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“Lessons for Teaching in the Environment and Community” is a regular series that explores how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula.

Part 8: Where is Curriculum?

by Jim Martin, CLEARING guest writer

We’ve been talking about our ‘Locus of Control,’ the place where the authority for what we do lies. That authority can be outside ourselves, or within. What determines where we find it? Nothing more than experience.

By experience, I mean having done something in a way that lets me understand it once and for all. Most teacher inservices introduce us to new learnings, then let us go, as if we had mastered it. Many field trips do the same; we go out, experience something neat and invigorating, then return to our classroom not understanding it well enough to incorporate into our curriculum. I think we might do well to revisit environmental education, and its partner, K-12 education.

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jimphotocroppedThis is the eighth installment of “Teaching in the Environment,” a new, regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin that explores how environmental educators can help classroom teachers get away from the pressure to teach to the standardized tests,  and how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula. See the other installments here.