Wachstumshormone

Feb

1

Lessons for teaching in the environment and community

Filed Under Environmental Education, Environmental Literacy, Inquiry, Jim Martin, Questioning strategies, Science | Leave a Comment

“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 10: Assimilation

When the world outside becomes the world inside

by Jim Martin, CLEARING guest writer

brainStarting in the world outside our skin, our personal tegumental boundary, I have claimed, is the best way to learn. By ‘learn,’ I mean integrate new material into old understandings so that they become a part of you. Part of you because they begin their synaptic lives with you by adding protein to the synapses they innervate, piles of stones along a new path, so they can find their way again. Becoming protein within you, they are you, a part of yourself that will travel with you wherever you go.

An enchanting thought, that, one that all teachers could give to their students in every class they teach. Learning for understanding, carried through each person’s life. I would think that thought would drive education, but it doesn’t. Even so, I’d like to talk about it for a bit.

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jimphotocroppedThis is the tenth 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.

Dec

21

Lessons for teaching in the environment and community

Filed Under Blogs, Environmental Education, Inquiry, Jim Martin, Place-based Education, Questioning strategies, Schoolyard Classroom, Science | Leave a Comment

“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 6: The Easy Part

by Jim Martin, CLEARING guest writer

fox sparrowWe’ve been exploring science inquiry, starting with doing a casual observation in a natural area. In the last blog, I found an inquiry question. What did it tell me to do? I discovered how straightforward the Investigative Design is when it is built upon a clean inquiry question. The inquiry question I finally chose was, Where in trees do Fox Sparrows spend most time? That tells me what to do. Here are the steps it will take me to answer it.

ALERT: You need to be a CLEARING subscriber to read the rest of this article. (See box in right sidebar)
(enter password then hit return on your keyboard for best results)

This is the sixth 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.

Oct

7

Filed Under Activities, Carol Malnor, Children's Literature, Environmental Literacy, Language arts, Outdoor education, Programs, Questioning strategies, Schoolyard Classroom | Leave a Comment

naturetrail-w-title

One of my favorite nature quotations comes from the Japanese conservationist Tanaka Shozu who said, “The question of rivers is not a question of rivers, but of the human heart.”

I wanted to touch the hearts of my middle school students with the beauty of nature as well as inspire them to take care of the local environment. I found the perfect spot for a nature experience less than an hour away from our school campus in the Sierra Nevada. Read more

May

31

The Art of Mentoring: Rekindling Appreciation of Nature

Filed Under Outdoor education, Questioning strategies, wilderness | Leave a Comment

mentoringwithnotebookFor the questioning mind, learning never concludes because it is an endless journey with an infinite number of destinations…

by Chris Helander
Head Instructor
Coyote’s Path Wilderness School
(reprinted from The Best of CLEARING)

There are many people who say our current model for learning is ineffectual. Parents and educators are asking “how do you reach young people who seem apathetic and unmotivated to learn?” In old cultures before schools, books, and grades, people learned by being mentored. Using stories, ceremony, games, and survival skills everyone and everything was a teacher. In the modern model of education, learning is force fed, sitting in chairs, listening to an adult spouting out information to be memorized. Modern children learning this way are trained to get their knowledge by memorization of someone else’s knowledge. They do not learn how to develop the questioning mind or follow their hearts to learn from their own experiences.

Read the rest of this article…

Mar

11

Developing Questioning Strategies: Learning to become a science teacher

Filed Under Jim Martin, Questioning strategies, Schoolyard Classroom, Science | Leave a Comment

“All anyone really needs is a coal bin and a friend.”


KidswithfungiBy Jim Martin

A storm of children, shouts, swirling bodies, and dust swept me out of the yard. Up the street, neighborhood kids whirled around some coal bins between two wartime shipyard houses. I can see and hear them now, the kids, a bicycle, the coal bins, the houses and trees behind them, the noise. Propelled toward them by their intense energy, I became madly aware that they were riding a bicycle. I wanted to ride too. This was 1947; kids didn’t have bikes during the war, and few had them now, two years after the armistice.

Nor were there such things as training wheels. Getting onto a 26-inch bike with a running start was so intimidating that I had shrunk from attempting it. But this day was different. Kids were riding the bike by balancing themselves between two coal bins which were set about three feet apart, making a narrow chute. They would put the bike in the chute, climb onto a coal bin, lower themselves onto the pedals, scoot out to the edge of the bin, push off, and ride! This, I saw so clearly, I could do.

I ran up the street and begged for a turn, mounted, scooted out, pushed off and rode in a large circle in the driveway, lost my balance, fell sideways, caught myself and the bike before we both fell to the ground, stood up and wheeled it to the next kid in line. I had done it! You could, too, with a little help from a coal bin and encouragement from your friends.

The coal bin gave me just that bit of support and encouragement that I had lacked. With it, riding a 26-inch bicycle became something I could do. And I did.
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