• 2011 CLEARING Compendium

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  Click to read the 2011 CLEARING Compendium!

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• Lessons for Teaching in the Community and Environment

  
  This new, regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin explores how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula.
  Read series here

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• NEW! Resources for the Classroom

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  Reviews of selected classroom EE resources by graduate students at Washington State University.

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  Biomes

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  Forests

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  Washington History and Salmon

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  Oceans and Aquatic Environments

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  Insects

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  Food Chains

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• THE BEST OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

  
  Learn the secrets of successful environmental education programs! Read the perspectives and opinions of experienced teachers! Discover new ideas that can turn your classroom into an innovative and dynamic hub of place-based learning! The Best of Clearing is full of fresh ideas and old wisdom to help you create powerful learning experiences for your students.
  
  Learn more and buy it today!

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• ENVIRONMENTAL LITERACY and the CLEARING COMPENDIUM

  
  Attention: Clearing is currently compiling case studies that demonstrate what ideal school-based environmental literacy programs & activities can look like. These case studies will help teachers understand how to more effectively integrate environmental literacy into their classrooms, and will be featured in the 2011 Clearing Compendium published this fall!
  
  Tell us about a model program that you think deserves recognition!
  
  Read the 2010 edition here!
  

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• Guest Writers: Voices of the PNW

  Jessica Levine, Eckstein Middle School,
  Seattle, Washington

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  Gregory Smith,
  Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon
  

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  Harmony Roll,
  Taiga Teacher, Anchorage, Alaska

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  Lindsay Huettman,
  Wilderness Awareness School

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  Megan McGinty, North Cascades Institute

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  Jim Martin,
  Retired Science Educator, Vancouver WA
  

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• Donate to support CLEARING!

  
  

  If you are a fan of CLEARING, or even if you just like it a little, you can help us keep this journal going by making a small donation. Thank you for your support. It is really appreciated!

  
  

  

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• INTERVIEWS WITH CONSERVATIONISTS

  
  What is the link between conservation and environmental education? Chris Gertschen, founder and former director of the Sawtooth Science Institute, talks to the leaders of conservation in the west to get their perspectives on the issue.
  Read the interviews here
  

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• K-12 Activity of the Day

  
  Sounds and ColorsEnvironmental Studies—Grades 6-12
  In a forest, meadow, marsh or park, sit or lie down on your back with both fists held up in the air. Every time you hear a new bird song lift one finger. This is a wonderful way to become aware of the sounds (and the stillness) of nature. For fun see if you can count to 10 without hearing a bird song. Vary the game by listening for general animal sounds - or for any sounds at all, like wind in the grass, falling leaves, rushing water. See if you can follow the wind as it flows through the forest. See how many colors you can see in front of you without moving from where you are standing.
  —Reprinted from a past issue of CLEARING
  
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ne 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

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For 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…

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

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The discs have been burned, and the packaging has been assembled, and the first batch of CD-ROMs featuring “The Best of Clearing, Volume VI” have been mailed out!

If you haven’t seen the advertising on this website, or seen reference to this document before, you should check it out… the best articles, activities, and reviews from past issues of Clearing compiled and published together on a CD-ROM. “The Best of Clearing, Volume VI” is a way to get the best of back issues of Clearing at a very low price (even less than the previous cost of a one-year subscription!).

And just so you know, we’ll soon be republishing an earlier B.O.C — Volume V — which gathers even more great articles from the recent past (think Mike Weilbacher, Jim Martin, and others) in one convenient reference volume for your resource library.

If you’re interested in helping to keep Clearing alive, this is one way to do it. Buy a copy of Volume VI in CD-ROM and keep an eye out for Volume V when it comes available. Click on the “Best of Clearing” link on the nav bar above to buy your copy!

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by Jude Curtain

The sun was shining. There was just a hint of fall in the September air. Twenty three fourth graders were hunched over their white dishpans, excitedly sorting through their samples of forest litter. So began a series of lessons designed to guide students in generating questions, creating investigations, and ultimately finding answers.

Lesson #1: Noticing Details
My experience has been that children need training to be good observers. My first lesson engaged students in examining a container of forest litter, sorting all the things they discovered in their samples, and recording each item in their science journals.

Lesson #2: Open vs. Closed Questions
We defined closed questions as those that had a simple “yes” or “no” answer. Open questions were those that required an explanatory answer. Examples of both types of questions were generated first by me, then by the students in a class discussion. Read more

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• READ THE LATEST POSTS!

  • Inquiry: Letting Kids Wonder
  • Lessons for teaching in the environment and community — 20
  • Lessons for teaching in the environment and community — 19
  • K-12 Oregon Forestry Literacy Program supports teaching about forests
  • Youth, Education and Climate Change
  • 5 EE Resources You Should Know About
  • Gardens Grow Minds: The School as Green Educator
  • EE Research: Playing in the woods

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