How do we nurture children’s capacity to “think about systems” through everyday conversations and activities?

Many of you know I’ve been asking this question for a long time.

These days, I’m thrilled to be part of a movement to help children develop “systems literacy“, “systems thinking dispositions“, and other systems thinking “habits of mind” (and here).   Today, children and the adults who teach them can learn to think about and work with systems through camps like Camp Snowball and Design Camp, through innovative learning programs from SEED, the Institute of Play (see related blog) and Lego Serious Play and from systems educators at The Waters Foundation, the Creative Learning Exchange and The Cloud Institute, by reading blogs by Beth Sawin, Tim Joy, Tom Fiddaman (especially when he talks about his kids), Pegasus and many more (tell me who I’ve missed!)

I now have to add my most recent book — Connected Wisdom: Living Stories about Living Systems (SEED/Chelsea Green)*–  to the list of good things that encourage systems literacy.

I found out today that the book and children’s CD won at the New York Book Festival. (The CD won last month at the San Francisco book festival).

That’s good news!

What may be even better news is that we now get to put those little gold “winner” stickers on the book and the CD.

Sure, it’s good to get the recognition (who couldn’t use a pat on the back), but mostly, it’s good because people will be pick up the book or CD, and share it with their children.

Now that’s the really good news! As our children come to appreciate and see living systems in their everyday lives, we can confirm for them what they already know:  that their world is interconnected and dynamic, a tightly woven web of interrelated elements involving people, places, events and nature and, as such, is indeed purposeful and meaningful.

My deepest gratitude goes to Simone Amber, who listened to (and acted on!) my crazy idea to use folk tales as as a way to learn about the principles of living systems.  And to all who have been on this journey with me for past fifteen years, thank you for your continued encouragement.  It has made a world of difference to me.  For those of you who are new, welcome!

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*The Connected Wisdom book and CD is a collaborative effort with three first-class artists – Milton Glaser, recipient of the National Medal of Arts is the book designer, Guy Billout is the award-winning illustrator and Courtney Campbell is the wildly talented children’s singer/songwriter.   Funding for Connected Wisdom was provided by SEED. It is currently translated into nine languages including English, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish,  Russian, Dutch and Hungarian.

This is what the poet Judy Sorum Brown has to say about the book:

“Artfully, beautifully, playfully, seriously, clearly Linda Booth Sweeney invites us to join her in a deeper understanding of the profound principles of living systems. Tapping wisdom connected to many cultures and many times, Linda weaves memorable simple stories into a tapestry holding enormous complexity.   A book that is at once a work of art, a representation of science, and an invitation to think more deeply and playfully, Connected Wisdom is a gift. Whether the reader is six or sixty, it matters not.  These pages open us more fully to the world around us.”

Ok. Just one more, from the children’s troubadour and author, Raffi:

“The moment you touch and open this book, its wisdom is evident. This is the wisdom of wholes, of belonging, and connecting the dots to see the richer tapestry of life.”

To hear a preview of the Connected Wisdom CD, click here.  Also for the academic-types among you (I’m one of them), my endnotes for Connected Wisdom can be found here.

For teachers:

Earth science and other educators looking to effectively engage young people while meeting state and national standards will find the Connected Wisdom book and CD invaluable resource that is easily linked to curriculum standards. For example, National Science Education Standards call for students in grades five through eight to study earth and life systems, including natural cycles, natural cycles, nature awareness, habitats and community (specifically, dependency of plants and animals on their habitat and each other) and, human influence on habitats (and in Canada, standards 4s1 and 4s3).

 

Not long ago, our local elementary school hosted a “Getting to Green” community event.  My job was to work with my friend, Edie, an Audubon educator and farmer, to entertain the little ones while their parents listened to Dr. Halina Brown talk about “sustainable” consumerism.

Edie, a spry elder with a twinkle and lightning-white hair, brought one of her chickens for the children to touch and hold.  I brought one of my “systems playkits”.

“Clucky”, Edie’s barnyard bantam, was a huge success. The children, ranging in age from 3 to 8, sat cross-legged in a circle, listening intently as she explained why a chicken has this part and that, what they eat, what color eggs they lay (Thoreaucana, a breed Edie developed, lays greenish-blue eggs. Dr. Suess would approve).

Each child had a chance to feed and hold the chicken on their lap.  To their great delight, they all received a white feather to stroke and tuck into their pockets to take home.  When Edie finished, one of the monitors arrived to give the group a choice:  “You can play basketball in the gym, or you can play a ‘systems game’ with Mrs. Sweeney.”

No surprise.  Most of the children bolted to the gym! (Note to self:  Drop the word  “system” next time).  The few who remained gathered into a small circle on the floor.  I showed them pictures of a chicken coop at Drumlin Farm, a local Audubon site. We laid out playing cards with pictures of chickens, cows, grass, manure, insects, decomposing soil, eggs, people, the sun, and more, and gave everyone a handful of wikki stixs, bend-able sticks made from hand-knitting yarn enhanced with non-toxic wax. We were ready to play.

When they looked closely at the mobile coop they could see that this coop was unique:  It had wheels!

“Now, why would that be?” we wondered.  Lilly, a bright and curious first-grader, had been to Drumlin Farm. She’d seen the chickens scratching the grass near the mobile chicken coop.  “I know, I know!” she said. “The chickens eat the bugs in the grass!” Lilly grabbed a green wikki stix and connected chicken card to the grass card.

I asked more questions:  What happens to the chicken manure when it’s left in the field? How are the chickens, the pasture and people connected?

A group of children created this "systems map" using wikki stix (from the Wolves in Yellowstone playkit)

 

 

 

Then the group set to work, adding and taking away links. When they were done, they had “connected the dots”, and had put together a tightly linked “map” of causes and effects.  They discovered that the more the soil was fed the chicken manure and decaying plants, the healthier it was.  With a little help, they also saw the positive influence the chickens had on the health of cows (eating the harmful insect larvae in the cow’s manure), people (an omnivore’s diet improved the quality of the chicken’s eggs) and the climate (less fossil fuels needed to produce chicken feed)

When the last wikki stix was pressed into place, Lilly paused to study the map. Then she exclaimed:  “It all comes down to dirt!”

If you read the newspapers, you know that this statement is both timely and profound. Loss of topsoil and soil erosion due to over-farming and over-grazing of fragile soils is, according to The Worldwatch Institute, “A quiet crisis in the world economy.”  The causes of soil erosion (expanding demand for food, short-cut farming practices) and consequences (silt-laden rivers, desertification) are complex. Said simply though, the more the soil erodes, the less productive it is. Without good topsoil, plants cannot grow.

So, Lilly, at the tender of seven, got it. She explored the interconnections and dynamics of the farm and found that all roads (all wikki stix in this case) lead to the soil. In just a short half hour, she discovered the role soil plays in the health of crops, animals and people. With more time, she would have also likely discovered soil’s role in the cleanliness of water and the livelihoods of farmers. She might also have been guided to think about “systems” as an organizing framework to take home and apply, for instance to that escalating squabble with her brother or to preventing homework “burn-out.”

Systems Playkits, like the one I used with Lilly and her friends, have been used on farms, in public workshops, with a local girl scout troop towards earning their eco-explorer badge, and most recently with a group of 50 graduate students, studying sustainable development and education in Brazil.

People, whether they’re eight or 88, like to touch, build, discover, explore, imagine and play. Using all their senses and interacting with the real world increases the depth and breadth of learning. As our children begin to understand the critical issues that shape our interdependent world, let them become true “systems citizens” with their hands in the dirt and a chicken feather in their pocket.  I think Confucius had it right when he said:

When I hear, I forget,

When I see, I remember,

When I do, I understand.

About the Systems Playkit:

Working with the Creative Learning Exchange and Drumlin Farm, we designed the “Healthy Chickens, Healthy Pastures” playkit to encourage students to think deliberately about living systems in a farm setting.  Through observation and play, the students discover the often hidden connections within the pasture and see the people, and wildlife around the farms, not as a set of interesting but disconnected parts, but as components in a vibrant living system.  When used in educational settings, the game also provides students with an organizing framework (informed by system dynamics) to take home and apply in other contexts. (The “Healthy Chickens, Healthy Pastures” playkit can be ordered through the Creative Learning Exchange).

An Opportunity to Learn and Play with Systems

Want to learn more about systems? Check out  Camp Snowball in Tucson the week of July 21-25.  This summer “camp” experience brings together students, parents, educators, and business and community leaders to build everyone’s capacity for learning and leading in the 21st century. Teams and individuals from school systems and communities around the world are invited to learn how to enable youth to develop into “systems citizens.”

Many thanks to my good friends Gale Prior and Sara Schley for your thoughtful comments on this article.  And to Ann Jennings (superb graphic designer), Renata Pomponi (Drumlin Farm) and Lees Stuntz (CLE) for our most enjoyable and fruitful collaboration!

 

 

 

 

In this blog I write about systems.

What’s tricky here is that systems — two or more parts that interact to form a whole — are often hard to see.

If you think of it, have you ever seen a system walking around?  Why not? Well, for the most part we don’t actually see the connections that make up systems. We have to imagine how this influences that.

I was reminded of this during yet another snowstorm last week.  With school closed, my two boys were having a ball, and then, as the afternoon crept in, the laughing was replaced by arguing.  What started out as a sharp word or two, ending up in a not-so-playful snowball fight.

Was this simply too much of good thing?  To find out, I took each one aside, and listened while each told their version.

They both told a similar story:  an annoyed comment from one, led the other to comment back, which led to a poke, then… (you know the scenario). In both of their explanations, I heard a common pattern – often seen in systems – called escalation. (If you don’t have children, just think about any situation that escalates like the old advertising campaigns for Coke and Pepsi, competing street gangs, or the current situation between Palestine and Israel. Siblings, companies and countries can all be viewed as “living systems”; the difference is the scale.)

Whether you’ve studied systems or not, you know the pattern I saw. One party does something that is seen as a threat by another party so the other party responds in kind, increasing the threat to the first party. This results in even more threatening actions by the first party and the cycle continues. Seeing this pattern I drew the following picture with my boys:

(Here’s how you read it: Start in the middle. One boy, let’s call him “J”, makes a move to be more awesome than the other. Now, moving to the bottom of the right-hand loop, we see this annoys “T”, who then throws a poke of some sort at his brother. “T”, feeling he now has the leg up,  then probably expresses some level of satisfaction. Then the cycle continues on the left-hand side, with “J” now feeling annoyed at “T” and so on.)

When I asked: “Would you say this is what’s going on?” they both agreed immediately but then quickly started talking over each other.

“Look,” one of them said, pointing to the diagram, “it’s a figure eight lying on its side.” The symbol of infinity.

“This thing could go on forever,” one moaned.

“And just keep getting worse,” the other groaned.

As we talked about it, the growing conflict was driven by each one trying to “out-cool” or “top-dog” the other. The more “cool” behavior one kid put on, the more the other wanted to squash it. As it turns out, one was particularly good at “poking” and the other one was good at “squashing”.

For that one snowy afternoon (with their Mom at her wit’s end), they saw themselves as part of the “system”, rather than separate from it. They “got” that focusing on just one of them wasn’t going to solve the problem. When they could see how their actions were actually fueling the actions of the other (with the help of a simple picture) they then were able to talk about how they might break the cycle.

When I asked what they could do differently, the answer came easily. The poker would lighten up on the poking, and the squasher wouldn’t squash so much.

When our children learn to see systems they eventually learn to see themselves “in” and not outside of situations.  When they see that nothing stands alone, they begin to see that  my bully is your bully, your food shortage is my food shortage, my climate is your climate. They learn to stop jumping to blame a single cause for the challenges they encounter and instead, try to track the a variety of interacting causes, effects and unintended impacts. They learn to move beyond laundry lists and look for  more web-like patterns of cause and effect in their everyday lives.

Does all of this really happen when we talk to our children about systems?

We’re expecting another snow day this week.  I’ll let you know how it goes.