20. John Muir Laws - Author, Naturalist, Artist, Educator

In today’s episode, we get to spend time with John Muir Laws, well-known naturalist, artist, educator, and author of many works. John, called “Jack” by his friends, grew up struggling with the challenges of dyslexia. But the love of his kind parents, the caring of two incredible high school teachers, and a love of art and nature, led Jack to discover the gifts and advantages of his dyslexia to pursue his passion for observing and drawing nature. In our conversation, Jack teaches us how essential it is to be curious, humble, and to always ask questions. He also emphasizes that we should slow down and pay close attention to the beauty and wonder that surrounds us and especially in nature. We talked a lot about the brain, our ability to learn and get better at anything we practice, and why we should download our observations of the world and nature in a journal so that we remember.

Connect with John Muir Laws
https://johnmuirlaws.com
https://www.wildwonder.org

John's Works
The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling
The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds
How to Teach Nature Journaling: Curiosity, Wonder, Attention
The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada

Books
The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain
Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction is Hijacking Our Kids

This Golden Hour
Free eBook Course
thisgoldenhour.org

Transcript

Jack Laws: 0:00

I think of the homeschooling parent as somebody who's willing to stand in the fire and it's hard and it's scary. But at the end of the day, it's going to be okay. You would not be here giving this much attention if you were not based in love It requires so much love to do this and if that child is coming from a loving home you are giving them the base to stand upon.

Tim Eaton: 0:33

Hi, I'm Timmy Eaton, homeschool father of six and doctor of education. We've been homeschooling for more than 15 years and have watched our children go from birth to university successfully and completely without the school system. Homeschooling has grown tremendously in recent years and tons of parents are becoming interested in trying it out. But people have questions and concerns and misconceptions and lack the confidence to get started. New and seasoned homeschoolers are looking for more knowledge and peace and assurance to continue homeschooling. The guests and discussions on this podcast will empower anyone thinking of homeschooling to bring their kids home and start homeschooling. And homeschoolers at all stages of the journey will get what they need and want from these conversations. Thank you for joining us today and enjoy this episode of this Golden Hour Podcast as you exercise, drive, clean, or just chill. You are listening to this golden hour podcast. In today's episode, we get to spend time with John Muir Laws, well known naturalist, artist, educator, and author of many works, including the Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada and the Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling. Thousands of learners and a sizable homeschool population use John's books and implement his teachings. John, called Jack by his friends, grew up struggling with the challenges of dyslexia. But the love of his kind parents, the caring of two incredible high school teachers, and a love of art and nature led Jack to discover the gifts and advantages of his dyslexia to pursue his passion for observing and drawing nature. In our conversation, Jack teaches us how essential it is to be curious, humble, and to always ask questions. He also emphasizes that we should slow down and pay close attention to the beauty and wonder that surrounds us, and especially in nature. We talked a lot about the brain, our ability to learn and get better at anything we practice, and why we should download our observations of the world and nature in a journal so that we remember. Welcome back to this Golden Hour podcast. We are so privileged today to be talking with and learning from John Muir Laws, well known naturalist, artist, educator, and author. John has published many works, including The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling. And I mention that, John, because That was the work that my wife really got started with. And we just went crazy almost a decade ago. One thing I want to say is that John has inspired like literally thousands to pay attention to the beauty and wonder that is all around us and to remember these observations through nature journaling. John, thank you for taking the time to be with us. We, Sarra and I, my wife are humbled and grateful to learn from you today. On a personal note, Your work and influence have been a major part of my children's education. I just want you to know that nature journaling is a permanent resident on their weekly schedules every Wednesday. Actually today's Wednesday. That's what they're doing. And they're what they do in nature study and journaling is totally based on the principles that John teaches and models. So I know that thousands and thousands of others have been blessed with this. And I know that thousands of homeschool families are blessed by John's work. We just can't say enough about being able to have this conversation. With that backdrop, I had to say one strange thing at the beginning. I feel a little humbled because, have you ever seen Napoleon Dynamite? Yes! Oh, I love that. Okay John Heder... As a matter of fact, right now I've got my tater tots in my pocket. Okay, okay. John Heder was my roommate at university. And who is Napoleon Dynamite in the movie and besides him, I don't know that I've ever had an interaction with somebody that had so much being well known. And so I'm just really excited to be able to talk with you today. So that's probably a weird...

Jack Laws: 4:13

no, no, I'm delighted to talk to you and we should just unpack that a little bit because yeah, go ahead. It is funny because I have, I've ended up making a bunch of videos and those have ended up being useful to a lot of us then. It's people think that anybody who does that must be some kind of some sort of unattainable star. So when we say star stars are out there, they're not here. And So that person like must be they're operating at a different level, but no, it turns out I it's one pant leg at a time. I I struggle just like everybody else. And It's really nice to have these kinds of conversations because yeah, we talk about things about the human side of being human and realize that we are all we are all dealing with those same sorts of things. So just because I made some videos that people have found useful or wrote a book that people found useful. It doesn't in any way change that I'm still at the end of the day, me, so actually you can call me Jack. We're often if. If somebody calls me and says, can I talk to John Muir Laws, then I know ah, you don't really know me I'm a telemarketer.

Tim Eaton: 5:26

In that case, you can call me Timmy.

Jack Laws: 5:28

Timmy. All right. We will.

Tim Eaton: 5:30

So how did Jack come about? How did that?

Jack Laws: 5:33

Jack, Jack, because it's so much shorter, Jack is the nickname for John.

Tim Eaton: 5:37

Okay. Okay. I think you said that earlier too, and I, it had, it took me a moment.

Jack Laws: 5:43

Yeah. The, Whether if I had been my, my grandfather was named John and his nickname was Jack for something like Jack Kennedy, John Kennedy. For some reason, Jack is John. It's as just about as odd as, Bob and Robert. I have no idea why, but that just happened. But Jack is the nickname for John. The backstory of that is that when I was born everybody thinks I was named after John Muir, the naturalist. I actually wasn't.

Tim Eaton: 6:09

Really? I was, no way.

Jack Laws: 6:11

No, Ethel Muir took care of my dad and she. Was this wonderful, strong woman who held down multiple jobs in the depression to take care of somebody else's kid. And my dad learned so much about how to be a good person on this planet from her. So I'm named Muir after her. That's awesome. Longest time after I was born. My, my parents didn't know whether I'd be a what to name me, but they finally got a letter from a friend who is sick of me being just baby boy laws. And she said, all right, enough of this, Beatrice, you've got to name your son. And here's what I think you should do. You should name your son John, after your father and everybody should call him Jack. And apparently she had incredible, you know, people used to really work on penmanship.

Tim Eaton: 7:03

Yeah, that's a it's unfortunately more lost but there's, I know a lot of people that are working on that. So yeah.

Jack Laws: 7:09

So she had incredible penmanship and then she wrote with this flourish, she wrote Jack laws. And she said, it sounds like a stagecoach driver, and my mom read that and she was like, okay, that's it. I Either would have taken up natural history or a career in transportation.

Tim Eaton: 7:30

Yeah. Amen. Or theater perhaps. That's good. That's awesome. That's awesome. So I would love for you if you're willing to do it, just to give a, just a brief personal bio and then a brief professional bio for our listeners.

Jack Laws: 7:44

Okay. Or maybe I'll fuse them together. Totally.

Tim Eaton: 7:48

However you want.

Jack Laws: 7:49

So starting out personally I grew up in San Francisco As a kid growing up in San Francisco, and this was at a time where in the educational system Nobody had heard about dyslexia And, spoil alert, I'm dyslexic, but they just didn't really have terms for it. And I was Johnny Doe in a bunch of the original dyslexic research, a bunch of people got their PhDs probing my brain and I thought it was really fun. I liked these people in white coats who would let me do puzzles. I would go do puzzles with them and they just thought it was great.

Tim Eaton: 8:27

How did they, how did they get you to do that? Like I'm saying, how did they identify you?

Jack Laws: 8:31

I, I don't know how they found me, but I was encountered by something called the Child Study Unit at the University of California in San Francisco, and Somehow my mom, she knew that something was different. She brought me to these folks and then I became Johnny Doe and all their research. And for me, it was fun because, and essentially it was free therapy. It was, people, and also for me, it was puzzles. And I love games and puzzles. And so I would come there and we would draw pictures and do puzzles and they'd read me stories and then I would write things and they would, there's, they saw this huge disconnect between, you could do certain things really well. And other things like you could, they would read me Peter Rabbit stories and I could, then, narrate back the whole Peter Rabbit story and all the detail. I could draw the picture of Peter Rabbit. I could, but then if they wrote out the word Peter Rabbit on a piece of paper and I was to copy that, I wrote Dieter Raddit and they looked at each other and high fived each other. So we've got one. This is. Yeah, this is this phenomenon that we're starting to see and they even went to my teachers at school who hadn't had any knowledge of these sorts of things in their training and they said like this kid's not being lazy. It's not that he doesn't care. His brain is wired differently and he's really smart. But. He's not going to be able to jump through this specific hoop of spelling and, it's, and it's okay. And, but the teachers. One in particular knew better, right? Of course. Yeah. We just gotta get his kids' nose to the grindstone or he is gonna develop bad habits and, you know, they weren't ready,

Tim Eaton: 10:17

they're just operating on the, on their best knowledge at the time.

Jack Laws: 10:20

And That's right. They were. And so bless this teacher's heart was doing the best he could with the knowledge that he had, and thought he was actually.

Tim Eaton: 10:27

But not in the, but not in the right direction.

Jack Laws: 10:29

But not in the right direction. and the. For a while as I was growing up I learned more and I was like mad at this teacher and, but now I realize that this person was just doing the best that he could with the knowledge that he had at the time. Yeah. And he had, it's interesting when we have lots of experience doing something. But there's no way of testing that your ideas are accurate or not. It's easy to develop a high level of confidence. in your explanations and the way you think the world works. Because there's no way to verify or more importantly, there's no way to disconfirm or to challenge your ideas. Yeah. So with and then we'll cherry pick the events that kind of make our thinking feel right.

Tim Eaton: 11:29

Yeah. Validates it. We look for things that validate what we believe exactly.

Jack Laws: 11:33

Confirmation bias. Yes. And the power of confirmation bias was working against this poor fella and he was doing the best he could with what he had and he was really trying to do right by me. But it ended up being using humiliation to try to motivate me. And so by the time, I, so a big part of my schooling was progressively starting to hear and believe this narrative that I was stupid.

Tim Eaton: 12:02

How old were you at this time ish?

Jack Laws: 12:05

I think that was, could that have been fourth grade? I think around fourth grade. Yeah. And so then I bounced to a number of different schools. And I was struggling. I was really struggling. Yeah. If you were, if we're seeing this on zoom, we're recording this right now I'm bald on the top of my head. Because I shaved it and that's another story. Yes, but back in these days, my, my anxiety and my, my, my tension, I became a hair puller yeah. I was so just wound up as a little kid that my tension came out. I would start to pull out all the hair on top of my head, and then if I put the hat on, I'd pull it out from the sides and I would pull the hat down further. I'd pull out my eyebrows. And it's just like this stress and tension kind of coming out in all sorts of weird ways. So I thought I, I was, stupid, but there was, there were some things that were they got me through without for some kids, when you're heading down this way, it's, it's a collapse because all the supports there's if there's no support structure for you there You just completely lose faith in yourself.

Tim Eaton: 13:11

So well and the support structure that is there the one you're expecting is the one that's actually creating that feeling.

Jack Laws: 13:17

Right, right Fortunately, I was lucky I had parents who unconditionally loved me and Yeah today on the recording of this it's actually the anniversary of my dad's death

Tim Eaton: 13:32

Thank you for sharing that

Jack Laws: 13:34

and he loved me and my mom loved me and that gets you through a lot Other things that got me through was being a Boy Scout. I was a pretty really good Boy Scout. Awesome and Also nature. And after school, after being beaten down in school, I would walk home. And my route could take me through golden gate park and I would drift into the park and just start following birds and learning all the sounds that the different birds make and making my own observations and the there was brightness there and my curiosity, I could cut, I could go there. I could play and

Tim Eaton: 14:20

is this, I'm not that familiar with Golden Gate Park. Is this like right in the city?

Jack Laws: 14:25

Right in the middle of the city? Wow. Like Central Park for San Francisco. Yes. Yes. And and my way of recording information about it was to, I would keep a notebook because with all these pictures and drawings in it, because if I did that, it wouldn't come back covered in red pen. Yes. And I've since learned to make friends with words, but in those days, words weren't my friends. I was threatened by them. And so it was mostly pictures. And so in high school, towards the end of high school, there were two teachers who went, huh, there's actually something, there's something in there. And they reached in and academically. Pulled out this other sort of being that was inside you inside that shell pulling out its hair and can I just tell you being a kid with a huge bald spot in high school, socially awkward. That's hard. That's hard. But these two teachers, they reached in, they pulled me out of that. And they teach what were they teaching. So one was Alan Ridley and he taught biology. And the other was Leroy Voto and he was a history teacher. And these two men in, in less than a year turned my world upside down.

Tim Eaton: 15:45

Yeah, you combine the efforts that they gave you with your parents.

Jack Laws: 15:48

Right. Yeah. My, my parents, like I, I loved them and I knew they loved me, but I also thought, I could discount everything that they say because I know that they would always say no, you're really smart because they're supposed to say that because they're my parents. But these two teachers, they didn't have a dog in the fight. Yeah. They were my teacher, but they're also the teacher for all these other students. Yes. But they saw me in a different way and they gave me the permission to be smart. And with their inspiration, I got into UC Berkeley studied natural history there graduated with high honors and they gave, those teachers had given me the confidence. That I could do this and also showed me how much fun it is to engage with ideas and to be alive and to think, and that, that was something that was a door that was open to me, even if I could not read the book.

Tim Eaton: 16:47

So how did they do that? What did they do? How did they pull that person out that was inside of you?

Jack Laws: 16:54

They looked at my ideas. We and it was looking at content rather than performance of wrote tasks, look at something that I wrote and not see the spelling. Yeah. Excellent. And that's actually really hard to do because there's a lot of research that shows like if you have a couple of spelling mistakes on something, people tend to think, Oh yeah this is...

Tim Eaton: 17:21

not drawing judgments.

Jack Laws: 17:23

Yeah. We judge it and then we feel, all right, this comes from a non reliable source and I think I can discount this. It's just. It's it's human nature.

Tim Eaton: 17:33

Yeah, take somebody who, very consistent. I'm just as you're talking and I'm going to let develop this, but as you're talking and you're emphasis on paying attention to what's all around us and to observing and remembering, I'm seeing the cultivation of that in you through them, that's what they would have had to have done. They would have had to have truly been observing you and caring. Otherwise, how would you ever make such a, or why would you put that type of investment into one kid?

Jack Laws: 17:59

That's right. That's right. There, there were lots of good reasons to write me off and they didn't, and they paid attention. And this is. Let me, I'm going to come back to that idea of them, but let's go this way. I've ended up in my career spending most of my time trying to figure out how to help people fall in love with their life and the world around them. And how do you help people fall in love with this world? I had to come up with a working definition of love. And so I did. So I'm going to share that with you. Please do. And and there went through several iterations of it, but here is, here's my, this is what I think love is that love is sustained, compassionate attention is the deliberate. Willful act of attention and it's hard to do and if you pay that think about your relationship with your children or your spouse and through paying Attention it takes work you have to be closed the laptop You have to be present and it changes you and it changes your wife's Connection with you through that attention when she really sees you, it changes the way that you interact with her when you and the same is true with our Children. The same is true with a place that we become, we come to know intimately. It's through these act of attention that we build a relationship and a bond with it. So attention is the, it's the doorway to love. It is actually so love itself is this act of attention. Okay. And that's what they did. They paid attention. They loved me.

Tim Eaton: 19:52

I want to, can I interject for one moment? And then I want you to keep going because that is beautiful. I've spent some time on when I was doing my doctorate degree, I was toying with the idea of really focusing on compassion as a part of my, what I was going to write about and studied it quite a bit and compassion, the root of that is compass, but it's. And it means to suffer with. And so I just love it, did you say sustain compassionate attention? Yes, I did. Like that. Like to me, that makes a ton of sense. You're suffering with somebody in a sustained manner or with sustained attention and you're going through it with them and you're a, so I love that. I love what you said there. And so talk about being present and developing a relationship. So no, that's really good. Thank you. Keep going.

Jack Laws: 20:35

And it's hard. So we're not talking about the falling in love thing. Right.

Tim Eaton: 20:39

No. We're talking active. We're talking active love. That's right.

Jack Laws: 20:43

This is, it's a choice and it's work and it changes you and it changes the world around you. And the and it was through that. Act of deliberate love that they pulled this kid out and it was hard and they did it anyway.

Tim Eaton: 21:06

That's awesome. I love hearing that. I love that. I'm just, as you're saying that it's just, it provides like the theoretical framework for everything else. Like I'm saying, if you were writing this as a, just like your life story that provides the framework for then what you've done. And so carry on because you were talking about how that kind of led you to this fascination and wonderment in observing nature and but anything else you want to, whatever flow you want to do there, but.

Jack Laws: 21:31

Yeah. Professionally I've I worked as a science educator for a long time and Eventually I, I found myself working in a science museum as their environmental educator. And if you do a really good job in a job that you do, what happens is you get promoted. And the problem with that is that every time you get promoted. You get promoted out of the things that you're good at and the things that bring you alive and that really motivate you.

Tim Eaton: 22:03

Oh, that's a really good observation.

Jack Laws: 22:06

And so I ended up eventually behind a desk managing budgets.

Tim Eaton: 22:13

Where you didn't want to be.

Jack Laws: 22:14

And. Can I tell you, I was terrible at that. I was really bad about this. And I've since discovered there's something called the Peter Principle, where people are promoted to the level of their incompetence. And from there on, they stay in that position. And so it's a thing and it happened to me. But while I was doing that I my grandmother, who was my artistic muse she's the one who put my first set of watercolors in my hand, and she taught me how to shade a sphere and showed me the rules, but also showed me that there aren't rules and you just got to play with it and see what happens. And so she was my artistic muse.

Tim Eaton: 22:55

Who's mom is she?

Jack Laws: 22:56

My mom's mom. Okay, cool. Beatrice Ward Chalice. And she was dying after a very long and full life. And during that time, family members would go down to Los Angeles and what we do is we would, she would slip in and out of sort of states of being more alert and awake. And sometimes those would happen in the middle of the night. And so my shift was essentially sitting up with her throughout the night. And if she woke up and she needed something or she could talk and wanted to talk or wonder where she was. There'd be a loving voice there and somebody to hold her hand. And that was me in the middle of the night, but most of the night I was sitting there watching, there's a busted digital clock that would just make abstract patterns. And I was just staring at that and it was fortunate, like now, people would be sitting there listening to some to, to something on on the web. And, but there wasn't any of that distraction. It was just darkness, her breathing in me and this digital clock. And I had a lot of time to think about to realize that. This is where we all end up and at one point, I'm going to be in this bed. At that point, what do I want my life to have been about? And I, I had a lot of time to reflect and I realized there are two things. One was, I wanted to become a daddy. I wanted to have a family. And the other was, I had this fantasy about making a field guide to the Sierra Nevada mountains. Yes. And I knew what this book would look like and all these color pictures and how I would organize it and how you could flip through the thing and kind of land that's the flower I'm seeing. And I wanted to make that book and I realized I need to make that book. And the only chance I have to do that is before I have this family.

Tim Eaton: 24:53

Because that's going to take a lot of focus and time and Oh yeah. And this is at the same stage that you're at the desk job. Yes. Yes.

Jack Laws: 25:01

Wow. Yes. And so I came back and I quit my job and went and studied scientific illustration for nine months and then took filled a backpack up with granola bars and paper and headed off to the Sierra Nevada mountains for the next six years. Yeah. I'm going to say six years. Everything around me through throughout the spring, summer, fall, then snow would come to the mountains and I would go back down to the Academy of Sciences where this, where I had been working, and now it was an associate there and I would go through their collections and pull out all the insects and paint the insects and then spring would come again and go back up into the mountains. And, Follow mushroom experts around and draw as many, clouds, mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, insects, trees, star charts, animal tracks, droppings, everything that I could find. Yes. And put it all into one book with thousands and thousands of watercolor paintings.

Tim Eaton: 25:58

And where did the, where did it start? Did it start in that hospital room or was it like always a brewin'?

Jack Laws: 26:03

Oh so that book hatched in my head in high school. I had hiked the John Muir trail with some classes. It was a sort of a hippie high school. And they're like, let's have a class where we hike the

Tim Eaton: 26:14

John Muir trail. I like it. I like it.

Jack Laws: 26:15

And I loved it. Right. And this class, sent me on a life trajectory. And in that class, I fantasized about what I would eat when I got out of the mountains. And I also fantasized about what if there was, I had, my backpack was so heavy. And most of that was field guides. And I was thinking like, what if there was only one book that I needed to bring? Oh, that would be good. So I then started, fantasizing about this book. And for years, this kind of book grew in my head. And so when when the time came to write it. It was just a matter of I need to draw the next one. I need to draw the next one. I know where this picture is going to go and I know how this is going to look.

Tim Eaton: 27:02

And I, and And you had been developing your skills as far as art and your observation. Yeah. Yeah.

Jack Laws: 27:10

So that happened. And And then if you write, if you draw thousands of pictures over a short period of time, you get a lot of practice drawing. And so I got a lot better drawing during the course of this project. Then people were like, how do you draw that? And so I started, I made a book about that. Teaching it. Yep. And but not just teaching the, here's how you draw the hairs on a squirrel's tail. But what is the thinking process going behind encountering that thing in the field and how can you, I'm really interested in the area of how can we get ourselves more curious about this incredible world that's around us. How do we get ourselves to pay more attention to it. And it turns out that curiosity is something that you can train yourself to do. You can deliberately do curiosity.

Tim Eaton: 28:06

You can develop, you can cultivate curiosity. If there's one word that I would say is repeated in these, focused on home education type of families, it's the word curiosity. That, that, that is a common thread among them. And I just wanted to comment one thing, but don't lose your train of thought. I'm just seeing like people that are familiar with you and your works, I love this view that I'm getting because I love hearing about your grandmother say, because I think one of the things that you emphasize a lot is because very commonly people will say, yeah, but I stink at drawing, I would say that about myself if I'm being honest, but I love what you teach about wherever you are is where you are and don't worry. And it's like your grandmother said, yes, there are rules, but there aren't rules. And I'm just seeing basically the foundation that led to your development of these ideas. And that's really cool.

Jack Laws: 28:52

Absolutely. To me that's exactly what happens because there's two ways of teaching art. One is follow this. This algorithm that's stiltifying, like those books on here's draw 50 boats, ships, and planes and like first draw this line, and you're going to get this drawing. No, but what if you want to draw it upside down from this angle, doing this? And what if you wanted to visualize cross section through the wing? You can't get there from here. So so one is this overly very rigid thing. The other is just express yourself with the paints, but we're not going to teach you any kind of basics and fundamentals. And it turns out that there's a lots, there's a lot of tricks and hacks and things that make it easier to get this image down on that paper. And once you learn, there's oh. Why didn't anybody teach me that before?

Tim Eaton: 29:41

I've seen the evolution of my children. I, my, my daughter right now, she's actually gone for a couple of years. She's doing a mission service and but she's still to this day carries her nature journal with her everywhere she goes and she has gotten, and she does, people say oh, they have an artistic flair or whatever. And I, I would say that she does, but the development of it and the cultivation of it has come through just steady doing it. Like literally she went to university. And was constantly doing that. So I love seeing that with all of my kids, but she would, she'd be jealous that I'm talking to you right now, by the way, too, but,

Jack Laws: 30:11

When she gets back, let's set up a zoom call and

Tim Eaton: 30:13

Yeah, indeed.

Jack Laws: 30:14

But we can do that. Okay. But we have this this idea that things like drawing or playing a musical instrument, that these are gifts that some people have and some people don't. And if you're born with that, you're lucky. And if you're not born with that, I'm sorry. You're just not one of the chosen few.

Tim Eaton: 30:35

Yeah. And what would you say to that then?

Jack Laws: 30:37

I'd say that, that is, that it is, it's complete that the evidence there's evidence against that idea. The evidence is very clear that we develop the skills that we work at and it is. there's the brain you're born with, and then there's the brain you build by the work that you do through your life. And you build, so we now understand that all learning is physically changing the structure of synapses in your brain. You're physically changing the shape of your brain. And your brain is a really lazy chunk of electric meat. If it doesn't have to change, it won't because that's work.

Tim Eaton: 31:24

If you're not caught, if you're not causing those pathways to form, then they won't.

Jack Laws: 31:28

So it's if you like, you live on the edge of glacier and you know that if you, if an elk walks through a field and you're really careful, like you can get down there, you can find this track and then this track. And you can look ahead and it's like the next one should be over here. I can't find it. But the next one. Oh, here's the next one. You can carefully track that elk through the grassy field. But if that elk takes that path every day. It makes a path and you can look up on the hillside and go oh, there's an elk trail over there. That's where they come down to the water. That's where they go down. That's an elk trail. And the same thing is happening neurologically in your brain. If you take that path again and again, it becomes this well worn root in your brain that is then reinforced with neurons. And then what your brain is doing is saying Oh this drawing task that you're doing, this is challenging. Stop it. This is hard. We're having to use up calories. Did you know that your brain, it's only, what is it? It's 2 percent of your body weight and it uses 20% of all the calories that you consume. Whoa. 20%. That's one out of every five burritos. So it's this like thinking is hard. And if your brain wants to take a shortcut, it will. So first it's just saying, just stop it. Don't do things that are hard. Watch more YouTube.

Tim Eaton: 32:48

Yeah. I love your analogy of the elk trail that like is just so like that just like lights up man.

Jack Laws: 32:54

But you keep doing that. And then what happens is your brain says look, you keep showing up for this thing. I'm going to have to make it easier for myself. So I'm going to actually rearrange some neurons so that the next time you do this, it's going to be a little bit easier for me. I won't have to use as much energy to do this task.

Tim Eaton: 33:09

As I'm just thinking as a man think it's

Jack Laws: 33:11

Yes, that's absolutely right. So by, by following that path, you reinforce those neurons. You change the shape of your brain. You are built. That's the brain that you built through your work.

Tim Eaton: 33:27

I like that you're saying it in a way that is it's not just this like false encouragement no, if you keep at it, you'll be good. It's no. No. Like it's it's evidenced. It's real. If you are who you become what you think about and what you continuously and consistently do and think about. And so that actually forms. I love that. It's not just pie in the sky stuff.

Jack Laws: 33:45

Yeah, like all the people that we think about as you're like this genius, Venus and Serena Williams, they're so good at tennis.

Tim Eaton: 33:55

They're so lucky to have it. They're so natural

Jack Laws: 33:58

gift of being able to play tennis. Do you know what they do every day? They practice tennis. That's what they do every day, right? And, why is Yo Ma so good at playing? It's because he practices and practices and practices.

Tim Eaton: 34:16

That same daughter that I was talking about, she plays the cello and she's, she played at university and the comments have always been, for people that come at a church service, they'll be like, oh, your daughter's so talented. And you shake your head and you go no, if you saw what she does every, like she's consistent, I'll say that she's consistent and she has developed and cultivated talent but and sure there's natural abilities in all of us, but they're they're dormant unless they're cultivated.

Jack Laws: 34:40

We might have a tendency towards one thing or another, but that gets completely swamped out by the work that we do. And so what you've mentioned is the consistency. And in order to get that, what helps you have that is, is a mindset that accepts this idea that I'm going to change and grow through my work. And so we call this a growth mindset, as opposed to this sort of fixed mindset, I've got what I've got, a fixed mindset is just I've got what I've got, and and I see somebody who does a really good job at that. And it's Oh, that's so good. I actually have this negative. This just so good reaction because I feel threatened. I feel intimidated. But if I've got a growth mindset and realize that my brain is going to do whatever it does, because of because of my my, my work and my actions, it motivates me to do those actions again and again and again, I know that to get better at drawing, I'm going to go, I'm going to draw today. I'm going to just draw. I'm going to do, maybe I'm going to draw again and I'm going to draw again and I'm going to draw again, or I'm going to practice the cello.

Tim Eaton: 35:38

I love when people say the difference between but and and it's I struggle with drawing well, and then, you could say I struggle with drawing, but, or I struggle with drawing and I'm going to keep working at it, like it's like that evidence of mindset.

Jack Laws: 35:51

Yeah. And if you say I can't do anything, like we need to teach our kids like the power of saying yet. I can't do that yet. But that is. And then we probably got to come back into the conversation on dyslexia on this because there are some things, for instance, me being able to spell, I still am not a good speller. My 10 year old daughter is better at her multiplication tables than I am. And that's not because I I haven't tried on those things but for some reason, those wires in my little dyslexic brain, they're just, they're crossed. They're going out different directions, but what I have figured out to do in those things that I can't get through my work, I'm going to figure out a way around them. So I want to figure out exactly where they live. And I know that's a challenge for me. And so when I come up against that, instead of going Oh no, this isn't working. I'm going to ah, hello friend. I know that you're one of these things that I have challenges with, but I've got six strategies to help me get to where I want to go in a different way. And that's something that dyslexics often get really good at. We get really good at finding the back door.

Tim Eaton: 37:04

The strategizing.

Jack Laws: 37:05

We're going to figure out how to find an open window. And so we're going to have to, we might have to climb up two stories and we can get in there, but we're going to end up with the same goal.

Tim Eaton: 37:14

It sounds like the classic and I'm not trying to minimize or reduce something down, but the idea that like your weakness is your strength. I'm just thinking about like the, all that you've said so far. I, if I were to ask you directly, are you grateful for that experience in your childhood? Because had you not experienced that, do you think you would be where you're at today with all these books and this amazing skill? And I'm holding here, I've got it before me cause this is what we use all the time. The law's guide to nature, drawing and journaling. And I'm just like, are you grateful for those early challenges?

Jack Laws: 37:46

I. It was really hard to be a kid in elementary school. That's the hardest part about dyslexia is. And so if you're a parent listening to this or you're a kid, you're going through elementary school, high school, right? Here's the, here's there's good news and there's bad news. So here's the bad news. It is really hard. And I hear that. I see that I felt it too. And it is authentically really difficult. It is more difficult for you than it is for your peer groups. And that's not fair. Yeah,

Tim Eaton: 38:24

it just is.

Jack Laws: 38:25

It just is. And it's also, and right now you are at a time in your life where they give all the awards and cookies and medals for doing these rote things like being able to do, to spell all the words. I know. To do the multiplication tables quickly and all these sorts of things, all these little kind of rote tasks. That will stick us. I still read really slowly. But people who are fast computation and really good at spelling in elementary school, then their teachers look at their paper and it's all spelled right. And so they assume, Oh, this must be a smart kid because, and then if they're, if, by the way, if teachers are told that a kid is smart or they look at something like they treat them that way. They treat him that way and then the kid often rises to that expectation and that's the teacher's expecting that they see what they expect to see. So then they're also looking at the dyslexic kid going you're a troublemaker, you're a problem kid, and you're really not cut out for this. So right now your kids, or if you are a dyslexic and you're listening to this, You are going through right now. This is the most challenging, difficult part of this whole process. And I am so sorry. I know it is really painful.

Tim Eaton: 39:45

Yeah. That's your that's your expression of love. That's your sustained, compassionate attention that you're expressing to those families.

Jack Laws: 39:51

Yeah. And, And it's real and it's hard but here's the thing. Number one, it gets better. Right now you are, like, why is it that we have the hardest part at the start? That's not fair, right? But right now, in my career, there is no way I would ever give up this gift of dyslexia to be like everybody else.

Tim Eaton: 40:14

The Gift of Dyslexia. Isn't there a book called The Gift of Dyslexia? One of my, one of the interviews I did said something, I think, I don't know if that's the title, but it's definitely the phrase. The Dyslexic Advantage. Yeah,

Jack Laws: 40:25

yeah. Yeah, by Brock and Frenette Eddy.

Tim Eaton: 40:28

And what I'm thinking as you're saying that, and then I want you to is like is I just wonder how many were beat down and didn't recover?

Jack Laws: 40:35

Oh, yeah. So dyslexics, we are well. Overrepresented in the general prison population. But here's the thing. We are also overrepresented as CEOs of fortune 500 companies. I know,

Tim Eaton: 40:48

I know that.

Jack Laws: 40:49

And the reason is that. Okay, if it doesn't tear us apart and completely beat us down,

Tim Eaton: 40:56

the innovation comes to work.

Jack Laws: 40:57

Yeah. We know that we were stopped here and that doesn't mean stop. We then go okay, what's the way around that? And we're stopped there. Okay. What's the way around that? And what's the way around that? We become masters of figuring out all these other things, whether that's reading human people's faces and getting social, emotional kind of. Kind of radar about things, whether that is three dimensional problem solving that blows other people away. We figure out all these other different ways of getting where we need to go. That for other people, they've only got plan a, yeah, we have plan. You it's infinite. The number of possibilities that we can come up with is by the challenges that dyslexia is giving us, if it does not destroy us. We're developing these dyslexic superpowers.

Tim Eaton: 41:50

Do we have any understanding about what the, I don't know what the word is. I don't know if percentages, but like what, how many rise out of that and how many are, I don't know, that would take a real study, but

Jack Laws: 42:02

I, there probably is and I wanted to direct. Parents to the, there's a book called"The Dyslexic Advatage" is looking at a bunch of these sort of case studies and these sorts of things. They're actually in the process of making a movie right now about it. Really? And the, but so it gets better and here's another thing and that is that you're not alone. We tend to think when we're like I'm there and I'm having trouble with spelling. This is all on me. All my peer group can do this. You're not alone. You can There is a large community of really creative interesting dyslexics. These are the people who you want on your team. And we are talking to each other. We are in communication with each other and we're supporting each other and look for ways that we can do this. And when we feel beat down, we can rely on each other. And connecting to these networks is really powerful. I just, I want to throw this out to all. You're a listener. So if you're a parent or a dyslexic kid, and you're listening to this, and you don't think there's anybody you can talk to call me up. My contact information is on my website. And you're not alone. It's, and it's not just me. There's a huge community of people that once we get through elementary school, this whole being dyslexic thing.

Tim Eaton: 43:29

Is such a gift.

Jack Laws: 43:31

It is so much fun. You've been given this brain that can think laterally into all these nooks and crannies that other people don't go. And the kind of field guide that you develop or the little project, whatever it is that, that lights you up. It's good.

Tim Eaton: 43:49

I wish that everyone could be seeing right now because I don't know. I would venture to think that many of our listeners don't aren't necessarily familiar. While many might, especially more seasoned homeschoolers, but just to see people just have to look it up. After this episode, if they listen, they have to look up your work because it's just going to be, it's And I really appreciate that you just not only gave like true hope in a general sense, but that you actually. Offered your personal support that's really meaningful. I appreciate that. Can I ask you a question? Specific to homeschool? Parents or families that does that deal with dyslexia? I've been talking to several families that have said that they've really found that when they've brought their kids home and they're homeschooling their kids They've been able to navigate the dyslexia world in the younger years in a better way do you have any thoughts on that or why they're thinking that or Yeah probably depends on the situation, but...

Jack Laws: 44:40

Yeah just imagine if you've had 30 children and it would be harder to give one of them the special care and attention that they need.

Tim Eaton: 44:51

Yeah. That straightforward.

Jack Laws: 44:53

That that's the really difficult situation that

Tim Eaton: 44:57

And I had one parent say that like one, one of the, one of the gifts associated with dyslexia is that you're very sensitive to, to like you said, facial expressions, and you're very observant. And so because of that, You take on these you catch the nuances of classmates and of teachers. And because of that, you start to give meaning to things that aren't actually accurate. And so she, she just said because she knew that as a, she herself knew that as a dyslexic parent, and she has two children that struggle with dyslexia, she was saying, I'm not gonna, if I have the choice. I'm going to help them to not have that experience because I can help them navigate it as a parent. And it's not like I'm sheltering them from the evil world. It's more like this is a healthy way to help them prepare for what you're saying. This gets awesome. This gets, this is a gift and it's a, it's an advantage.

Jack Laws: 45:48

Absolutely. And it's hard because when you're just starting, you don't know which are the things that I can do a little bit more work with this. And then I'm going to get to the other side and it'll be part of my skillset. Okay. That just took some more reps. And now I have this new ability and which are the things that no matter how I squash and turn this around in my head that I'm not, I'm still not going to be able to do at the end of the day. And like for me now down the line, I'm okay with. I still I was over breakfast working on the six multiplication tables with my daughter and she got to six times 12 and she did six times 12 and I'm Ooh, I thought to myself okay, that's wrong. And I said give me that one again. And she did it again the same way. And I'm like, and then my older daughter said no pop, that's right. And I don't know, six times 12. Okay. And, where before I would be beating myself up what's wrong with me? Why can't I do this? And now I'm just Oh, there it is again. And I can make, that, that part of me that wants to retreat, retreat from trying. Yeah. That's a part of my brain. It's just trying to take care of me. It's a defense thing that if if I don't really try, then I haven't really failed. And when before safety, yeah, before Leroy and Ellen reached in and pulled me out in high school. I was believing the narrative that I was a dumb kid.

Tim Eaton: 47:19

And how many kids are experiencing that all over the planet?

Jack Laws: 47:23

That's because we're smart enough to know that our parents have to say nice things to us, right? And we can look around and every it's let's be scientists here. And let's look at this and analyze it. I look at it and okay. I know that there are some that everybody else can do this thing easily. I can't do this. Therefore, what is the, let's use Occam's razor here, right? Is it like the simplest explanation here? The one with The fewest kind of extra assumptions is that they're smart kids. And there are some kids that that, that aren't so smart. And guess what? I pulled the wrong straw. And so I'm over there. So I'm thinking like, it makes total sense to me that I'm dumb. And I

Tim Eaton: 48:01

love that you're offering people like just know this gets better because they do like how many people leave and just continue. How many people are adults right and continue to think that.

Jack Laws: 48:11

And but I was in that downward spiral. That's what's amazing about the attention and love that Ellen and Leroy gave me, is that I was in that spiral, giving up on myself and not trying the best that I could. And that was, that's part of it's just a defense system. And it also makes sense if this is something that I'm never gonna be able to do, like why beat my head against that? Why? Yeah. But whoa, why try? And I could, I figured out, like I could be a really good class clown. I could find, I could excel at all sorts of other things. Yes. But being academic and loving to dance with ideas. Yeah that's, that's not me. And, but I had mostly given up. And that's what blows me away is that those two chose to pay enough attention that they could see through that mask through that defense system, and reach in there and invite me back out. And yeah,

Tim Eaton: 49:15

That's so amazing. I,

Jack Laws: 49:17

I remember the, these specific moments in with each of them where this kind of crystallized for me and where I or I chose then to take a totally different tack with, you With the history teacher, he was teaching this American revolution class. And we had this debate between some of the kids were loyal to the crown and some kids were wanted to to leave England and and we'd have this debate and, so if you are one of the kids who gets to be on the sides of the separatists, right? The side of the revolutionary heroes of our past. All the good speeches have already been written for you. Give me liberty or give me death is it's like low hanging fruit. It's like right there in front of you. Okay. So that's it. But I was, and a couple of my friends, we were. The ones who were tasked with let's argue to stay with the crown. Yeah. And I got into the debate of it and started to play with this. And I had enough information that I could we destroyed them, right? And then partway through this class, I was going off about it. One of the things that England wanted to do was to ban slavery. And I took that angle and used that as this morally powerful reason to stay loyal. And so what happened is, of course, we left England and then we've had slavery for many more years. All right. And this horrible history of slavery. But so I was getting in there and that, and my, the, my Leroy was wearing this red sweater and he. And he looked over, and he took the red sweater, the red coat off his back, and put it on me, and I felt seen. I felt validated. He saw what I was doing and he saw that I had just, we had just shredded the this opposition that should have won that debate. And he saw me and this struggling kid with a bald spot. And he put his sweater on me and yeah, and from that point on I would have done anything for I wanted to show him that I was worthy Of his respect. Yes. And I also felt that I could do it. With this biology teacher, I remember I wanted to take, he taught a class on human body. It was two, two semesters. And I had a conflict and I couldn't do the first one, but I had been in this other biology class with him and he then agreed that during his lunchtime. he would meet with me privately and teach the whole class to me one on one because he thought I could do it, and so I would pour through the textbook, and I would fill the margins of it with questions that I had for him. Because in this little period of time that we had, I would pepper him with this question, like this, okay, I read this, but I don't understand this, and I read this, and I don't understand this, and I don't understand this, and I don't understand this, and I can't find this vein on this dead cat. And the but he showed up for me.

Tim Eaton: 52:39

And he obviously made you comfortable that you could approach him with all those questions.

Jack Laws: 52:42

Yeah. Yeah. And it was fun for him. He said like in the other class, no one asks any questions. Said as long as you keep asking questions like this, he said, we're going to keep doing this. Awesome. And now you think about it, like asking questions, it is part of my shtick. It's what I do. Yes. I teach people how to be more curious. Yeah. And Alan Ridley was teaching me to be curious and that he didn't want me to impress him with how much I knew. He wanted me to get into that information, then use that as the springboard for the next question. And when I would ask him questions that he didn't know the answer to, he got really excited. And he encouraged that. And so that is, that's what I want to be when I grow up.

Tim Eaton: 53:28

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. No, that is that really does come full circle. I love that. Oh thank you for sharing all that.

Jack Laws: 53:35

Can we shift for a minute like a lot of our listeners might not know even what nature journaling is. So I just thought if you could just give some background on that and what it is. And then I think we, it's interesting. One of my main questions was how did you get into this? But I felt like you, that was such a holistic complete way to describe how you got into that. And it sounds like you started really young when you were walking through the Golden Gate Park and started that. But what is nature journaling? And give people some background on that and then we'll go from there. So nature journaling First, let me tell you what it's not and I'll get into what it is. I think when most people think of it, they think of, I'm going to get a notebook, I'm going to walk through some field, I'm going to find a flower, I'm going to draw a really pretty portrait of it and a, country diary of an Edwardian lady. I'm going to have this beautiful kind of watercolor dry brush representation of the violet. And then I might in a kind of script on the bottom, put its Latin name. It can be that, but it is so much more. Nature journaling, I think is the most powerful tool that we have to open your brain and your heart to being a better observer, a better thinker, and to enhance your memory of the experiences you have. Essentially what it is you're going out in a wild, natural place and using a notebook and a piece of paper and a pencil or whatever tools you'd like to use. You're drawing pictures, making diagrams, making maps, you're writing paragraphs, you're writing poems, you're writing put little bullet points, you're spelling things any way you want, you are counting things, you're measuring things, so you're using words and pictures and numbers to encounter some phenomenon that's in front of you in as many places you possibly can. And the journal is the place that all of these ideas come together. If you go out in the field and you take a walk, your brain gets immediately overwhelmed by the complexity and the beauty of all the things that are happening around you. And you can only handle a tiny little fraction of that in your brain at a time. So the research on our human brain shows that in your brain you can hold about seven different ideas at a time. Plus or minus two. And this has been repeated in a whole bunch of different ways. So you've got this magic number seven, plus or minus two. And, but if you notice something and you put it down on a paper, you now don't have to hold it up in your electric meat anymore. And so then you get the next observation.

Tim Eaton: 56:08

Which leaves room for more observation.

Jack Laws: 56:09

That's right. So I'm going to, so it's like having. If you have more programs open on your computer slows down. Yes. But if you take some of that information and you save it off to an external drive, you now have more room on your computer. Ah, that's a good comparison. Your computer works better. And the, what we're doing is we're downloading these observations to the piece of paper. And then we look down at this piece of paper and the piece of paper can hold much more information than you can inside your head. And so now all this information that you've recorded is bouncing back at you. And this then inspires you to to ask questions. And you're writing these questions down because if you're trying to remember an interesting question, that's one of your seven plus or minus two, right? Yeah, don't use them up. Yeah, don't use them up. You've got to use that just to begin to process your way around like some part of something that you're looking at. And if you make a connection with this is like this other thing that I saw that I learned or read. This reminds me of this, whether it is something that from the science book or some piece of scripture, I tie this in this way, and this is relevant to me, right? So we have these three different activities that we do. We call it what I call a notice. That's your observations. I wonder. That's your curiosity. It reminds me of. So that's making remembering. Yep. Your memories, your what you've read, what you've you saw in a documentary, and this can be as playful or as scientific or as, as spiritual as you are feeling in the moment.

Tim Eaton: 57:42

Customized you as you make it.

Jack Laws: 57:44

Yes. It's you. And you're taking all of that and putting it down on paper. The paper then is this curator of all of these ideas and experiences. And so you're using words, you're using pictures, and you're using numbers intentionally because each one of those different modes, words, pictures, and numbers, they are. Are activating different parts of your brain and making your brain work in different ways. So a lot of your visual stuff, there's, you've got this visual cortex towards the back of your brain. A lot of your language is procerate processed in your prefrontal cortex. You've got a strip above your ears on either side that lights up in fMRIs when we are doing math. And so it appears that these different activities they're going to different brain regions. And it's not that one is better than the other which is the one that I should use? No. They're all. They're all different. So you are going to think differently if you're making a map of something than if you're writing a paragraph. And what I want to do is give my brain the biggest trampoline that it can to like play with all these different factors. So you come up before some miracle, some wonderful little moment in nature, and you start recording this in your journal. And this process allows your brain to go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And it short circuits the thing that otherwise would happen in your brain where you start looking at something and what your brain does is it says to you like, you know what, for your survival, you don't need to really look anymore. You've basically got it. You figured this out. It's okay to bounce to the next thing. And so you look at something for a while and you're like, Oh, that's neat. Think of yourself in an art museum. You walk up to the first painting and you stand there. You gawk at it. You're like, wow, that's cool. Maybe I'll read the little tag. And then you walk to the next one. That's cool. Maybe I'll read the little tag. And then you go to the next one and you, by now you have forgotten what was in that first thing. And then at the end of the day, you're like, wow, there's a lot of stuff there.

Tim Eaton: 59:47

Yeah. Yeah. But nothing in particular, but right.

Jack Laws: 59:52

But if you sat down with one and you made a little diagram and a sketch of it, and you drew a little line to this, and you asked yourself a question. That act of intention is going to be with you at the end of the day.

Tim Eaton: 1:00:03

I like that phrase, active intention.

Jack Laws: 1:00:06

Yeah, so we're being, so attention is deliberate. We have to be on purpose and deliberate. That's what's, that's what love. So what you're doing is you are falling in love with this flower, with this rock. With this cloud formation with whatever it is. And you can also do this process with things in our net, in our human built environment. You can do this with ideas. You can do this with whatever you want, but when we were looking at a natural phenomena, there are the, it is infinite.

Tim Eaton: 1:00:37

It's amplified.

Jack Laws: 1:00:39

Yes. And also when we do this in the presence of nature, There's a lot of research out that shows that, our stress hormone levels go down, our breathing slows, our heart rate slows, our being in the presence of nature is physiologically really good for us.

Tim Eaton: 1:00:57

So I had on here, one of the questions that I had been thinking, and I know this is, it seems very a reasonable connection, but like the idea of nature journaling and art. And their influence on mental health and spirituality, especially in the day we live. I heard this on a pack podcast the other day. I want to put this to you. It says it was like on a recent podcast, the guest said that the global average time spent by young children in free play, and I don't know what study this is, I'd have to find it, but is seven minutes a week in free play. So like kids could be on a team or something like that, and they're doing that, but seven minutes what do you make of that?

Jack Laws: 1:01:30

It is so it is. I'd say that's probably very accurate.

Tim Eaton: 1:01:37

That's one minute a day.

Jack Laws: 1:01:39

And you think about the amount of time that they spend on a screen on average. I don't remember the statistics on it, but every time I see it, it was worse than the last more and more. We are on our screens. And here's one of the reasons why we adults are modeling that behavior. Yeah.

Tim Eaton: 1:02:00

So we're perpetuating things that we haven't taken the time to actually learn the effects of. And so we are just unintentionally but either way it's happening where we're introducing those problems.

Jack Laws: 1:02:11

So the yeah, there's a wonderful book that I want to suggest to all of your listeners. Yes, please. It is about this. It's by Richard Louv and the book is called Last Child in the Woods. For saving our children from nature deficit disorder.

Tim Eaton: 1:02:30

Thank you very much. I have not yet done my show notes, but I'm definitely working on that. So that will, we will do show notes.

Jack Laws: 1:02:36

Put that in there, and one of the things that he points out, he shows you all the data on this. One of the best things we can do for our kids is giving them unsupervised free playtime in nature. Yes. And that is, it's totally different than being on a soccer team. There are rules and you can learn, teamwork and all those things. That's wonderful. Yeah. Great physical fitness stuff.

Tim Eaton: 1:02:58

We're talking about a different way of learning.

Jack Laws: 1:03:00

It's a totally different way of learning. And kids, they think about like when you were a kid, I'm guessing that after school there was this big block of just free time and don't come back until the lights come on. Totally. All right. And then and think about how far you were able to range from into wild places. Were there wild places that were accessible to you when you were a child?

Tim Eaton: 1:03:27

I, when you say that, my mind goes to collecting fireflies in jars. And going down to this pond where I lived in a town called Palatine, a suburb of Chicago, and we'd go to this pond in our neighborhood. And there were like these, at least I remember them as giant bullfrogs. And and and like we, yeah, like we spent, and I was a kid that was involved in lots of sports, but I, but it just doesn't happen as much anymore. It really it's,

Jack Laws: 1:03:54

It happens hardly at all. Now parents Don't want the kids to leave the living room. So it went from don't come back until the lights come on to stay in the front yard to stay in the living room. And let's give you a computer game now to entertain me late and to stimulate you and keep you there in that space so that we now know where you are because that's going to make you safer. That the statistics don't show that it's actually getting less violent out in our world here. The big dangers are now our childhood obesity. And but free play in nature, we really need this. That last child in the books, in the Woods book is A really helpful read for us as parents to motivate us to and then you're thinking like, okay, this, I guess it's gonna be good for my kids. And then you start doing this as a family oh yeah, this is what we need. This is what we need.

Tim Eaton: 1:04:54

I recently read a book called glow kids. I don't know if you're familiar with that one, but I found that one fascinating and the just the connection of the the topic of addiction and with screens and how real that is. Anyway, that, that's another book that I would recommend also. I just want to plug in there and ask you about where does Charlotte Mason play into this? So Charlotte Mason is for homeschoolers, she is a, an icon for sure. And for anyone who's not familiar with her, she was a British educator and reformer in the late 1800s and had huge impact on education. I can't believe, like I did my doctorate of education at the university of Alberta. Nobody knows her name. And I just, it's a tragedy. I just go, how is it that in education circles, she's not known? And so how does she play into this idea of observing nature, loving nature study? What would she say about this?

Jack Laws: 1:05:43

Yeah I'm also, I'm a huge Charlotte Mason fan. The I have this fantasy about, who I would love to invite to my kind of fantasy dinner party, if I could reach across time and Charlotte Mason is is on the top of my list.

Tim Eaton: 1:06:00

Yeah. Is Louis L'Amour on that list? No, it's not because have you read about him at all? And this is I don't know about Lou cause he, you remind when you talked about when I, cause I read about that before you said it on this podcast, the six years of going, so I always thought of Louie Lamour as this kind of here's another example of just ignorance, ignorance to dyslexia, ignorance to Louie Lamour. Like I thought he was just like this kind of like old, Westerners and Cowboys love to read his stuff. Then I read his book and I read, my wife read his biography and he reminded me of you. Like he walked the United States and just observed every single thing he could. And it is a fascinating life. So anyway, I would just in the little that I know about you, I would think that he would be at that table with you, but anyway, that's just food for later. That sounds like fun. Yeah. Anyway, good to have a cowboy. Yeah. Amen. The but, you were talking about Charlotte.

Jack Laws: 1:06:56

So Charlotte Mason has all her folks doing nature journaling. Charlotte Mason was doing nature journaling before it was cool.

Tim Eaton: 1:07:03

Yeah, yeah, before it was a thing.

Jack Laws: 1:07:05

Yeah, and there are all these things that I thought I figured out, and then I would, I I was invited to come to some Charlotte Mason conferences to be a speaker. And I would sit there and, I had my presentation queued up and I'd listen to the speaker before me and I'm like, all right, so I've got these three big ideas that I'm going to try to get across to you. And Charlotte Mason has said all of these in a more eloquent way.

Tim Eaton: 1:07:30

A hundred years ago!

Jack Laws: 1:07:31

A hundred years ago. What's with that? Yeah, she wants us to be out there nature journaling. She wants us to go be outside. And to play in nature, to be in nature. And she knows that is really important.

Tim Eaton: 1:07:44

Yeah, she called children born naturalists.

Jack Laws: 1:07:47

Yeah, so she was this is embedded in her stuff. So I think of my, I give people strategies to to sometimes, very often people will get into the country diary of an Edwardian lady approach to nature journaling. Yes. I think it can be much more multidimensional than that. And if that's what if you like doing that's not...

Tim Eaton: 1:08:12

yeah, that's one small aspect of it, perhaps. But you're saying there's a whole world that you might be avoiding if that's what you're just myopic about.

Jack Laws: 1:08:20

That's right. And so I encourage people to cross train in all these different ways and see what that builds for you. Yeah, Charlotte Mason's philosophy and also this whole idea of narration. Let's think about that.

Tim Eaton: 1:08:33

Yeah. You mentioned that earlier with it, you could narrate back when they read you Peter Rabbit, but then when you had to spell the title, that was different. I caught onto that when you said that, because that's a huge, that's another huge part of our homeschooling is narration is just a fundamental in our household in many households. So yeah, go ahead.

Jack Laws: 1:08:50

Think about what journaling is. Journaling is narration to yourself, but now you have all these different ways that you can narrate. It can be with words, it can be visually, it can be quantitative, right? You're taking, you're observing this phenomenon before you. And what's, what, if you're not going to be narrating, if you're not going to be journaling, it just comes into your brain and blasts out the back while you're trying to keep a hold of the latest seven plus or minus two, right? But if you, in order to journal, it has to come in, be processed, chosen and deliberately put back out delivered onto that page. So the intersection between nature journaling and narration is very, very tight.

Tim Eaton: 1:09:42

Yeah. I like how you're, I like how you're weaving those together. That makes sense. You're you're putting out what has been stored and you're, and what I like about it also is there's not like crazy rules to it. And and I like that too, when you're narrating I love to hear my kids when they were five years old until they're in high school and they're, they're, it just evolves.

Jack Laws: 1:10:01

Yeah. And when I hear people narrate who have practiced it again, it sees you like, Oh, this is what happens, how we develop skills by repetition. They can, they are paying so much more attention when they're reading and then they've got so much more to to bring out those are that whole skill set is something that you can apply in a billion different places in the rest of the world and it doesn't just apply to reading the three musketeers. Yeah. Yeah. It is to it's to thinking, to digesting, to taking in and then being a maker, putting back out into the world.

Tim Eaton: 1:10:38

So you mentioned like that you're, when you're talking to people about your or like you said, you've been to those Charlotte Mason. So are, is, am I accurate to say that the, or is your large, is the largest portion of your audience homeschool families?

Jack Laws: 1:10:51

I don't know. I don't know. There, there are several different parts. There are formal classroom teachers who are really into this form of nature journaling. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yes. There's a very active homeschool community and Charlotte Mason style programs. are really adopting these approaches.

Tim Eaton: 1:11:09

So it's education at all all over the place?

Jack Laws: 1:11:12

But also there is there's a lot of adults who don't have Who, whose kids have gone on and grown up and they retired and they're now they're picking up nature journaling. So there's lots of people coming at it from different angles. What I do tend to see is then there's this sort of in the, you look at the demographic of nature journaling. I think it's interesting. What I see is I see a lot of kids doing it both in formal classrooms and and with homeschool families. I see people on the, and then the parents in the homeschool families and these educators are also doing it. And then I see older retired people, but it's interesting that few kind of mid career adults seem to pick it up and have wondered about this for a while. Yeah. It is this, you see the same pattern with people learning a musical instrument. Or learning a foreign language that it's exactly the same sort of demographic pattern. I think part of that may be that mid career we're either so busy and focused on what just the next thing that I need to do. That taking on something else feels like an externality that I don't have time for.

Tim Eaton: 1:12:36

It's overwhelming.

Jack Laws: 1:12:37

It's overwhelming. And I think another piece of it is that very often, as adults, we are identifying ourselves by the things that we are competent at already.

Tim Eaton: 1:12:52

And that's what you mentioned earlier, where you almost, and you say I've reached this level, and so I don't have the capacity to go more, right? It's what you were saying about your teacher, that he had observed you and based on his understanding at that point, he could only help you up to that, so there was a problem with you. Instead of being like, I have the humility to keep learning. Yeah, that's that. I think that is accurate. I think that does describe so many of us that are mid point.

Jack Laws: 1:13:17

And Then we retire and we gotta be like, Oh, I guess I've got the rest of my life here. What am I going to do? I guess I'm gonna learn something new. And then all of a sudden we start learning new things. And we realized we could have done this all along. And so wherever you are, you can start. And these are skills that will come to you, and if you do it, it will come.

Tim Eaton: 1:13:36

Yeah, it's good for me to hear this. I, one of the questions that you've already answered, but I had down, I was just, I'm just glancing at a few questions I had is you know what you've covered this thoroughly, but why would you tell people not only to spend regular time in nature, but to journal it? And you've said so much about that. When I think of experiences I've had here's an experience. I was in Kimberly BC with my family, which we love to frequent. We love that area. It's beautiful. Have you been, no, I never have. It's amazing. But but we were, we watched this, we were in the in the place where we were staying at Airbnb and we were watching this little video. I forget who put it out, but it was basically. Just this young fellow. And he was in Washington, DC, very busy area. And he was the idea of the video was, Hey, right around you pick, just roll over rocks and roll over leaves and all these things. And you're going to be fascinated with what's there. And so after we watched it, we just said, let's go do this. So we went out and it's a very. Nature esque place. And we started doing that. We started it was particularly rocks. We were by water and we were and we found I'm not kidding that the kids spent the entire day. We had no schedule. We had no time constraints and that just sticks out to me. And I wouldn't say that's like my typical life, and. And why isn't it right? Is the question that you might ask him. Why is it not my typical life? Cause I'm busy, man. I got, I'm overscheduled and I've got all these things that are more important than than spending time in nature.

Jack Laws: 1:14:58

But that day you stepped out together and you pulled back the curtain a little bit. On this infinitely complex, beautiful world that is around us every moment, we usually don't

Tim Eaton: 1:15:13

see, no, we pass right by it,

Jack Laws: 1:15:16

we pass right by it because we are being practical, efficient things that this is for our survival. This is a useful mentality, but we have to be intentional to pull back that curtain. The infinite complexity and beauty of the world. is waiting just on the other side of the point where you usually stop paying attention.

Tim Eaton: 1:15:40

Yeah, I need to clip that.

Jack Laws: 1:15:42

That's accessible to us in every moment. And what we need to do is live our life in a way that lets us be open to and to see these wonders that this is happening around us. All the time and initially when we look for something beautiful, we're looking for capital B beauty. So there's a rainbow and a waterfall and an eagle flying by

Tim Eaton: 1:16:08

and no, the bigger, the more dramatic that's what we're going to go like, Oh wow.

Jack Laws: 1:16:12

And then we take a selfie with it and then we turn our back to it and we're on our way. Yeah. Or some little. Like some incredible Oh, this is so weird, super mystery that you come across and then we go Oh, that's weird. We get a little bit curious about it until we come up with one idea that might be a plausible answer. And when they say that must be it, and then we're out. So part of what you're doing with nature journaling is you're also bringing down your threshold. To what makes you go or what makes you go. So we're going to lower the level and start to...

Tim Eaton: 1:16:48

slow down.

Jack Laws: 1:16:50

Yeah, we slow down and then we realize there's beauties that are these little micro beauties that are around us every time, even if we're in the middle of the city and where these little Many mysteries that are around us all the time and what we have to do is live our life in a way that lets us encounter those. I've got one right here that I've been geeking out with recently. This was, I I have a tomato.

Tim Eaton: 1:17:13

Yeah, I can see it.

Jack Laws: 1:17:15

On our counter in a sunbeam and the seeds inside of it are bursting.

Tim Eaton: 1:17:21

Yeah, that's fascinating.

Jack Laws: 1:17:24

And, it's this wonderful little mystery. And so now I'm sketching this every couple of days and watching what happens to it as it kind of changes.

Tim Eaton: 1:17:32

And how old is that tomato?

Jack Laws: 1:17:35

I don't know how long was it, what was the time from when it was picked to when I got it? I've had it for about a month. And so it sat unloved and on my counter and then it decided to do this. It decided to do this. And it had a friend who looked rather similar and that one got cut open and I took apart inside, but this one, I'm not opening it up. My daughter has named it Bob and we're watching how it changes. And it's just

Tim Eaton: 1:18:04

see that black spot there.

Jack Laws: 1:18:06

What's up with, with that, what is happening here? We realize that in this little tomato, there's all sorts of tomato behavior that I absolutely did not expect. I have in my head I think I know tomatoes. My entire life, I cooked with them. I cooked with them tonight. But this tomato is behaving in a way that, it's puzzling and it'd be so easy to go Oh no, it's sprouting and throw it out. Yeah. Chuck that thing. There's a mystery right here in front of me if I choose to open up to it. And this is going to teach me something that I never knew about tomatoes.

Tim Eaton: 1:18:38

Yeah. You didn't know that prior. I read an article recently that talked about the it was basically saying this, and this was in a religious context, but it was saying. It was saying, we look at the technology that is advanced to be able to heal the human hand, for example and the point of the article was, and you could have used any example, the eye, the ear, whatever. And they said, we're so fascinated by the miracle of technology and what it can do to heal the hand. But what about the hand? Just look at the hand. Ah, yes. It's unbelievable to think about that way. And this article was saying all these things denote there is a God. And and that was the frame that this individual was writing from, but yeah, but it hit me the idea that like, if I could almost freak myself out. I've done that in the mirror when I look at my eye, but when I look at my hand and I'm going, I actually had a class do that today, I had them look at their hand and I had them. Have their brain very consciously tell them what finger and I had him say it out loud. I say, tell them, tell me what finger you're going to put down. And I said, Isn't that amazing? Like your finger just did what you're and it was just so fun to go. Oh, yeah, like we're all what or like I've said to my kids constantly. I'll be where I drive home is on like you said on the outskirts of a national park. And when I look up and I see the mountains in the background and I see this ball in the sky stuck up there and we call it the moon and I'm like, we're just like, we're just like Okay with this like that. There's just you know, and I see it becomes mundane but if I allow myself to think about it, I'm in wonder.

Jack Laws: 1:20:11

Yeah, and the more that we understand these things scientifically it just helps us realize how much more we don't know Yeah, so the things that have been understood that we understand the most are the things that then have the biggest kind of ort cloud of questions around them. Because you start peeling beneath the surface and this answer begets 20 more mysteries. And there's an interesting phenomenon. I think you're that you're alluding to here called the illusion of explanatory depth. And it's a really fun thing to geek out on that most of us, we look at something like just try to do this. Now, if you are at home, what I would like you to do is to draw a bicycle and turn it into a little diagram explaining how it works. And you start to do this and you realize I've seen bicycles. I ride them. I do this all the time. I can change my tire and I have the subjective feeling that I know how a bicycle works. You have the subjective feeling that you know how a toilet works, but we scratch beneath the hood just a little bit and we realized I have just a...

Tim Eaton: 1:21:17

primary

Jack Laws: 1:21:19

primary, I go a little bit further and I'm very quickly at the point where I go and

Tim Eaton: 1:21:25

I got nothing.

Jack Laws: 1:21:26

I don't know. Subjective feeling on all these things around us that we know and we don't

Tim Eaton: 1:21:33

Yeah. If, as you say that, I'm like, I'm doing that on my little pad right now. And I seriously do not know what to do from the tires. I'm from the wheels. And it's because like you're saying, if I had slowed down a hundred thousand times and drawn a bike and looked at it and had put that out of my brain onto paper. I would be able to replicate that right now, but I am struggling.

Jack Laws: 1:21:55

Yeah. So if you're listening to this, really try it right now, draw a bicycle. It will freak you out, right? And it's not you. This is all of us. We are all going around with this illusion of understanding things around us. Oh, very seldom get beneath the surface enough to realize I don't get it.

Tim Eaton: 1:22:16

Is that a book illusion of explanatory depth? Is that a concept? It's

Jack Laws: 1:22:20

a, it's an area of scientific research. And so you can do a Google scholar search for illusion of explanatory depth. You bet. And all these different sorts of articles come up. And with this, they find all sorts of things like, like right now the United States Is extremely politically divided. Yeah. Don't worry, what I'm about to say, I'm not going to get political. Okay. But here's the interesting thing. You can take some partisan position and you can say to somebody we're going to give you this much money. How much of this money would you like to donate to this? And how much do you understand it? And people will say, I understand this thing very well. And I'm going to give this big chunk of money. To support this cause that supports whatever I'm feeling this is done people on the right and the left and then you say, okay, that's cool. So explain to me how it works. And then the people begin to explain it to, and as we try to explain it, we realize in all these things that we thought we knew and we understood that we have no clue, it's not just the bicycle. It's about all these things around us. And then we ask people to, you have, you ask people to say, how much do you understand this before they try to explain it, they will give themselves a very high rating, and then they try to explain it. They give themselves a lower rating and then how sure are you about this? They give themselves a much lower rating and how much money would you be willing to donate towards that? They give less because they're now realizing that these positions that we have, these partisan positions on the right and the left, so yes, those people who disagree with you, they are doing this. Aren't they silly? Here's the scary thing. We are too. I am too. And, but we carry around these illusions of understanding because these are the illusions that are carried by our kind of primary identity group. So we don't question it, but we go a little bit, but we have, but we think we do.

Tim Eaton: 1:24:12

We think we do. As you're saying that's a perfect example to illustrate the principle because the bike was great, but that is a great one because cause you do, you have these strong feelings and they're usually emotionally charged because we've been marketed to that way and whatever else. And I'm not trying to...

Jack Laws: 1:24:29

your computer has figured out an algorithm to give you a whole bunch more videos that will push you further in the direction of what you're already searching for. Yeah. And we, so I'm over there in my little bubble and I think I get it and then I get under the hood. And I. Yeah. Yeah. The and it's humbling and we can handle that in, in a couple of different ways. One is just to double down and ignore it. And the other is to open ourselves up to humility and to say, I'm not as sure as I thought I was. And isn't it? Might maybe it is useful to listen more. Yes, right?

Tim Eaton: 1:25:13

And one thing I would just want to highlight there because that using that example and I agree like I Haven't for I don't want to get into political but I love what you're saying about that because when you talk about nature nature has its biases, but When you go to nature, you can, it is a valid resource of information. Yes. Whereas I'm at a point where I'm very much so many people in North America where I don't know where to get valid information but what's reassuring is that I can Have a clear principle. I can have a clear principle from which, which to operate. And I love that idea. Illusion of explanatory depth. I can at least explore a principle as deeply as I can. And then to the best of my ability, how does that align with this principle in nature, you can do that with unadulterated and that's a beautiful thing. Like it's unskewed and it's and it is no respecter of persons. And so I can just observe and then record, and then based on that, draw my own conclusions and feel good about that. One thing that we have talked about on this podcast. With with many of my interviews so far is this idea that if you were to start homeschooling, there's tons of people looking into homeschooling right now. And I, and one of the things that we say is if you were to start homeschooling, instead of trying to just go, okay, what do they do at the school and then bring that home, we're trying to help people see what would you do if you just had your, if Jack has his two daughters, or if anybody has their family members and, or their children, and they say, what would, if I was just left my own devices and I wasn't trying to be dependent on all these other things based on the principles that I've learned, what would I do to teach my children? What would I do to create a lifestyle? And then I think you could get pretty far. Just by exploring that, slowing down, not rushed, getting outside, reading as much as you wanted, and then just formulate your own thing. Go deep on it. Anyway.

Jack Laws: 1:27:11

That's how Charlotte Mason started. She started with a bunch of those same things let's read a lot of different stuff. Yes. Let's figure out a way to reflect on that more. Let's spread a piece. Let's get outside and pay attention. And I like what you're saying about nature being this sort of. This infinite source of information, then you can use that to like to look at, okay, here's a claim and here's the, I'm trying to figure something out in the forest. And what is the strength of the evidence for this claim? Yes. And in our kind of grownup world, we have disassociated evidence from the strength to which we support a claim. And epistemologically, that is really interesting. In, in an ideal world, here's what I try to do here. And I'm gonna put an emphasis on the try because I'm not there yet. I would like to be in a state where I'm going to support any claim in proportion to the strength of the evidence for it. And it's so hard to do.

Tim Eaton: 1:28:19

That's why you said you're going to try.

Jack Laws: 1:28:20

That's right. So That that's my goal. And so part of that is me realizing that a bunch of the stuff that I think in my head, it's not based on evidence. And it came from my peer group. It came from things that my parents said or influential teachers or my pastor or different sorts of sources of information.

Tim Eaton: 1:28:41

And people that you love. And that's why you take it to heart and you respect them. And if you're a history teacher and your biology teacher, you're going to take that to heart because they had meaning. But I like what you're saying, but if we were intentional. This phrase of scales falling from our eyes, we, we could allow scales to fall from our eyes more commonly if we just grappled with it more instead of took a stance, before we actually considered the angles and we, we could say, like you said, the word yet another way to use that. Is to say this, so far, like this is what I love that. I'm gonna write that down. It's what science is. Isn't science, the discovery of truth so far.

Jack Laws: 1:29:24

That's right. And it's and or not, I wouldn't even say truth. Cause I don't think even, I don't think science is in the truth business. I think science is about finding a useful explanation for the evidence that we currently have on hand.

Tim Eaton: 1:29:38

Yeah, good.

Jack Laws: 1:29:39

And it may be true, right?

Tim Eaton: 1:29:42

Yeah, we're pursuing, we're after something.

Jack Laws: 1:29:44

Yeah, we're after and we're slowly getting closer to something. But any kind of claim that we make, it's provisional. Because it's based on, here's the evidence that I'm basing this on, and if that landscape of the evidence changes, I need to be willing to change myself. So if I, as you say, plant my flag on the claim, and then the evidence changes, I'm scared and I'm defensive. Yes. But if I plant my flag on the process.

Tim Eaton: 1:30:12

And the principle.

Jack Laws: 1:30:13

And the principle, yes of, I'm going to, I'm going to be searching and I'm hoping that by the end of my life, I'm going to be a little bit closer. Yeah, little bit closer to an accurate sort of understanding of reality around me knowing that I will never truly get there.

Tim Eaton: 1:30:31

And that's why you said humility.

Jack Laws: 1:30:32

Yeah, and I'm currently wrong about a bunch of stuff and the funny thing is that the things that I'm wrong about feel just the same as the things that I'm more right about. Well said. And because I can't tell those, I need to go forward in humility and when I encounter somebody who has a different frame of mind or thinks differently than I do, they're not my enemy. They're not a threat. They are my next opportunity to perhaps change my mind.

Tim Eaton: 1:31:01

Absolutely. And to to develop whatever that, whatever that theory or that thought is even more, this is only going to add to that. If we look at it, like you said, it's a, that's a growth mindset. That's not fixed mindset. So go ahead.

Jack Laws: 1:31:16

So in that some of the people who can be our biggest assets are people who disagree with us, but currently, at least in the States. People are, they've de-friended all their, all the people who they knew who were in a different political party. Yes, I know. We collect in little groups of people who will all nod to the same things. And that gives us a subjective feeling of being more right. But I think it is dangerous to us as... Thinkers.

Tim Eaton: 1:31:47

Yes. Yeah. It's limiting.

Jack Laws: 1:31:49

It's limiting. And there is so much, and also then what we try to, we tend to do is we either then think that those people that are, that have a different perspective than I do, they're either evil. We're stupid or misinformed.

Tim Eaton: 1:32:08

And, that really becomes personal to you because isn't that's almost like your experience growing up. It's like you had these conclusions that were drawn because of the way that you were, it's really, it's coming full circle. One, one observation I'm making is about, I'm learning about myself right now. My, my decision with my spouse to, to home educate our kids. I had all these misconceptions and ideas and just. Ideas about what it was like and I really had to do what you're what you just described and that's why it was resonating with me because I know it maybe it's not for everybody and to each his or her own but for me like I just would have never been open to that if my wife wasn't asking the questions and sometimes I cringe at myself because It's really helped me to open my mind to a different way of thinking, because I've always been a very conventional, yeah, but if my wife asked me, so why do you want to send our kids to school? And I'm just going what do you mean? What else do you do? And so I wish I had that dyslexic way of thinking of going, because there's, This is close to me. I can now have all these other things. I'm just too conventional in my thinking. And so I like to challenge those things because I feel like it's led to something that's been beautiful for my family. And again, to each his or her own, but there are principles. There are principles that hold. In any educational setting that people just have to consider and just know the options and I love that. I love all that you said there. That was great. Now I'm just cognizant of your time. You tell me, but I'm having so much fun talking. Okay. Okay. Let's rock on.

Jack Laws: 1:33:36

So I want to pick up on a thread that you had thinking about this decision to make to homeschool your family. Yes. So that is, what a difficult decision to make for most parents, like the idea that somebody else is going to make all those millions of micro decisions about how to educate your child, that somebody else is going to handle that for you. It's very comforting and it's it's the easy button. And if. Your child has learning challenges, then it's their problem, right? Yeah. It is the decision to homeschool your child, and I agree with you, like different people are going to have

Tim Eaton: 1:34:25

Circumstances are so subjective.

Jack Laws: 1:34:27

Circumstances are so across the board, but should you choose to do it and should you be able to do it? What? I just think of it as such a brave decision, such a compassionate decision that you, when you're wondering about these things, I've got a child who's dyslexic and then you feel like this is all on your shoulders. And if only I, I had the right answer but it's now all on you to make the right call. What a weight. And I think it just takes such tremendous courage to stand up to that. And I think of the homeschooling parent as somebody who's willing to stand in the fire and it's hard and it's scary. But at the end of the day, it's going to be okay. Yes, you know your kid you're a dyslexic kid They're gonna be okay Because you would not be that here giving this much attention if you were not based in love It requires so much love to do this and if that child is coming from a loving home you are giving them the base to stand upon.

Tim Eaton: 1:35:50

Yeah, it works out. It's gonna work out. And one thing I would say, Jack, to that also is one thing that we're really trying to help people because we like, and I say we, because it's like, this is totally, Sarah and I together, but but, and homeschoolers in general, but like what we are specifically trying to help, especially new homeschoolers, but all homeschoolers to know is, there is a conception that it's all on you. And in a sense it is because you've assumed the primary role of their education. But what we're trying to help people understand is there are so much there is. In fact, one of my episodes that's coming up is my mother in law who is an amazing grandmother who has added to my children's education in a myriad ways. But is the idea of the principle of mint mentorship. And outsourcing in, in very proactive, intentional ways that can help you when you have for example, I just interviewed a family in Texas whose child or has a child with dyslexia and the way that they've outsourced that in a very proactive parental leading way is impressive. And again, another family is going to do it differently, but that you're not alone. And that you really, you've taken on that. But there are so many resources, and I don't even, like I've been saying on my podcast, I don't really love the term homeschooling. Basically, we're just raising good humans. That's what we're trying to do and contributing humans. And we need help from all over the place. And the community.

Jack Laws: 1:37:12

The community you there, there is community that is here to support you. Excellent. And that that reaching out to that community. You're going to find that they are, they're there, they're active, they're thinking about the same things that you are doing. They are doing so very often in a joyous, loving way. Yes. When you get a critical mass of you together. So And so to intentionally look for those networks and you will find yourself feeling stronger, more support. There's so much support out there. I absolutely.

Tim Eaton: 1:37:50

This podcast you, you reached out, I was just so impressed that you even said, contact me personally with all that you have going on and to, to a dyslexic parent, like that means something. And so it's not, and so it's, like I said, I don't even love the idea because I don't care if a kid's in this school or that school or homeschooled or whatever that we're talking about community and branching out to people at, in, in all different facets of life. And you illustrated that in this podcast, you said, Hey, if you're somebody who's struggling with this, you can call me that's a huge thing.

Jack Laws: 1:38:20

Yeah. And I'll tell you when I've been to some of these Charlotte Mason conferences, the most wonderful discussions in, in the, you go to these ones where they people sit around in the evening and people just start talking. Yeah. Just, such. a thoughtful, intentional, powerful, inspirational community. You and I really want to encourage parents to to reach out to these networks. And I the Charlotte Mason one is the one that I know the best. But and so I can't really speak for the others, but what I've seen in there, just so much fun. And there's laughter there's music, there's really deep inquiry and introspection and people looking for, let's, and not taking anything as dogma and looking at like, how do we move this. This board and let's figure out these best practices together and how we learn to make this move. It's,

Tim Eaton: 1:39:20

it's beautiful. Yeah. I really appreciate that. And again I like for me, I, if I could help people just see that this, we're talking about just like Charlotte Mason did, we're talking about principles of learning and living and education. I don't even want to give it a title. I just want to say, and what you bring to the table. Like when I think of kids, when I think of homeschool families, for example, or any family for that matter, thinking of, man what do I want my kids to learn? And then I consider like of all the topics and subjects. And then I think of what you might say to that, as far as what is the place of being in nature and journaling and what you talked about as far as like the development of the brain and the development of the soul. I just can't see that wouldn't be a main topic. I just, it's just so beautiful and and in so many ways and healing and mental health. And I don't know, we could go on and on, but that's right. Oh this has been an amazing conversation. So much fun. Is there I think we have to do a round two at some point, but I,

Jack Laws: 1:40:21

I've enjoyed bouncing around ideas with you so much. Anytime you want to call me up and say, Hey, let's do this again for part two. I'm totally game. Okay. We're happy to come here and do this. And I'm so glad that you are creating these resources and helping connect people. The community. That grows up around nature journaling is one is such an incredible resource and such an asset to people are doing it. And you help people make those connections. I really respect that. And thank you for the work that you're doing to to help us raise this next generation of citizens of humans of curious, joyful youth. This makes a difference. Thank you for the work that you're doing to help ignite that bar.

Tim Eaton: 1:41:10

Thank you so much. I just want to, that was a great place to end right there. I was beautifully said, where do you like to tell people to find you and connect with you?

Jack Laws: 1:41:18

I Put a bunch of resources on my website, which is johnmuirlaws. com and no paywall, it's all free. And so a bunch of those things are like drawing classes discussion. I've got several different discussion groups going out. We've got a discussion group with educators. People can join in on that. We meet every week and discuss different topics and ideas as relates to nature journaling and education. We've got a book club earlier this evening. I was at our nature journal book club meeting and there's again There's no payroll for any of this if you want to get involved you can excellent out there also i've just started a non profit organization called the wild wondered foundation that is that helps people connect with the world, through nature journaling And you can find that at wild wonder. org. There, you'll also find a community calendar of events all over the globe, be able to find a nature journal club that's in your area. A lot of homeschoolers are also getting together, forming their own nature journal clubs. Yes. And that's fun. Cause you start doing this, you do it by yourself. It's fun. You do it with your family. It's even more fun. You got to get a group of people together and it's an absolute howl.

Tim Eaton: 1:42:28

Cool. Hey, thank you so much. I appreciate that. I'll stop the recording, and then we'll say farewell. So thank you again. Appreciate it.

Jack Laws: 1:42:37

Thank you so much.

Tim Eaton: 1:42:40

That wraps up another edition of this golden hour podcast. If you haven't done so already, I would totally appreciate it. If you would take a minute and give us a review in Apple podcasts or Spotify, it helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you much. Please consider sharing this show with friends and family members that you think would get something out of it. And thank you for listening and for your support. I'm your host, Tim Eaton. Until next time, remember to cherish this golden hour with your children and family.