Joshua Korenblat asks how educators might present today’s biodiversity crisis in a way that moves beyond statistics and predictions to a mode of knowing that is more deeply felt. He presents a teaching philosophy for biodiversity rooted in close relationship, compassion, attentive care, and Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. Many conservation efforts today rely on compassion or outrage, which are limited sources of energy, or enforce compliance through fear. Instead, we need a pedagogical motivation that is expansive and renewable: wonder. Wonder guides us beyond narrow self-interest and complements reason with imagination. Korenblat’s learners stay in relationship with the more-than-human world (Abram) via nature journaling. Using pictures, words, and numbers, students inquire into the umwelt or worldview of other creatures. This pedagogy acknowledges that the biodiversity crisis is too vast to leave to experts. Educators can, instead, nurture an amateur understanding using inspirational models from Goethe’s tender empiricism and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. Korenblat’s approach operates in the spirit of the original meaning of the word amateur: one who acts from innate love. Educators can build a foundation for sustainability within the individual learner, a sense of responsibility to others sustained by wonder and intimate knowledge.