing on a list. The “grammar of animacy” reframes that: verbs and relational words point our attention to process, change, and responsibility. It also raised the harder question of language loss; when a community’s words for the living world go quiet, the ways of noticing they encode fade too. That feels relevant in school, where the words we privilege quietly train students on what counts.
Practically, I’m not throwing away terminology, but I can change the sequence and the tone. Start with an encounter, then name: watch condensate bead and slide before we say “surface tension,” feel the “tug” in a stretched line before “force,” track a plant’s height over days before “rate.” When we introduce the formal terms, keep a parallel, verb-rich gloss on the board so both registers stay visible. I may also try small translation moves, like rewriting a definition in process language, or telling a proof as a story of what one quantity does to another—so students hear that concepts are relationships, not just objects. I do want to emphasize that none of this replaces the precision we need for problem solving, but it might keep the ideas from feeling mechanical and make room for easier understandings.
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