What is Nature Smart

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Just had an interesting conversation with a grade 5 teacher about "nature smart". 

He wasn't totally convinced that multiple intelligences were something we should be teaching towards, specifically with nature smart ideas. 

I fully understand that encouraging people to develop growth mindsets can get them out of a box of learning a specific way and not just focusing on their strengths. The conversation which really got me though was, what was nature smart? 

In the book he was looking at it said something like liking animals as a basis, his question (and rightly) was who doesn't like animals? Does that really make you nature smart. 

I started talking about the ability to see things in systems, not really sure if that's nature smart, but looking at connections between animals, and creating empathy that kind of thing. But wasn't really sure. 

So this week will be digging a little deeper into my ecoliteracy book, trying to convince him about maybe thinking ecoliterate is a little different from nature smart, we'll see.