Part 10: Assimilation

When the world outside becomes the world inside

by Jim Martin, CLEARING guest writer

tarting 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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This 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.

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Part 6: The Easy Part

by Jim Martin, CLEARING guest writer

e’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.

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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.

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An innovative education program is introducing Squamish First Nation kids and their non-Native classmates to the richness of plant and animal life along the waterways of their lush corner of Coast Salish territory in British Columbia.

Last school year, 500 children in 24 classes from kindergarten to seventh grade learned about the life adventures of salmon, the magic of traditional medicinal plants and the duties of humans as stewards of the land and water.

The Squamish Rivers and Estuary Education program, a partnership between local schools, an environmental nonprofit and Squamish First Nation, provides a curriculum that incorporates the ancient aboriginal culture of the area. The program began in 2006 with eight classes from three schools participating.

“It couldn’t have come at a better time because the school board in Squamish had just had a meeting where they said our (First Nations) students were failing the science program miserably, right from elementary to high school,” said Linda Williams, membership services officer at Squamish First Nation. “The board and superintendent told the principals to do whatever it takes to get our students doing better in science.”

The program’s emphasis on outdoor, hands-on activities that bring science and environmental learning alive makes it extra enticing to students.

“They are really excited to get out of the classroom,” Williams said. “…First Nations people are really strong visual learners so that (outdoor education) strengthens the book learning.”

During the outdoor school, kids rotate among stations where they identify and release fish; plant grasses, shrubs and trees; map the shoreline; learn to recognize invasive plants; and sharpen their five senses.

The activities and the setting invite First Nations children take a leadership role in sharing with their classmates the unique knowledge about the land and water that has been handed down through their families for generations.

“Our children have been gillnet fishing with their parents and aunts and uncles, so when they are out in the field, they become the leaders,” said Randy Lewis, environmental coordinator for the Squamish First Nation.

“The non-Native kids study our traditions and go, ‘Wow, this is cool.’ And when our kids are out in the field, they become the explainers on the ground. They’re seeing their culture, they’re witnessing their knowledge being taught in the schools,” said Lewis, who is president of the Squamish River Watershed Society. “They’re not ashamed to be an Indian—they’re saying, ‘Yes, I’m an indigenous person.’”

Lewis has witnessed other intangible benefits stemming from the children’s exposure to the program. For example, when a biologist worked with one group, the kids asked about her salary, and were awed to learn she could make more than $1,000 a day as a consultant.

They listened with new interest as she told of the academic path— starting with math and science in grade school—that positioned her for such a career. “They said, ‘I want to be a biologist. I want to be a registered professional forester,’” Lewis said.

The cost of the Rivers and Estuary Education program, shouldered among several public, nonprofit and private entities, was $47,000 for the past school year. Fundraising is always a challenge, said Edith Tobe of the Squamish River Watershed Society, and the program could serve more students if it had more financial support.

In developing the curriculum, which is available on CD and via downloads, the watershed society’s education specialist, DG Blair Whitehead, collaborated with teachers from local schools. The lessons include a classroom component, designed to prepare students for the outdoor segment.

Teacher’s guides and lessons can be found at the District of Squamish website: squamish.ca/city-hall/departments/ community-services/environmental/squamish-rivers-estuary.

“The schoolchildren and their families now look at our streams, wetlands and estuaries in a new light, and recognize how important these areas are to fish, wildlife and a healthy ecosystem,” Tobe said.

Contact the Squamish River Watershed Society at (604) 898-9171, or by email at srws@shaw.ca. The website is: squamishwatershed.org/ Education.aspx.

—Sarah E. Smith

The Coast Salish Gathering Newsletter is a publication of the Coast Salish Gathering The Coast Salish Gathering is a convening of Coast Salish Elders, Tribal Chairman and First Nations Chiefs with U.S. and Canadian federal and state or provincial officials to engage upon environmental and policy issues.

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By Saul Weisberg

I love knowing the names of things. It makes them familiar, like old friends. I also love to look at patterns in nature. Veins on the back of a vine maple leaf. The yellow and black scales on the wing of a two-tailed tiger swallowtail. The striations in a piece of greenschist. The patterns of nature show us the details of life where the wonder lies.

The landscape is made up of details, too. The ways things fit together — the interactions of living and non-living things — tell a story. In order to make sense of larger patterns, in order to recognize them in the first place, you have to know the details. You have to be able to look at the pieces and pick them apart, understand what this thing is, why this lives here and not there, why things work the way they do, and what has changed over time.

The distrust and ignorance of science that is prevalent in society has made inroads in environmental education as well. It is not unusual to see eager and competent educators with master’s degrees in EE who have no knowledge of natural science, and who are unable to identify common birds and plants. These educators tend to focus on two things: the experience of teaching in the outdoors and the big picture — important processes and concepts. But somewhere between the experience and the process we lose touch with the thing itself — the organism and its world.

The poet William Carlos Williams said “No ideas but in things.” In the beginning you have to know its name. If you know the name of something you can take that knowledge with you anywhere. You have friends in every habitat. When we know the name of something we can talk about it; it is a sign of respect. Do we need to know the name of something to talk with it as well? Is it harder to harm something when you know its name?

Environmental educators must have a strong grounding in natural history, and field biology and ecology. In addition they should have an intimate knowledge of at least one group of organisms. The group does not matter. It can be dragonflies or butterflies, bears or salmon, mosses or conifers or lizards. Intimacy is the key. This grounding should include an ability to identify local species  and an understanding of taxonomic and ecological relationships. Taxonomy is intimately connected to real patterns in the natural world. Why a butterfly is a butterfly, or an orchid is an orchid, is connected to things you can observe, patterns that you can see around you in the faces of familiar organisms.

A naturalist is someone who pays attention. Paying attention brings you into intimate contact with the world. To be a naturalist you must be curious, observe actively and closely, describe and identify what is before you, take good notes, look for patterns at all scales, reflect on where you’ve been and what you’ve seen, and immerse yourself in the natural world. For a naturalist — intimacy is everything. We must dive deep and immerse ourselves in our wonderful northwest landscapes. A naturalist practices passionate observation in all seasons and in all weathers. At North Cascades Institute we are often asked the question “How can you teach (go birding, look at bugs, key a wildflower, watch a frog) in the rain?” Our answer is that there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.

Aldo Leopold wrote that “The penalty of having an ecological education is to live in a world of wounds.” One antidote to Leopold’s dilemma is increased intimacy, knowledge, and depth of experience. Natural history is not just a scientific approach — our responses to the natural world, our feelings, are equally valid. Our feelings call us to action from a different, deeper place than our intellect. We need both. You cannot be a naturalist and not be involved in the natural world. One of my favorite images of naturalists afield was put forth by botanist Art Kruckeberg who said that “a naturalist is an ecologist in short pants.” Get your feet wet and your hands dirty, and don’t forget to have fun!

The following two activities will help take you a little deeper into the natural world. The first focuses on observation skills and recognizing patterns in the natural world; you do not need to know names or taxonomy or natural history to do it. The second is a series of simple exercises recognizing the early signs of spring in the Pacific Northwest. It provides a way to learn basic natural history information — identification of common northwest species — through observation.

ACTIVITY #1— Patterns: An Observation Game

Children are great at finding patterns in the natural world. This activity builds on this ability. This game hones observation skills and helps you recognize and think about simple patterns found between similar or dissimilar objects in nature.

The object of the game is to find and collect ten patterns — groups composed of a mix of three attributes (Shape, texture, color), each divided into three different characteristics. Within each pattern each attribute must be completely similar or completely dissimilar among the three items.

Work singly or in groups and set a loose time limit at first; make it shorter as the participants get better at finding patterns Different habitats will yield a completely different game — think about a beach, a forest and a meadow. Are there other attributes that you could use? How many can you add before the complexity becomes overwhelming? The fun comes when the groups gather to share their items and explain the patterns they have found.

Attributes (and characteristics):

Shape (round, angular, straight)
Texture (smooth, rough, slippery)
Color (greens, browns, grays)

Hint #1: Characteristics are relative — you must decide as a group what is “round” versus what is “angular,” or what is the difference between “slippery” and “smooth.” What characteristics do bigleaf maple leaves or moss share? What if they are wet?

Examples that work

Three things that are similar in all ways:

• straight, smooth, brown ‑ dry pine needle
• straight, smooth, brown – twig
• straight, smooth, brown – dried willow leaf

Three things dissimilar in all ways:

• round, smooth, gray – stone
• straight, rough, brown – stick
• angular, slippery, green – moss

Three things that share two attributes (shape and texture) with a variable third attribute (color):

• round, smooth, gray – stone
• round, smooth, green – leaf
• round, smooth, brown – bark

Hint #2: You have to be able to say “same, same, same,” or “different, different, different” for each of the three characteristics for each attribute. If you can’t, the pattern is broken.

Examples that don’t work:

• round, rough, brown – fir cone (dry)
• round, rough, brown – bark
• round, rough, green – young fir cone
(the color of the young fir cone breaks the pattern)

• round, smooth, gray – rock
• straight, rough, brown – stick
• angular, smooth, green – oak leaf
(texture must either be all the same or all different to make this pattern)

Does this collection fit the pattern?

• round, slippery, gray – wet stone
• angular, slippery, green – square mat of liverwort
• straight, slippery, brown – branch

You can add attributes or characteristics to make the game more complex or more interesting. Use your imagination; now go outside and play!

ACTIVITY #2—Signs of Spring

As naturalists we must use all our senses to explore the world around us. As humans we are limited compared to many other species. We can’t see ultraviolet light like bees, we don’t perceive microscopic amounts of trace chemicals in the water like salmon. Our eyesight is poor compared to a bald eagle, and our sense of smell pales beside the nose of a coyote. We must practice to make best use of the senses we have. Look, listen, touch and smell the first signs of northwest spring. Use field guides to identify what you find. This activity works well for people singly or in groups and can be easily modified to fit the experience level of a group. People living in different places will have different experiences to share. In the early days of spring the numbers of new species to learn is small. It’s a great time to get started being a naturalist. See what’s out there. Learn its name. Talk to it. Introduce it to a friend.

• When does the first butterfly of the year appear? What is it?
Look for mourning cloaks on any warm, sunny winter day, and anglewings in March.

• What is the first plant to bloom in your yard? In your local park? Do flowers or leaves appear first? Indian plum begins blooming in February, red flowering currant and salmonberry in March. All three of these early flowering shrubs develop flowers before developing leaves. Explore south facing slopes for early spring flowers. South facing grasslands and balds in the San Juan Islands are alive with lovely blue grass widows in March.

• When do you first become aware of the rich scent of cottonwoods along rivers and streams?

• When do you first see and hear the croaking of frogs from local wetlands? When do ducklings appear? What species are they?

• Are there any spring plants that feel good? Touch the softness of pussy willows in late January and early February.

• When do birds begin to migrate? What species begin to travel first? Listen for migrating geese and swans in April.

• When do the first ferns begin to unfold?

• When do you first see evidence of birds singing, building nests or defending territories? Which birds set up territories in your year first?

February and March is the best time to begin to learn bird songs. Each week a few new species begin to sing. You can use tapes from the library to identify these common songsters of spring: redwing blackbird, song sparrow, American robin, Bewick’s wren, winter wren, white-crowned sparrow, and varied thrush all begin to sing on a regular basis in February and March.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Libby Mills and Shelley Weisberg for their gracious assistance and natural history expertise. Many of these ideas have developed through ongoing discussions with Tom Fleishner, Ed Grumbine, Bob Pyle, Wendy Scherrer, and John Miles.

Saul Weisberg is co-founder and Executive Director of North Cascades Institute, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to increasing understanding and appreciation of the natural, historical, and cultural landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. For more information about the Institute’s education programs visit http://www.ncascades.org
Artwork by Joan Barbour

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By Ryan Johnson

When I was ten years old, I was absolutely obsessed with the original Nintendo Entertainment System. My cousins had one, my best friend had one, it seemed like everyone I knew had a Nintendo. I would have done just about anything to have one as well, but my parents refused, despite my continuous complaints and numerous solicitations.

I thought I was the most neglected ten-year-old child in the world, while my parents, patiently suffering my pleas, would remind me that the Beartooth, Big Horn, and Pryor Mountains, the McCullough Peaks, and Shoshone River were just beyond my doorstep. These natural features were, in fact, truly magnificent and unavoidable constituents of the landscape, dominating every view with snow-capped peaks, granite cliff faces, rainbow-colored bluffs, and crystal clear riffles, containing everything from wild horses to Grizzly Bears to rattlesnakes. Now, perhaps needless to say, I prize every single second I am able to gaze upon the mountains and deserts of northern Wyoming, and I cherish every memory of running through alpine forests and mountain biking through tumbling sage brush. But a conscious acknowledgement of my privilege of being born into such natural wonder eluded me, and as a result I still found modern, escapist forms of entertainment media seductive. Even in a place completely dominated by mountains, peaks, rivers, valleys, prairie, and high desert, I still found a way to explore MTV far more often than Heart Mountain. Taking for granted what you are born with is obviously not unique to me. Nor is seeking out replacements for direct experience through television, the internet, gaming, etc., which have become pervasive in our society and, with the exception of the internet, were common ways to replace experience in my youth (I did a fair share of mountain biking, hiking, and kayaking in my middle and high school years, but not nearly as much as I could have or wish I would have).

It could be argued that human beings are genetically predisposed to seek entertainment, at least that which conveys a story; the ability to transport oneself to distant lands and imagine oneself in an infinite number of alternative settings has been a compelling part of human history via oral stories and the written word for thousands of years. Only relatively recently, however, has it become a nearly unavoidable aspect of our cultural landscape, available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week by means of innumerable glowing screens. Our society generally and our youth specifically spend an enormous amount of time “plugged in” to various types of entertainment media. The inexorable progression of technological innovation has led to the production of a multitude of gadgets that provide constant channels to maintain one’s connection to digital content; we’re voluntarily (and often involuntarily) inundating ourselves with images, videos, links, buttons, logos, and just about anything and everything else imaginable. And all too commonly, our youth are “discovering” their own backyard, its geography, cultural history, ecology and biodiversity, through pixels on a screen rather than boots in the mud, if they learn about it at all.

There are now so many ways to replace actual experience with virtual experience it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference. Video games, Second Life, GoogleEarth, Facebook, and many more electronic media all provide avenues for replacing physical reality with a digital substitute, abstracting relationships and, perhaps arguably, contributing to feelings of alienation and detachment in an age of unending connectivity. From a look around it is starting to seem as if digital devices that maintain that connectivity are viewed by their owners less as tools for productivity or communication than necessary prosthetics of the new digital self. We are, quite frankly, culturally enslaved to them. While this isnít necessarily problematic in itself, there is now unassailable evidence that we are living in an age of ecological crisis for which we will need to retool the ways in which we view technology and it’s social, economic, cultural and ecological significance. The days of driving technological innovation predominantly for entertainment media, unsustainable forms of energy production, or simply conspicuous consumption will need to come to a close. We need a new technology, or at least a new perspective on the role of technology in our lives, one that embraces ecological principles and aims to more effectively align human society with sustainable forms of living and working. To do this, we will need a new generation of technologically and environmentally literate citizens for whom technological innovation is viewed as a powerful way to collaborate, communicate, and democratically solve the ecological problems we now face. Technology must cease to be an end in itself and become a means to confront the enormous environmental problems future generations will face. We must find a way to direct our collective, and vast, technological literacy toward ecologically sustainable and socially equitable solutions to our environmental problems, while continuing to explore emerging technological innovations in promising and environmentally sound fields, such as green energy and biomimicry.

In order to direct our technological prowess to address our environmental problems, we must have an environmentally literate society, one that understands the consequences of failing to address the tremendous environmental challenges that confront us globally. To that end, media has been instrumental in communicating the issues, from the likely repercussions of global climate change, as portrayed in the films “An Inconvenient Truth” and “The 11th Hour”, to media-heavy, environmentally focused expeditions, such as “Summit on the Summit” and “The Plastiki”. These latter so-called “eco-adventure” spectacles have attempted to leverage the profound pedagogical opportunities of media technology to bring awareness to environmental issues, in this case clean and accessible water and plastics in the ocean respectively. But is environmental literacy as delivered through a screen enough to cultivate a new generation of environmental stewards? Does there not need to be a second movement, one of direct connection with our biological neighbors and our geological phenomenon? Furthermore, these often smart, creative, and important media projects meant to attract attention to an environmental cause tend to focus overwhelmingly on the potential calamities that could result from our currently precarious global environmental state. While this awareness is vital to a 21st Century environmental literacy, it can all too often result in a feeling of hopelessness in the audience, particularly for young people who may have never seen a spawning Pacific Northwest salmon in their home watershed but know all to well of their declining numbers, just to offer up one example. Recently, this despair among young people regarding the state of the natural world has been given a name: ecophobia. If the only exposure our youth have to ecosystems comes from YouTube or Google Earth, regardless of how charismatic that exposure may be, their sense of what the natural world is, and the environmental issues that threaten it, will not only be abstract but often times lead to resignation or detachment. While the knowledge, or even environmental literacy, gained from these media may be perfectly relevant and the amount of information prodigious, what is lost in translation? Unsurprisingly, if our youth are only consuming information about the environment by way of their television or laptop screen, it isn’t hard to imagine a certain level of ambivalence or even dread dominating their perspective of the natural world. Consequently, there is evidence that our next generation of environmental stewards may be giving up before they even start.

Is there a union of technological and environmental literacy to be found, one that uses technology to encourage our youth to experience the natural world for themselves? One that uses technology as a bridge to outdoors? One that adds that unquantifiable experience of being surrounded by nature and feeling part of it? It is just such a union that can help us forge a new era of environmental stewardship while encouraging the use and creation of new tools to confront environmental degradation.

Technology as a “Bridge” to the Outdoors
The educational possibilities that modern, web-based technology provides are startling in both number and content. Combined with the fact that we now have an entire generation that cannot imagine life without an iPod and a cell phone (and are rarely seen without both), the opportunities to employ technology in the classroom are limitless. As outlined above, the problem isn’t technology itself, but our propensity to let it take us outside of ourselves and replace actual experience with virtual experience, while promoting detachment and even hopelessness regarding the state of the environment. So how do we utilize the manifold educational applications of emerging technology without compromising the vital, irreplaceable, and less quantifiable educational and ecological benefits of hands- on, authentic, experiential learning? Today’s students are so comfortable with technology, its use to supplement authentic, place-based investigations seems both timely and necessary to reconnect students to the outdoors and support their role as active, lifelong environmental stewards.

There are now multiple web-based tools, rich internet applications, and geo-RSS mapping interfaces that educators and students can use to find place-based venues for study, create dynamic research projects, and share the product of their study online. Moreover, the open source movement, one of the most promising and unapologetically democratic developments in the short but extremely prolific evolution of the web, is offering up professional tools, from blogging to video editing to GIS mapping, that are beginning to change the landscape of content creation and dissemination on the web. No longer are the tools needed to create dynamic media projects or sophisticated geographic models only for those with high budgets for the latest plastic-wrapped software package. The open source movement, essentially an organic network of software and website developers working collectively to create new and revolutionary ways to use the web, is churning out free, accessible, and innovative alternatives to the software applications that have been the (expensive) status quo for at least two decades. In addition, there are now numerous ways to access and post local information geographically on the web. Several mapping application program interfaces, the most popular of which is provided by Google, allow users to convey their own content and geographically relevant information directly onto a dynamically generated map. These tools were almost unthinkable just a decade ago. Now they are both changing the way we think about place while offering incredible opportunities for educators.

Now that so much information is available online using these dynamic tools, especially if that information can be customized locally, how do we avoid replacing the authentic experience of place with such tools? For example, there are now online mapping tools that allow for such sophisticated hydrologic and land-use modeling, it can be tempting (and, for the first time in history, less expensive) to use them as a replacement for field investigations, providing as they do access to so much information in one place. Despite this temptation, and with the realization that there is no replacement for field research,  these sophisticated web-based tools are valuable supplements to field study, helping to draw connections between concepts and contextualize data sets. To use an example of the how these connections can be made using emerging technology, the United States Geological Survey automatically updates streamflow measurements throughout the country,  allowing students to compare stream discharge in multiple locations with ease. In Oregon’s  Tualatin River basin, students collecting water quality data in the field can compare their data with that being continuously updated thanks to an Oregon USGS map that syndicates real-time water quality data from numerous locations in the watershed.

With reference tools like these, perhaps the most profound educational possibilities with respect to technology, environmental literacy, and service-learning lie in “ground-truthing,” the process of confirming or disputing information derived from computer models and GIS applications by gathering data and observations on the ground. Today’s ground-truthing practitioners often make use of multiple technologies, from GPS units to geo-tagging digital cameras to sophisticated monitoring equipment. Educators can effectively employ both the process and tools of ground truthing, beginning with the study of aerial photos and online geographic and hydrologic models, as well as research conducted by NGOs, agencies, or other organizations.

This information helps introduce concepts and allows students to formulate guiding questions and draft hypotheses before moving on to field-based research to explore realities on the ground.

Students and educators can access multiple online databases to help them prioritize areas of investigation and make use of numerous web-based outlets to share the results of their findings, making available their work to the larger community via presentations, videos, photography, and other creative pursuits. Students can utilize social networking sites to organize events at which to share the results of their field work with the community and alert regulatory agencies to potential anomalies in their data sets. Also, students can use a variety of new so-called “cloud-based” tools to create presentations, spreadsheets, and other documents and easily embed them in virtually any social networking site, blog, or webpage using simple cut-and-paste HTML code. These exciting new networking possibilities are providing new avenues for students and educators to share their work and, in the process, helping to reestablish classrooms as central to thriving communities while cultivating a new generation of civic leaders and environmental stewards.

Perhaps human beings, and especially those among us who advocate for sustainability and environmental conservation, will always have a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward technology. As we know, technology has allowed human beings to extract the earth’s natural resources with increasing speed and efficiency, find and burn fossil fuels at an almost incomprehensible rate, and ultimately alter the very climate in which we (and everything else) live. For our youth to confront the ecological challenges they will undoubtedly face, they will need to re-tool their relationship to the technological “tools of the trade”. They will need to embrace a new view of technology that encourages innovation, creativity, and sustainability. In order for coming generations to feed an increasing world population while beginning to address natural resource limits and climatic disruption, they will need all of the tools of human ingenuity they can possibly muster.

Perhaps our most important role as educators is to try to prepare the next generation to face those challenges through new tools and a new perspective, simultaneously guiding them and ourselves to a future that embraces technology as a means to live more sustainably on this planet.

Ryan Johnson is the StreamWebs Coordinator for the Freshwater Trust in Portland, Oregon. To find out more, visit www.thefreshwatertrust.org/education/streamwebs

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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.
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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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What we have called the “environmental crisis” is the most significant challenge humanity as a whole has faced in its recorded history. How we understand and frame this crisis—and how we summon the political courage to change—will determine the extent to which we are able to continue existence on Earth in a way that is worth living.

The enormous significance of this issue demands that it come to the forefront of our thinking in all spheres (political, religious, commercial, and legal) and at all levels (individual, family, community, national, and global)—especially within education. How and why humans are undermining their ecological support—and what can be done about that—make a vital, complex, interdisciplinary area for inquiry at all levels of education. Not to educate with the earth and future generations in mind would be an unimaginable moral folly, much like saying we would rather continue to party on the Titanic’s foredeck while refusing to deal with the upcoming iceberg which is in full view.

First, we must understand that the crisis we are talking about is more appropriately understood as a cultural crisis and, specifically, a spiritual crisis. What is happening to the environment is a symptom of something fundamentally awry with the way humans think of themselves and their relationship to Earth—this place which is our home, but which we don’t think of as such because we see ourselves living in a world made of human imagination and labor. Thinking of environmental destruction as an environmental problem is another form of disassociative, nonsystemic thinking in which we define the symptom (like a child who runs away) as the problem—without considering the larger context in which we, ourselves, have a role.

So, we must first recover an integral way of thinking and the courage to accept the responsibility back in our own human lap. When we do this, we are less likely to retreat into simple technological, legal, and other instrumental actions which, while absolutely necessary, tend to get us off the hook from having to make those difficult, searching, inner changes which are the only basis for real transformation to a peaceful, just, and sustainable world.

Years of well-intended environmental education have sensitized us to the problems and the needs for environmental awareness and stewardship. But as we have employed education, science, advocacy, conservation, and laws to save the land, we have been distracted from more clearly seeing the root cultural issues involved. Thus, we have learned and done meaningful things in environmental education, but have not galvanized the broad public and political will for significant cultural change. As evidence, over 80 percent of people in industrialized countries claim to care and be very concerned about the environment, but most of those same people lead a lifestyle that would take, perhaps, six earth-type planets to sustain if the poorest humans lived similar lifestyles.

What we must do now is look at our deeply rooted perceptions, beliefs, values, institutions, and ways of living that have contributed to a separation from the earth community and our resulting destructive impact on life. We must challenge our assumptions about what has value and dethrone the human as supreme in the order of things, along with the notion that the human economy and its ethic of making and having more is both unquestionably good and inevitable.

Rethinking What Education is for

Understanding our role in nature differently will call for the most fundamental and radical transformations in the way we think of, and practice, education. This begins with our notions of ontology and epistemology, from which our assumptions about education and learning are drawn.

Prevailing ideas on the nature of being and the essential properties and relationships between things (ontology) must reveal the integral nature of reality not only as scientific fact, but also as the empirical mandate for an ethic of care. Only seeing the world as made of separate objects will never locate humans in a reality of mutual obligation with nature. We must have a system of knowledge that nurtures obligation to that which is known in revealing the interdependence between all things. Equally, with an integral view of life, we must counterbalance the myth of objectivism as path to the highest truth and reclaim the power of subjective, symbolic, and intuitive ways of knowing.

For eons, these participatory ways of knowing sustained indigenous peoples in a web of mutual obligation with their surroundings. These societies experienced animals and nature as kin and part of larger web of life to which they owed great debt. Today, we know the world without feeling a part of it—and that is inhuman. This disconnected way of knowing has led the most educated people to visit unimaginable atrocities upon fellow humans and other life. Without participatory ways of knowing and being, knowledge too easily falls prey to human arrogance, power, and rationalization unchecked by the moral restraint inherent in the experience and ethics of interdependence.

Moreover, we can no longer pursue knowledge and technology for their own sakes, as if the unending possibilities of human imagination deserve to be reified and not held accountable to larger considerations supporting the whole community of life. Not everything we can think of or invent should be made a reality. E.F. Schumacher (Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered) argued persuasively, for example, on behalf of earth- and human-friendly, intermediate technologies that a small farmer might use, as opposed to the massive technology that might disenfranchise sustainable living. We must grow out of our adolescent enchantment with innovation, growth, and progress, and mature into the wisdom of self-restraint.

In this vein, we must rethink what body of knowledge we canonize as worthy of study. This will call on keen insight into the studies and perspectives that do (or do not) contribute to the continuance of life, as opposed to perspectives that feed the tendency to exceed our human boundaries and to reinforce a system of philosophies, human ethics, and laws that are blindly human-centered, at the expense of the larger whole. For example, most history books that present an uncritical picture of human exploration and territorial conquest would be considered antithetical to a social and ecological justice commitment—immoral as well.

Losing our the Oneness with Nature

Beneath the cultural crisis lies a spiritual crisis that might be described as a loss of attunement with, and respect of, nature.

Indigenous cultures reveal how early human societies experienced themselves as part of the natural world, not as owners of it. At one time, humans realized they belong to nature—and not the other way around—as has been the case with our own Native American cultures. Streams, rocks, trees, and animals were felt to be alive with spirit in a world that was often fearsome and unpredictable, but not beyond human capacity to propitiate, communicate with, and hold sacred within a delicate partnership of care that kept everything going.

Cultural anthropologists, historians, and ecopsychologists may differ in their explanations of why humankind became psychically disconnected from its fragile kinship and communication with other animate and inanimate life. Perhaps it was the inevitable result of human evolution from medullary to cortical man, in which humans lost a participation mystique—which Levy-Bruhl defines as “embeddedness of human consciousness in nature”—through the process of becoming self-conscious. Genesis and other creation stories would certainly support this picture of a fall from unity with the advent of self-awareness.

On the other hand, for long periods of time, indigenous societies maintained their reciprocal, familial relationship with nature, a way of living and being that remained until the growth of agrarian cultures, cities, territoriality, and the conversion of the “forest” from a place where we once lived into something remote and the subject of our fearful or romantic imaginings (Roger Harrison).

With this recession of nature into human imagination and a loss of our relationship of necessity with nature, perhaps it was a root human fear that propelled humans to seek a once-and-for-all advantage over nature. To answer the anxious unpredictability of nature and to be forever secure in our human-made world would be a triumph of great proportions. Thus, the monster-slaying hero was born in the human psyche as the conqueror of natural forces (now depicted as evil) and as the ideal for a human-centered culture in which norms made by and for humans replace those derived in reference to nature.

Resolving human ambivalence within the precarious relationship with nature came at both great gain and cost. The Promethean energies of inventiveness (symbolized by fire, which Prometheus stole from Zeus and gave to humans) and technology were unleashed, which allowed humans to harness nature and master technology to levels as boundless as the human imagination. But, as we know from the story of Prometheus, the gift of fire to mankind brought with it Pandora’s curse. This was a way to counterbalance the arrogance and hubris of heroic culture, much in the same way that God’s wisdom in Eden, once stolen, required toil and suffering to bring Adam and Eve down to Earth, humble and “human” after tasting powers beyond their capacity to use wisely.

With the ascendancy of human creative fire and expanded dominion over earth also grew civilization’s shadow of suffering, despair, war, and chaos in the subjugation of all things (nature, women, the feminine, children, others not like us) that were of lower order in the heroic culture. Thus, we have the basis of the ecofeminist argument that the subjugation of the feminine and nature are of one whole cloth when seen in terms of the larger symbolic patterns in heroic, male-dominated societies. This has inevitably led to our modern, technoscientific civilization in which we are (literally) burning up with an excess of Promethean energy and being cut off from both feminine and earth wisdom. Like Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and fell into the ocean, our burning is once more calling forth the floodwaters.

But where is the ark?

The Reunification of Humans Within the Natural Order

The ark to bridge the troubled waters of our time will only come with a transformation to integral consciousness in which humans are reunited in heart and mind with nature. Therefore, questions we must ponder seriously include: How can we regain a felt communion with the natural world? How can this be done in a way that needless harm to any one part of nature is felt personally? How can we educate so that the fruitfulness of Earth elicits a sense of gratefulness and an ethic of responsibility to preserve the abundance of Earth for future generations? The emerging dialogue around this kind of inquiry is an evolutionary process that is as much about questions as it is answers.

In that spirit, I would like to propose several broad areas of inquiry that exemplify what would be at the heart of an ecologically sound form of education.

• A new myth and worldview which make meaning of life within the natural world, as opposed to transcending Earth;

• A reverence for life arising from a perception of the sacred “otherness” in all things.

• The essential role of nature in the reenchantment of life and the human capacity for aesthetic appreciation and beauty;

• Reinhabiting a richly storied, simpler life with less distraction, fewer “things,” and more meaning so that we can experience the reality of “less is best”;

• Breaking the myth of materialism, progress, and its latest incarnation—a culture and economy of globalization—and moving toward earth-friendly practices and technologies that enable a sustainable world;

• Social justice (covered previously); and

• Sense of place and ecological literacy.

A New Myth-An ecology of Heaven and Earth

We need a new worldview in which the spiritual and material are brought together—an ecology of heaven and Earth, so to speak.

In The Dream of Earth, Thomas Berry has written:

It is all a question of story, we are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not yet learned the new story. Our traditional story of the Universe sustained us for a long period of time. It shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life purpose and energized action. It consecrated suffering and integrated knowledge. We awoke in the morning and knew where we were. We could answer the questions of our children. We could identify crime, punish transgressors. Everything was taken care of because the story was there. It did not necessarily make people good, nor did it take away the pains and stupidities of life or make for unfailing warmth in human associations. It did provide a context in which life could function in a meaningful manner.

Prior to the scientific revolution, people in the West lived by the Christian view of the Great Chain of Being in which plants, animals, and man were understood as part of a great, interconnected hierarchy culminating in the ultimate perfection of God. This story made sense of man and nature within a larger picture, but gave way during the scientific revolution that required only one cosmological level, the physical, and detached human activity from its higher, moral purpose.

Today, a significant movement on several fronts seeks to rejoin material and spiritual outlooks in order, to forge a new ecologically sound belief system and ethic. One such effort is supported by Harvard and Bucknell Universities and is called The Forum on Religion and Ecology—an inter-religious, multicultural, interdisciplinary initiative engaging in scholarly dialogue on the environment. The Forum recognizes the role of religious traditions in fostering worldviews, moral frameworks, and narratives regarding the relationship between humans and the natural environment.

Parallel to this work is the new paradigm from twentieth century science that reveals an interconnected world similar to that portrayed in religions and wisdom traditions. A promising story to emerge in this vein is that of the universe itself, as rendered with depth by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry in The Universe Story.

The Universe Story revisits what we know about all of life, from the “big bang” through billions of years of evolution, but it does so in a way that enchants the heart and mind. Bringing together the viewpoints of poet, saint, and scientist, Berry and Swimme help us to understand that the becoming process, the genesis process, the evolutionary process, is spiritual/psychic as well as material/physical. The Universe Story helps us view these two aspects of life as inseparable, and to see that our living is drawn out of the universe itself, which is primary. In Swimme and Berry’s hands, what might otherwise be a purely scientific account of life becomes a cosmic drama charged with awe and mystery. Such rendering lies at the heart of great storytelling that elicits a depth of experience far beyond the literal narrative.

Their storytelling elicits a reverence for life.

A Reverence for Life

If I am a thinking being, I must regard life other than my own with equal reverence, for I shall know that it longs for fullness and development as deeply as I do myself. (Schweitzer 1987)

Ethics consist in my experiencing the compulsion to show to all will-to-live the same reverence as I do my own. A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives. (Schweitzer 1936)

Reverence is defined as a feeling of profound awe and respect, often love or veneration, which is precisely the magic elicited by Berry and Swimme’s mode of narrative in The Universe Story. It was the keen insight of Dr. Albert Schweitzer which fathomed that the world’s suffering and inhumanity could be reversed if only each person had a “reverence for life,” a feeling of respect so profound for other living beings that an intrinsic ethic of nonharm and joy in life would flourish.

Experiencing a reverence for life requires seeing and feeling beyond ordinary physical reality into its hidden mystery and beauty. It entails an experience of a sacred otherness in all life and a profound sense of moral obligation to give respect and care to that Other. Contemplative modes of observation, seeing the larger patterns in reality, and imaginative and intuitive perception open awe-inspiring worlds closed to the literal mind. Let me provide an example from my own experience.

Looking at my garden from the deck of our house, I noticed that a leaf from a tulip in a far corner was wavering intermittently. I became aware that every other plant or shrub in the immediate vicinity was absolutely still, suggesting an absence of air current. My curiosity was now peaked to the point that I looked at the tops of all the surrounding Douglas firs and Western red cedars and found that none were moving even the slightest bit. Upon returning to the still-moving leaf, a most profound and certain conviction emerged spontaneously in my mind: It’s waving at me! At that point, I broke into tears and felt a distinctly enhanced sense of affinity and communication with everything around me, including so-called inanimate things such as rocks, mountains, dirt, water, and so forth.

The profound effect this perception had on me is far more significant than any question about whether or not the leaf was actually waving at me. The former absolutely did happen; the latter is hard to explain with traditional science. However, we do know from Dorothy Mcclean’s work with plants and vegetables in the Findhorn community in Scotland (and much earlier work with measuring plant reactions to human behavior via electronic sensing devices)—that all matter does have some capacity to sense other presences. This is a knowledge humans once had, but which has been lost in the modern world.

The Reenchantment of Life

The eyes of wisdom and the heart of compassion experience nature as a source of joy and numinous revelation. This brings us into the whole dimension of imaginal and aesthetic ways knowing. Here, we enter into an enchanted world and leave behind the disconnected, ordinary world of everyday, literal reality. The difference lies in our way of seeing and capacity for openness and being moved.

In Care of the Soul, author Thomas Moore, writes (The Reenchantment of Everyday Life) of nature as the quintessential opening to spirit and a sense of connectedness. The beauty and majesty of mountains, rivers, flowers, the wondrous complexity of living systems, the incredible intricacy of cell structures, the fascination of quantum physics can—when fully apprehended—bring a sense of awe, spirit, and the largeness in life.

“Nature is not only a source of spirit: It also has soul. Spiritually, nature directs our attention toward eternity, but at the same time, it contains us and creates an intimacy with our own personal lives that nurtures the soul. The individuality of a tree or rock or pool of water is another sign of nature’s soul. These intriguing natural beings not only point toward infinity; more intimately, they also befriend us. It’s easy to love groves of trees or mountain ridges, to feel related to them as though by blood, and to be secure in their familial protection” (Moore, 5).

The awe and beauty in nature speaks to us, for we are constituted of the same stuff, the same soul. We can speak of an ecology of mind wherein the human soul resonates with the world soul from which we came. Ecopsychologist Theodore Roszak writes: “[E]copsychology proceeds from the assumption that at its deepest level the psyche remains sympathetically bonded to the Earth that mothered us into existence.(1995, 5) . . . the psyche is rooted inside a greater intelligence known as the anima mundi, the psyche of Earth herself that has been nurturing life in the cosmos for billions of years through its drama of complexification.”(1995, 16).

Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson parallels these thoughts with the notion of biophilia, an inherent human love of life and the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes. This is likewise echoed in Howard Gardner’s eighth intelligence—the naturalist intelligence. Naturalist intelligence designates the human ability to discriminate among living things (plants, animals) as well as sensitivity to other features of the natural world (clouds, rock configurations).

Thus, we have been deeply tuned into the matrix of nature from which we grew. Nature is an inspiration for language formation, our source of mathematical sense, and our capacity to imagine and think. Nature casts her spell on us all from the youngest age. We are wise to nurture our children’s inherent curiosity and love of nature and to regard Earth as first among our teachers in teaching us a reverence for all of life.

Simplicity: Living in a Storied World

I have taken this route to the subject of simple living because a simpler, sustainable world is possible only with the kinds of inner mental, emotional, and spiritual transformations I have just described. The rich inner life arises in a world whose story makes sense at a personal level and whose daily experience is full of enchantment. When we are full of authentic life, the things of a materialistic, man-made culture seem paltry by comparison and quickly lose their power over us.

A life of fullness and meaning forms the heart of what is now known as the voluntary simplicity movement. Frugality, human-scale living, a view of work as service to others, and a strong communal ethic have always existed in American life. But such simple, ethical living has been declining steadily for centuries—at no time more disturbingly and precipitously than in the present era of our megahomes, flashy cars, and shallow, advertising-saturated culture.

But people are fighting back. All over the United States and in other parts of the world, people are eliminating debt, leaving stressful jobs, getting rid of excess things, and moving into more modest (sometimes communal) housing in efforts to become grounded in something real and alive. This is not new. Thoreau inspired many in the current environmental and simplicity movements when he wrote about his life at Walden Pond:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. . . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner. (1971, 91)

We now have a broad, grassroots movement through such organizations as the Simple Living Network and The New Roadmap Foundation, whose books, videos, workshops, and informal discussion groups are empowering young and old to live simply, not just for ourselves but also as a commitment to social justice—realizing Ghandi’s admonition to “live simply that others may simply live.”

When we are freed of being possessed by that which we possess, a whole new relationship with things, man-made and natural, is possible. We can now contemplate and cultivate the significance of the things about us carefully and deliberately. We can begin to live in a storied world in which the boulder in the yard, the beat-up dresser we restored, our mother’s favorite necklace, smooth stones collected from some solitary beach, and pictures of people we admire now inhabit our consciousness and homes as loved familiars. We now become makers of life’s enchantments and not just recipients of nature’s enchantments—assuming that we have learned well nature’s lesson in how to perceive and grow beauty.

We see this lesson lived most fully in indigenous cultures, where everything people have resonates with its own unique meaning and story. Martin Prechtl, Native American and former Mayan shaman, emphasized how making something as simple as a knife caused a great debt to the “holy” from which all things come, and, therefore, required equally great ceremonies, thanksgiving, and other love offerings to fill the void left by what had been taken. The making of every gourd, bowl, knife, or piece of rope involved a vast love relationship with the forces supporting the world of man and nature, and bestowed each thing its own numinous story.

What do we know of the things we own in modern society? Very little. For the most part, our homes and lives are littered with dead things with little life and story. They are things that come from far away, made by people we don’t know and who were disconnected from their handiwork. We live in a “wasteland” which has been defacing our souls long before T. S. Eliot made this word famous. And it was Eliot’s particular genius to see how the trashing of inner life and outer landscape are of one whole cloth.

Care for things and care for nature is also care for self, and vice verse. Let’s begin with the dictum “less is best” and live the storied, simple life of depth in our homes and schools! Let’s see our obsession with curriculum coverage as part of our broader addiction to quantity and not quality. Let’s slow down and go deep in our curriculum, make and collect things with our kids that are memorable and worthy of being cherished. Let’s learn to see the beauty in little things that the world may disregard; for these are echoes of the vulnerable little places of essence within ourselves.

Deconstructing the Myth of Progress: Toward a Just and Sustainable World

Along with inner transformation to a more meaningful life, moving into a more just and sustainable world requires that we deconstruct the unquestioned acceptance of social progress through our current market-based, economic model. The United States and the industrialized world has exported much good in the ideals of democracy, rights for women and children, and public education as pathways toward a more humane world. Parading behind these humanitarian ideals, however, greed and power have corrupted our corporate-dominated economic systems and have resulted in economic and social injustices around the world. To the least privileged in developing nations, globalization is simply another face of rampant colonialism.

Worldwide antiglobalization protests and a burgeoning literature on the downside of corporate hegemony (When Corporations Rule the World, David Korten) have recently made it fashionable—even among the world’s financial elites—to critique the economic policies exacted on developing nations by the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF, World Bank, GATT, now the World Trade Organization). There is a good reason why millions of people have taken to the streets in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, the Philippines, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the United States, Venezuela, and many other nations of the world. The current economically based model of social improvement is not working, even according to its own criteria. Globalization, its corporate practices and policies, have led to a growing disparity between the rich and poor, the dislocation of indigenous, sustainable livelihoods, flight of the dispossessed to overcrowded cities, corporate piracy of natural resources through patenting native seed and plant technologies, environmental deterioration—a list of ills longer than I can recite here.

With the spread of social, economic, and environmental injustices, the choices are becoming clearer each day that our world is either about fear, greed, and money or it is about humanity—about what brings death or what gives life. If we continue to educate for economic being, that is, for jobs (as we do in schools today), then we side with the forces of oppression that rob us of our own lives as they spread havoc among the community of life around the world. If we do no more than prepare kids to participate uncritically in a system that can strip them of their dignity, then we are handmaidens of injustice.

Teaching for sustainability, then, must take on a top priority at all levels of education. Sustainability involves everything covered in this book: our calling and meaning in life; our sense of community, locally and globally; sensitivity to issues of social justice; knowledge of and love for nature; and commitment to advocacy as well as action to reverse natural and social imbalances. Sustainability is about ourselves, our communities, and the world. It is about souls, soils, and spirit — indivisible locally and globally.

The Earth Charter makes an excellent foundation in terms of ethics, principles, and scope to frame our understanding of a sustainable future for the earth family. The Earth Charter[1] is perhaps the most inclusive, widely consulted, global proclamation of human, economic, and ecological rights ever developed in modern history. It came out of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, and now serves around the world as a guide to communities, local governments, businesses, and educators who are part of a broad, global movement toward a just, peaceful, and sustainable world.

Along with this most important framework, education can engage young people in the study of earth-friendly, sustainable practices and technologies that are lighting the way toward a brighter future. But first, it is important to give young people realistic cause for hope in order to counter the apathy and resignation that are so pervasive today and which contribute to the continuation of destructive policies. Second, kids deserve to know about the new career opportunities that are arising in response to the current crisis. Many fields are showing progressive innovations—renewable energy (wind, solar, ocean), sustainable agriculture, permaculture and ecological design, ecological and local economics, microcredit and other socially responsible lending, green business development (now talking about the triple bottom line as money, people, and environment)—to name but a few. Possible adaptable curriculums range from organic gardens for young children to hydrogen-powered cars for college-age students.

If we really want to leave no child behind, we need to prepare them for a sustainable future worth living.

Sense of Place and Nature Literacy

Care for our neighborhoods and local landscapes springs from rootedness and local knowledge. Too few people, young or old, really know enough about the social and natural history of where they live to ground them in a real sense of place. This problem is, perhaps, most pronounced in urban settings, but it is also evident in rural settings, and especially apparent in the young who want to get out of town and into the big city.

Modern culture is more about getting someplace else than about being where we are. This has created a rootless element at all economic levels, from migrant labor to the deracinated elite of the multinational corporation who are homeless, don’t belong any place, and, therefore, have not entered into a relationship of mutual obligation that place calls forth in us. Without that obligation, what is there to care enough about that one would want to fight for it?

Rootless people may sigh when the new Wal-mart paves over a once beloved meadow, but they are not likely to walk in protest, write letters to the editor, or give up something so that they can contribute money to the cause. Putting caring to action arises out of a relationship to place, its people, buildings, and natural landscapes.

I currently direct the Heritage Institute, a continuing education program for K-12 teachers in the Northwest that has offered place-based field studies on the natural and social history of our bioregion since the mid-1970s. Teachers love our classes not just because they are fun, but because they nurture a sense of connection with their local neighborhoods and landscapes that make them come alive. It is this sense of aliveness and meaning that draws teachers to our program—as well as the fact that what they learn is useful in their own classrooms and intriguing to their students.

In recovering a sense of place, we discover an authentic basis for learning. We learn more deeply when we care about something enough to sacrifice, cry, or get angry when what we love is threatened in any way. In contrast, learning about “the environment” in an abstract way, wherein we distance ourselves intellectually from what is learned, creates an emotional disconnection and superficial interest.

I want the kind of education in which the trees, rocks, rivers, historic areas, and words of our ancestors speak to our young people—who, in this listening, will be transformed.

References

Berry, Thomas. 1990. The Dream of Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club.

Harrison, Roger Pogue. 1993. Forests: The Shadow of Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Korten, David C. 2001. When Corporations Ruled the World. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Moore, Thomas. 1997. The Reenchantment of Everyday Life. Boston: G.K.Hall.

Roszak, Theodore. 1995. “Where Psyche Meets Gaia.” Pp. 1-17. In Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. By Mary E. Gomes, Allen D. Kanner, Theodore Roszak. New York: Sierra Club Books.

Schumacher, E.F. 1989. Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. Vancouver: Hartley and Marks.

Schweitzer, Albert. 1936. “Ethics for a Reverence for Life.” Christendom (Winter): 42.

Schweitzer, Albert. 1987. Philosophy of Civilization: Part I: the Decay and Restoration of Civilization. New York: Promethean Books.

Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry. 1994. The Universe Story. New York: Harper Collins.

Thoreau, David H. 1971. Walden. The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

[1]. For more on The Earth Charter, visit their website at www.earthcharter.org.

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I learned early on that storytelling is one of the most important tools for teaching science. If you think about it . . . what is science? Science is an attempt to understand the universe.

A well-told science story does three important jobs: It brings facts to life; it makes abstract concepts concrete; and through the virtual reality of storytelling, it walks listeners through the process of scientific inquiry.

Children are curious about information and science facts if they’re presented in an intriguing way. Historically, teaching science education meant spending an inordinate amount of time memorizing facts. Facts are important, and storytelling is one of the most effective ways of delivering them. But if you stop with facts you are not teaching science. Science is a verb, an activity, not simply a body of knowledge.

Ideas such as the food web, evolution, the water cycle, and animal adaptation are examples of the “big picture” ideas that are critical to understanding modern science. But if you stop with concepts, you still are not teaching science. You are building a necessary conceptual framework for ordering and understanding facts. Again, science is something you do, a way of asking questions and seeking answers.

Storytelling can be used to introduce or implement all of the science standards. Though it is obviously a prime example of language arts and science communication skills, I often include mathematics problems in the science stories to emphasize the importance of mathematics in science education.

Science-process skills are the methods or strategies that scientists employ to discover and understand the story of the universe. A good story involves the listener in many of the strategies of gathering the facts of the story, making predictions about the outcome, and checking their hypothesis against the unfolding details of the tale. Also, you can use a story to make abstract concepts personal and tangible. Important facts can be conveyed within a dynamic context so the facts stick; they have more meaning and impact

Let me share a short story that will show you what I mean.

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Forest Grove Community School student taking a closer look at macroinvertebrates living in a stream near the school.

by Charles Graham

I have made an interesting observation about teaching recently.  Some of the best lessons are not necessarily the carefully planned and orchestrated units, but rather the ones that grew and took shape as the project progressed.  I have found that some of my best teaching has been when I didn’t know the exact outcome in advance and learned something new right along with my students. This has been my experience with environmental exploration into stream ecology and the “Leaf Pack” program.

About five years ago, I was looking for a way to have my 6th graders make deeper environmental connections.  My classes had raised salmon and trout for several years through a Fish & Wildlife program, and I sought out a way to extend my student’s learning about life cycles and habitat into the stream ecology that supports fish.  I decided to give the “Leaf Pack” program from LaMotte a try, even though this was new territory for me, as I had no academic training or background in the study of macroinvertebrates.

The basic procedure of a Leaf Pack experiment is pretty straight forward.  Students identify the primary trees in the riparian zone that “feed” the stream.  Leaves are collected, weighed, and placed in mesh bags, then are carefully placed into the water. Observational data is collected about the stream, stream banks, and air/water temperature.  Three to four weeks later these bags are retrieved from the water and carefully examined for macroinvertebrates that have taken up residence in this ‘trap’.

The identification and sorting is made easy with the use of a number of resources included in the Leaf Pack kit, including sorting place mats, full color identification cards, magnification loupe, and a dichotomous key. Once sorted, a tally of each type of macroinvertebrates is recorded for later analysis. Stream conditions and air/water temperature are noted for comparisons, and then the aquatic critters are returned to their stream.

Student placing leaves into a mesh bag which will then be placed in the stream as a "trap" for macroinvertebrates.

The first time a class of mine attempted to run the Leaf Pack experiment was a true learning experience for all involved.  My personal learning curve had to be a steep one, as I was learning just one step ahead of the students. Worries that we might not find anything in our packs to analyze turned out to be unfounded. As the day progressed excitement built.  I found myself saying many phrases like “I don’t know- what do you think?” or “good question- we will have to research that further”. The engagement of the students was perhaps the most exciting part. They seemed to feed on their discoveries and the challenges they presented, eventually making some deep connections and observations. Those that had expressed hesitance to work so closely with these ‘ugly bugs’ soon lost their inhibitions and fully participated.

Back in the classroom, the excitement continued.  The collected data became more meaningful, as we uploaded it into the Leaf Pack Network data base.  The results were magically transformed at the web site into colorful graphs, with “biotic index” numbers and “EPT ratings” that indicated that the stream water quality was healthy. The whole process clearly showed us that it was not just the quantity of macroinvertebrates that mattered, but the variety.  It turns out that not all macroinvertebrates are of equal value and each species has different pollution tolerance values that are used to indicate the overall water quality. The fact that our data was now published and easily could be compared to other streams and rivers throughout the country added pride to what we had accomplished.

Leaf Pack has now become a mainstay in my yearly curriculum. I am now able to add more to background information and pre-trip activities that enhance student learning.  Students seem to naturally make connections between our studies of trees that produce the leaves. Leaves eventually feed nutrients to the streams, which in turn feed the macroinvertebrates, and become the food base of the salmon and trout. Our study of trees, stream ecology, and the raising of fish are all designed as ‘hands on’ experiences. The effectiveness of teaching through these projects is clearly demonstrated through the student’s depth of understanding of this energy flow and the interconnections in nature.

This past year, our work with Leaf Pack opened up into some new directions.  We are now collecting steam water quality data on an ongoing basis for Hyla Woods, a local “sustainable” harvest timber company.  As part of their efforts towards restoring a creek after a period of several flooding, we are analyzing macroinvertebrates populations in the fall and the spring. We plan to continue this for at least three years with the goal of complying comparison data to help determine the effectiveness of their overall restoration efforts. The fact that student work can provide usable information for a real world situation, adds meaning and authenticity to their efforts, as well as a sense of pride and value.

The opportunity to be frequent visitors to Hyla Woods has deepened our connection to the land and has developed into a real sense of place. This last year, Peter Hayes (Hyla’s owner and former school teacher/principal and Clearing contributor) helped us explore his forest for signs of past impacts of man. Our discoveries revealed a dramatic history of pioneer farming attempts and periods of extensive logging. By the end of the year, our work at the water’s edge had expanded into an exercise of “reading the land” for signs the history of the area. In collaboration with our art teacher, we eventually created a wall sized mural as an exhibit of our findings. This interactive display includes student writing describing what they found and its significance.

In order for education to be most effective, what we do must be alive and genuine.  Sometimes the best way to do this is to venture into new directions with your students. Be open and willing to try what is unknown to not only your students, but to yourself as well. Seeking out collaborative relationships with the community can add authenticity to whatever you study. The adventure of learning is greatest when discoveries are yours as well as your students.

Charles Graham has been a classroom teacher for 23 years teaching all disciplines for grades 4-6. He currently teacher at the Forest Grove Community School in Forest Grove, Oregon.

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