As I write this column early in the morning sitting on our deck, a symphony of birds keeps me company. The sounds remind me of something I read recently about what truly makes us live longer. We know that healthy eating, exercise and managing stress lengthen lifespan, but another integral factor is a deep relationship with nature. For the majority of time we’ve been on this planet, people and Mother Earth worked in synchrony, but the human-nature disconnect is increasingly getting worse, especially as addiction to technology and sedentary lifestyles increase. That being said, I’m a believer this can be reversed, but it takes awareness and passing along knowledge to younger generations.
When I was an educator, we were often reminded why early intervention and prevention leads to better results than remediation or retention. For instance, through progress monitoring, we could see which kindergartners were already struggling with pre-reading skills. Addressing those deficits immediately when they were four- and five-years old yielded much better long-term results than waiting until third grade when they failed their first End-of-Grade test. Research states that students who are not proficient by third grade will likely never read on grade level, and students who aren’t reading on grade level by the end of third grade are more likely to drop out of high school. It’s heartbreaking to think this vicious, life-altering cycle could’ve been prevented had someone put in the work earlier.