Agraria Journal Winter 2021

give and share with us, and health to be tended to by us. “It” connotes inertness in the English language. Yet all of these beings, even rocks, move. They change. They live. I do a disservice to children if I teach them the difference between biotic and abiotic “factors” in an ecosystem, as the educational science standards command. The parceling out of biotic and abiotic, living and non-living pieces of a system is language that separates and produces unnecessary hierarchy. This educational standard (and societal distinction) breaks down and denatures those intimate relationships, because biotic (alive) beings are more important in this hierarchy, whereas abiotic parts are not as important, expendable, and able to be manipulated without effect. We cannot be in right relationship with any being if we think of them as less than us. This type of partial, semi-whole ideation has produced, is producing, and will continue to produce violence toward fellow humans and earth. Let us ask ourselves why we are teaching this division in the first place? To categorize. To observe. To get to know all parts of a system. Yet, I can teach parts of an ecosystem with all beings equal in importance, equal in spirit. I choose to teach aligned with relational education (hyper linked to https://weavingearth.org/relational-education/ ), to stress the importance of building relationships and connection between humans and the world in us and around us. And so it is in these small, intimate moments of EMILY FOUBERT Teens in Agraria's Music, Myth, and Storytelling Camp last summer hung out in Jacoby Creek. AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 19