Staging Nature
Landscape and Language
Landscape and Language
Going outside can enhance language arts skills and open childrens’ eyes to the wonder of nature.
By Lorraine Ferra
When the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke admitted to his sculptor friend Rodin that he had come to a standstill in his writing, the artist suggested that Rilke leave his desk, visit the zoo, and look at an animal for a long time. For several weeks perhaps, Rilke acted on the advice. He singled out a panther and watched it until he could see it and then wrote a memorable poem which reverberates with the monotony of the panthers pacing back and forth behind the bars of its cage. As a sculptor, Rodin understood the necessity of keeping the senses alert, an ability considered basic to the visual arts but often neglected in language. And so we continue encouraging children to produce grammatically flawless compositions and stories — writing that is often devoid of visual and tactile imagery, music, and that aura of silence which can draw us further into the depths of an experience.
I have been looking at the beginnings of two stories by fifth-graders about Utah floods. The first was written by a child who was asked in a creative writing class to describe the event:
One year there was a great flood is Salt Lake City. Stores were closed, and homes were destroyed by the rough water…
Well written grammatically, but echoing in tone the nightly reports of newscasters on local Utah television stations.
The second story’s opening was composed by a child who was advised to go to the scene and witness it firsthand. Besides observing the flood waters, she was to listen to bystanders’ conversations, discern facial expressions and notice the surroundings and activity:
Would you like to meet the father of a flood, stacking sandbags with tears in his eyes? His son ran away in the spring…
What a magnetic invitation to enter the story! The imaginative intelligence and emotional engagement in these lines could have been generated only by attention and sensitivity to detail. Moreover, the fact that the child was present, looking and listening, enabled her to internalize the event, a necessary component of transforming the writing process into more than a mere exercise.
As a poet-in-education, I have been passing along Rodin-like advice to children “This evening, sit outside and watch the sunset. What does it remind you of? What does it smell like? Write a poem about your ideas while you watch the sun fall behind the mountains.” As a result I receive poems describing the sun on the horizon “quiet as a pumpkin sitting in my backyard or “slipping away like someone turning off a lamp in the late evening.” A first-grade boy, whose attention had been diverted by a rainbow, handed me this short poem:
What is a rainbow? Sometimes
I think it is a beautiful bracelet
That turns on a girl’s wrist.
-Rick Lee Robins
The beauty of this poem lies not only in the product, but also in the process; the child did not simply follow the “assignment” in writing about a subject, but rather gave himself over to the few brief moments of the rainbow’s sudden appearance. He was “looking in the purest sense, without the self-consciousness that sees the object or occurrence as homework, without that myopic vision which blurs the possibilities awaiting the peripheral vision of the imagination.
Beyond asking children to observe and write outside the classroom, I have been taking them on what I call “poetry field trips” to meadows and canyons, migratory bird sanctuaries, aviaries, farms, city parks, even cemeteries. The decision on a location could be connected to a current geography, science or social studies unit, or best, could be simply contingent and spontaneous. But regardless of the relationship to the curriculum, it is perception and the act of writing that are integral to the awakening of language.
Early one fall morning I arrived with a group of fifth graders at Utah’s Bear River Bird Refuge, one of the country’s largest sanctuaries on the Pacific Flyway. The sun was still low in the east as shadows of cattails lengthened across the narrow road through the river channels. As we began the twelve-mile auto tour through tall reeds, the children, having spent much of the commuting time consulting various field guides and wagering over who could spot the most species of birds, suddenly quieted in the wild beauty of the place.
In preparation for the experience, I had suggested that they practice looking and wondering the way Walt Whitman did when a child brought him a clump of grass, and I recited parts of Whitman’s poem for them:
A child said What is the Grass? Fetching it to me
With full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,
Out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancers designedly dropt,
…
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the
Produced babe of the vegetation.
…
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
-from Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (from “Song of Myself” section 6)
Although they all readily agreed that the last image was “weird,” they were, nevertheless, enchanted by its mystery and haunting sense of beauty. *I recited that line in a lower, reverential tone of voice which lent to the ambivalence and left them wondering at its openendedness). They like the way Whitman initially confessed his helplessness in satisfying the child’s curiosity and then enumerated the various “answers.” I reminded them that the poems they would write about the birds would not rhyme, explaining that always trying to find a rhyming word often cuts off the flow of their ideas and feelings. The Whitman poem was a good example, filled as it is with its playful exploration while moving in tune with the natural rhythm of the human voice. It was also an inspiring model for a new way of looking and imagining. As we drove deeper into the refuge, the boy who had been reciting the familiar nonsense about “the pelican —his beak holds more than his belly can,” pulled his tablet and pencil out of his backpack while watching a flock of magnificent birds descending a hundred yards away and began his poem: “Pelicans resting like huge white clouds on the blue river…” I sense we were on our way.
One girl, convinced that there were no birds more wonderful than the whistling swans, composed this gracefully tangled mixture of images:
They float like leaves over the river,
Like crowned kings, but different in ways—
Their long necks resemble arches
That have been standing for thousands of years.
–DeAnn Perkins
Besides capturing the majesty of swans in “crowned kings,” she unconsciously unfolds her thinking process, making it part of the movement of the poem as she pauses with “but different in ways—” and then works out the association of swans with arches. The association was real for her, since she had lived as a very young child in southern Utah near the Arches rock formations. The sight of swans had evoked that childhood world which she transformed into a magical kingdom in her poem.
All the children were overwhelmed by the wide variety of bird life, but one boy was particularly charmed by the snowy egret’s alternating displays of stately and comic posturing. His poem evolved into a “candid camera” clip of what he found to be the bird’s human-like quirks of vanity:
THE QUESTION MARK
The snowy egret flaps his wings once
Or twice, to show his pride. But
When a noise comes near, he pokes
His head up out of the water
Like a question mark.
–James Fairbanks
It was unmistakable that observing the birds intensified the children’s pleasure in writing about them. They clearly wanted to write and read their poems as the went along. The experience was similar to coming upon a secret and longing to tell it to someone who would also find delight in the excitement and wonder of it all. Their poems were spontaneous celebrations of being in this landscape of strange and wonderful birds, not written assignments after the fact.
Ultimately, the “secret” children stumble upon in writing poetry is an inner landscape, that realm of language (a place all their own) in which they can wander about and conceptualize the world in such a way that trying to communicate where they have been requires a new way of speaking. Moreover, the accumulated experiences of reading and writing outside the classroom can encourage a habit of spontaneity among children. The next poem, in which the young writer saved the breathtaking moments of watching a Cooper’s hawk devour its prey in her yard, is an example of this spontaneous writing:
THE HAWK IN MY YARD
The hawk comes in
on silent wings
and perches high atop
the old bare-branched tree.
His piercing beak pokes
his dead prey
and little sparrow features
fall to the ground.
He sits with his back to me
and, with a wary eye,
turns his head
to watch
over his shoulder,
then shifts his feet
and ruffles his feathers
as the cold night air draws near.
–Allison Prescott
The writer just happened to be outside when the hawk came in “on silent wings.” Her poem reads like an eyewitness account by a reporter at the scene of a mysterious event, and her last line, “as the cold night air draws near,” leaves us shivering with her in the darkening yard filled with the hawk’s awesome presence. Also, this tactile ending of the poem points to the fact that once the wonder of looking and seeing is encouraged, the other senses seem to open naturally as we allow the daily events of our lives to penetrate the shell of routine.
With the same group of fifth-graders I led another poetry field trip to a canyon just a few miles outside of Salt Lake City. It was a weekday morning, and, as I had expected, we found ourselves alone on the canyon trail. Alone, that is, with aspens and pines, hawksbeard, lupine, and perhaps a dozen other newly opened, wild flowering plants.Each child had access to booklets on the regional wildflowers and had already thumbed through the pages filled with color photos of variegated flower accompanied by their “wild” names: Rose Pussy Toes, Goatsbeard, Prairie Rocket, Yellow Monkey Flower, Creeping Barberry… The names were enough to excite their imaginative instincts.
Before going off on the search, we gathered together and I read them a poem by Denise Levertov in which she speaks of tulips “becoming wings/ears of the wind/jackrabbits rolling their eyes…”
Rarely do I ask children to write without first reading them a poem or two from selections of classical or contemporary poetry. Doing this results in the stimulation of ideas and exposure to the various ways language can be explored. I ask them to recall favorite lines and to tell why they suppose the poet chows a particular word out of so many possibilities. This habit invokes a necessary attentiveness to language and consequently to careful writing.
The Levertov model was the right choice. Its associations broadened the list of exotic names the children had learned in the field guides, and its last stanza established the perfect mood: “some petals fall/with that sound one/listens for.”
These last words drifted off in the cool mountain air, and so did the children, quietly, as if listening for the flowers. One by returned, after sitting for a while beside a wild rose, with his poem:
THE WILD ROSE
High in the silent forest
a wild rose sits, in its center
a harmless sun rests. Its petals
are wings of a baby chick.
Its leaves are hands waving goodbye.
–Adam Lewis
The delicacy of language and imagery parallels the fragility of the rose. “A harmless sun” is a wonderful metaphor for the flower’s sun-like stamens. And the las image in which leaves are seen as “hands waving goodbye” suggests the transience of all living things, not only of the flower. These kinds of insight come from the children when we gather again to share our poems. “It makes the flower seem like a person who’s going somewhere. Maybe not coming back for a long time,” one child thought. Some children affirm the idea while others volunteer new perspectives, and the writer listens, sometimes shyly, mostly pleased, and often happily surprised by his or her poem.
Commenting on each other’s work, especially outside the classroom environment, creates a unique communal experience and noncompetitive atmosphere in which children learn things about themselves and the world that they never considered before. And what better place to write and read about a wild rose than in the mountains on a spring morning while its fragrance mingles with the smells of pine and canyon life?
The following poem approaches that place in poetry where the barriers between thought and speech dissolve into simple acts of praise:
SHOWY GREEN GENTIAN
What are you,
a falling start,
or hidden fire growing
quietly by yourself?
Showy Green Gentian,
What a beautiful name!
–Rosemary Fairbanks
The effortless conversational tone, so spontaneous and direct, reveals an intimacy with the subject which the young writer might not have achieved at her desk by simply looking at a wildflower picture. It also accents the personal impact of the observing-writing process that keeps children connected to what is most human in themselves and in their perceptual relationship with their environment.
The idea of “poetry field trips” does not imply that creative writing cannot happen in the classroom, for imagination can be stirred in any environment. But the imagination relies on senses not dulled by routine, by schedules, or by school bells that move us so quickly from one activity to another that we no longer hear them.
# # #
Lorraine Ferra was born and raised in Vallejo, California, a seaport on the east side of the San Francisco Bay. She was a nun for seven years in a community in Fremont, California, where she majored in theology and education and taught in elementary and secondary schools.
After leaving the convent, she lived for several years in Salt Lake City, pursuing seminars in modern and contemporary poetry and creative writing under the directorship of Robert Mezey at the University of Utah.
Her poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies since 1976, and some are collected in Eating Bread (Kuhn Spit Press, 1994) and What The Silence Might Say (One-Crow-Dancing Books, 2012).
Her creative writing book, A Crow Doesn’t Need A Shadow: A Guide To Writing Poetry From Nature (Peregrine Smith Books, 1994) has been endorsed by the National Council of Teachers of English.
Ferra is a recipient of a Utah Arts Council Award in Poetry and a Westigan Poetry Award selected by John Haines.
She has worked extensively for many years as a poet-in-residence with various state arts programs across the country and, since 2002, through the Skagit River Poetry Foundation in La Conner, WA.
Lorraine and her spouse, Deborah Trent, have lived for twenty-three years in Port Townsend, WA.
Integrating Place-based EE, Literacy, and the Performing Arts
Staging Nature
Integrating Place-based Environmental Education, Literacy, and the Performing Arts
by Regine Randall, Rebecca Edmondson, and MaryAnne Young
“Teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher!”
Such a cry is likely to get any educator’s attention—and quickly. Yet, this repetitive call is not coming from a child but, rather, an ovenbird whose common breeding territory includes Acadia National Park in Maine. In a unique collaboration supported by a regional instructional grant, teachers Rebecca Edmondson and MaryAnne Young at Conners Emerson School in Bar Harbor, Maine—the primary gateway for Acadia—developed a musical to integrate multiple elements of the state’s Kindergarten–Grade 5 curriculum while also helping children to take notice of the very special place where they live.
Creating the musical Plant Kindness and Gather Love gave the students at Conners Emerson, as well as the communities on Mount Desert Island, an opportunity to celebrate the 2016 centennial of Acadia National Park and the bicentennial of Maine in 2020. Plant Kindness and Gather Love, however, was much more than that: it served as a much-needed model for creative teaching where learning objectives incorporate important foundational skills with efforts going well beyond screens or a brick and mortar building to raise children’s awareness of the world around them.
The seed of an idea takes root
Acadia National Park draws several million visitors from across the world every year. Yet, Edmondson and Young wondered how well students at Conners Emerson really knew what was in their own backyard? Having collaborated frequently and over time to blend language arts with music, Edmondson and Young observed that this integrated approach had a consistently positive impact on student learning and engagement. Young had a regular practice of sharing books with children in which the lyrics of a song were, in fact, the entire narrative of the story. With books in hand, the students then sought out Edmondson’s help in learning the songs. Singing the text breathed new life into traditional read-alouds. With this in mind, Edmondson realized that she and Young could adapt the same approach beyond a single book or skill (e.g. alphabet learning) to create an original story about Acadia. As noted earlier, the project coincided with celebrations of the centennial of Acadia and the bicentennial of Maine but also tapped into traditional academic subjects and literacy standards. Raising awareness of the park’s natural diversity through the musical was simply one more opportunity for Edmondson and Young to amplify what could be discovered within Acadia but also a chance to join with park associates in highlighting stewardship through family-friendly conservation practices.
Centuries ago, philosophers Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Friedrich Froebel argued that the best education occurred when children learned with the head, heart, and hands through play (McKenna, 2010; Tracey & Morrow 2012). Plant Kindness & Gather Love became a manifestation, quite literally, of Unfoldment Theory where teachers provided the necessary support for the children’s play (Prochner, 2021). Moreover, Edmondson and Young believed that such a musical would help children as young as kindergarten begin to see themselves as stewards of the earth because coming to love a place foments a desire to know and protect it (North American Association for Environmental Education [NAAEE], 2016). Despite the Herculean effort required to launch any school production, the excitement and pleasure embedded in this creative endeavor optimized learning for students and teachers alike while also forging a stronger and more memorable connection to the natural world. What makes the work unique is that their younger students did not need to wait until middle or high school to “envision knowledge” because this collaboration gave them the opportunity to be actors in sharing what they learned with a community that may or may not have known the same content (Langer, 2011).
From root to branch
Plant Kindness and Gather Love developed into a forty-minute musical with ten original songs written, arranged, and choreographed by Young and Edmondson with parts for fifteen characters. In the planning stage, Young and Edmondson brainstormed ideas for the musical with the Acadia National Park (ANP) Education Coordinator, Katie Petri, as well as other ANP associates. The Park Service went on to provide material support for the production in the form of Junior Ranger hats. The goal of the musical was to expand the venues through which children learned environmental content specific to Acadia and Mt. Desert Island. Instructional activities that supported the production of the musical ranged from students sketching and labeling wildflowers (where they also learned about the Fibonacci sequence) to discussing and illustrating the dramatic seasonal changes in Acadia to determining the components of stewardship and encouraging that we all act upon them. Such endeavors help introduce children, especially those in kindergarten and the primary grades, to all the park has to offer since more formal outdoor education programs (e.g., Young Birder, Schoodic Adventure) often begin a bit later, typically around age ten or fourth grade.
Interest in the musical spread throughout the school and the larger community. Locally, the art teacher helped with scenery and displays, a local greenhouse donated flowering plants and foliage, and parents constructed costumes. To help other teachers throughout the state and New England consider similar projects, Petrie organized a teacher workshop at the Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park based on Plant Kindness and Gather Love as a follow up to performances in Bar Harbor, Maine. Additional workshops on the musical were offered at the Maine Music Educators Association Conference and the Maine Environmental Education Association Conference. Most notably, a copy of Plant Kindness and Gather Love went to Washington DC to be placed on Senator Susan Collins’ reception room table along with other children’s books by Maine authors.
Making music
The songs within the musical Plant Kindness and Gather Love moved from broad concepts to specific ideas. In “Nature Lover,” the introduction began with a simple request: step outside. Jason Mraz had expressed this same sentiment years earlier in a clever rearrangement of his smash pop hit, “I’m Yours” where, during his performance of “Outdoors” on Sesame Street, he sings about the good feeling we get when we’re no longer “trapped between the walls and underneath the ceiling” (Sesame Street, 2009). Edmondson and Young took a similar approach by using song to inspire students to explore, but Acadia was the place to where children were taking a “close look or commanding view.” Only through experiencing the sights, feelings, sounds, and wanderings in a place like Acadia can they promote the desire, as Jason Mraz also reminded us, that “all of nature deserves to be loved, loved, loved, loved, loved” In the musical, a “nature lover” may be one who goes on to identify birds in Acadia by their unique calls or one who takes the initiative necessary to lead for an environmentally literate citizenry as made manifest by Maine’s motto of “Dirigo” (“I lead” or “I direct”).
Thinking, seeing, listening, learning, dancing, singing
Plant Kindness and Gather Love integrated content to develop higher-order thinking skills in identification, comparison/contrast, mapping, synthesis, and representation. Typically, the focus on higher-order thinking characterizes learning objectives in grades six to twelve when basic academic skills are assumed to be more fully developed (Zwiers, 2004). Yet, as Johns and Lenski (2014) note, learning anything requires that we can recognize something for what it is and also know what it is not. Edmondson and Young capitalized on this principle in their musical. For instance, the tempo of the song “Beacon Bills” is allegro (brisk) and includes the calls of no less than ten birds found in the park. Children become acclimated to a “prima donna” cardinal calling “purty, purty, purty” whereas a chestnut-sided warbler is “pleased, pleased, pleased to meet cha.” What is significant here is that students come to know things not through sight or seatwork alone. They can also learn by seeing what gets left behind: tracks, nests, scents, even scat! Not actually seeing but still knowing is the essence of inferential reasoning.
Another song in Plant Kindness and Gather Love has children singing of the wildflowers in Acadia. This scene incorporates movement because the children who play daisies, violets, bachelor buttons, British soldiers, foxgloves, and Johnny jump-ups are “dancing in the breeze” along the sea. Movement can solidify content in long-term memory, and we see this technique in teaching letters through air writing as well as during exercised where children tap out sounds or clap to count syllables (Madan & Singhal, 2012). That said, imagining that the wind off the Gulf of Maine made you sway in the same way as Queen Anne’s lace can fuse children’s personal expression with their connection to nature.
Children performing as flowers may be charming as well as kinesthetic, but it did not veil the very pointed message contained in the refrain. As the “flowers” came together in a true “kindergarten,” they sang out “Don’t pick me” over and over. Children’s growing sense of the natural world develops alongside their growing sense of themselves, as well as others, in the world. By leaving flowers to bloom and go to seed, we are making a promise to those who will come upon them in the next season that they play a vital role in the park ecosystem in addition to being a pleasure we share (Harlan & Rivkin, 2008). Of course, not all plants are equal, and such a song helps elementary science teachers also discuss the concepts of invasive species such as purple loosestrife in the park.
More on reading and writing Acadia
Too often and in many schools, reading and writing activities in the primary grades are taught as discrete skills that divorce them from other content (Gabriel, 2013). With science of reading initiatives, this practice may become even more entrenched with the focus on content area reading and writing not gaining momentum until upper elementary or middle school when curriculum more often reflects scheduling constraints, staffing, or building organization rather than a pedagogical decision (Fullan et al., 2018). Yet, the musical and what children learned about Acadia easily lead to a variety of literacy activities that keep nature and content learning at the fore. For example, children who are developing phonological awareness, an important precursor to skilled reading, can participate in activities where they see pictures of different birds (such as owl, seagull, chickadee), name the bird, and then stomp out the number of syllables they hear in the name. In a word identification lesson focusing on the onset (letter or letters making the initial consonant sound, blend, or digraph) and rime (the vowel that follows and remaining letters) of one syllable words, choosing a word from one of the songs (e.g., “pick” from the refrain “Don’t Pick Me!” in “Wildflowers of Acadia”) so that children can change the first letter(s) to form other words strongly supports decoding and spelling development (tick, quick, stick, chick, etc.). Since students are likely to have been introduced to this vocabulary, the words are easier to decode for two reasons: 1) they are within the same phonetic word family, and 2) they have become part of students’ receptive and expressive language used when learning about Acadia.
Such an activity moves from word and spelling patterns to an opportunity to record salient observations based on what happens in the park. For instance, “Tuck your pants into your socks to avoid tick bites.” Another might be “With a quick dive, a loon snatches a fish.” Or, “Adding a branch here and a little stick there, beavers keep their dam in good shape.” Finally, “Trails to Jordan, Valley Cove, and Precipice cliffs often close in the spring because peregrine falcons nest there and raise their chicks.” In another spin on word learning, the use of rhyming words such as tea, ski, and tree all contain different graphemes (ea, i, and ee) that are among the letter combinations that “spell” the long /e/ sound. Not only do such activities help children learn phonics concepts and other basic skills, but they are also introducing content specific vocabulary (loon, dam), homonyms (their, there), and usage based on context (nest as a verb). Bridging the observation skills that help children notice the macro and micro details within the natural world strengthens their ability to notice patterns and differences across multiple areas.
Speaking from my own perspective as a teacher educator, I welcome instruction that moves away from over-dependence on workbooks and commercial programs. Teachers who understand the scope and sequence of language development are poised to use any text any day to capitalize on how words work (sounds, spelling, syllables) and the ways we use words to create meaning and show what we know. Writing prompts that simply ask children to record what they see (the waves rolling in at Sand Beach), feel (wind at the top of Cadillac Mountain), or hear (the collision of water and air at Thunder Hole) are always authentic in the sense that responses can change day by day, hour by hour, or minute by minute. In terms of checking understanding of key facts or concepts, students can also complete sentence stems such as:
- Hiking in the woods means….(e.g. you might get bug bites).
- Being a park ranger means…(e.g. you have to be good with the public).
- Loving nature means…(e.g. you are happiest outside).
- Going to Acadia means…(e.g. you are on an island, or you could be on the Schoodic peninsula, or you are in a National Park).
Open-ended sentence stems allow children to generate many different responses with varying level of detail. Such responses can also suggest what we need to study further or better understand. It is a low-risk activity that introduces children to multiple perspectives while also enabling the teacher to identify misconceptions or misinformation (Randall & Marangell, 2018). Further, the sentence stems serve as a launch for extended writing on a self-selected topic of interest to the student. Ultimately, though, Plant Kindness and Gather Love went beyond interdisciplinary cross-pollination: it helped teachers understand how nature and place can re-energize lessons to improve targeted skills, expand our ideas of text to include multimodal materials beyond print (artifacts, audio, digital collections, etc.), and facilitate content learning. Historically, we know what engages learners and creates success; the joy and pleasure that went into imagining, producing, and performing Plant Kindness and Gather Love are the same emotions that motivate any learner to gain important skills, understand content more deeply, achieve more, and seek out new experiences wherever they are (Dewey, 1938; Duke et al., 2021; Gardner, 1999; Rosenblatt, 1938).
Show and share how to care
The musical concluded with an ode to the beauty of the park, which is undeniable and fine as far that goes, but also, more pointedly, with a call to be active in its preservation. The different songs, choreography, and even the costuming in the musical all contributed to creating the sense of wonder that comes from living in proximity to the natural world (Wilson, 1994). The score and lyrics for “Nature Lover” in Plant Kindness and Gather Love sets the stage by encouraging discovery, and the North American Association for Environmental Education (2016) described children as naturally inquisitive because “everything” is worth exploring “with all of the senses” (p. 2). So, exploring is for everyone but, perhaps, it is children’s particular ability to notice “a fish, a beaver, or an otter…a little bird…a white-tailed deer” that can reignite our own interest in using natural places as tableaux for learning.
You, too, may live in an area that has of extraordinary natural beauty and diversity, is near a wonderful park, or, equally important, want to make wherever it is you do live more special in the eyes of children. For instance, Last Stop Market Street by Matt de la Pena and Christian Robinson is a children’s picture book of city life where Nana helps her grandson smell the rain, watch it pool on flower petals, and be a better witness to what’s beautiful in people, places, and things. With this in mind, the success of Plant Kindness and Gather Love may be just the right incentive for you and your colleagues to tell the “lively stories” – in any form, not just musicals – of the places and the inhabitants in your community (van Dooren, 2014).
References
Dewey, John. (1938). Experience and education. Macmillan.
Duke, N. K., Ward, A. E., & Pearson, P. D. (2021). The science of reading comprehension instruction. The Reading Teacher, 74(6), 663-672.
Fullan, M., Quinn, J., & McEachen, J. (2018). Deep learning: Engage the world, change the world. Corwin.
Gabriel, R. (2013). Reading’s non-negotiables: Element of effective reading instruction. Rowman & Littlefied Education.
Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the twenty-first century. Basic Books.
Harlan, J. D., & Rivkin, M. S. (2008). Science experiences for the early childhood years: An integrated affective approach (9th ed.). Pearson.
Johns, J., & Lenski, S. (2014). Improving reading: Strategies, resources, and Common Core connections. Kendall-Hunt.
Langer, J. A. (2011). Envisioning knowledge: Building literacy in the academic disciplines. Teachers College.
Madan, C. R., & Singhal, A.. (2012). Using actions to enhance memory: Effects of enactment, gestures, and exercise on human memory. Frontiers in Psychology, 3(507): 1-4. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00507
McKenna, M. K. (2010). Pestalozzi revisited: Hope and caution for modern education. Journal of Philosophy and History of Education, 60, 121-25.
North American Association for Environmental Education. (2016). Guidelines for excellence: Early childhood environmental education programs. NAAEE. https://cdn.naaee.org/sites/default/files/final_ecee_guidelines_from_chromographics_lo_res.pdf
Prochner, L. (2021). Our proud heritage. Take it outside; A history of nature-based education. NAEYC. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/fall2021/take-it-outside
Randall, R., & Marangell, J. (2018). Changing the narrative: Literacy as sustaining practice in every classroom. Association of Middle Level Education, 6(2), 10-12. https://www.amle.org/BrowsebyTopic/WhatsNew/WNDet/TabId/270/ArtMID/888/ArticleID/918/Changing-the-Narrative.aspx
Rosenblatt, L. (1938). Literature as exploration. Appleton-Century.
Sesame Street. (2009, December 18). Outdoors with Jason Mraz [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrqF7yD10Bo&ab_channel=SesameStreet
Tracey, D. H., & Morrow, L. M. (2012). Lenses on reading: An introduction to theories and models (2nd ed.). Guilford.
van Dooren, T. (2014). Flight ways. Columbia University Press.
Wilson, R. (1994). Environmental education at the early childhood level. North American Association for Environmental Education.
Zwiers, J. (2004). Developing academic thinking skills in grades 6–12: A handbook of multiple intelligence activities. International Reading Association.
Authors
Régine Randall, PhD, is a professor in Curriculum and Learning at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) in New Haven, Connecticut where she teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses in education. Her teaching and research interests allow for regional collaboration with K-12 educators on literacy instruction and assessment, student engagement, and best practices in environmental and agricultural education. With roots in Maine, Régine is an avid hiker and biker throughout New England and the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.
Rebecca Edmondson is a composer, conductor, clinician who has taught in both public and private schools in Maine and Pennsylvania for the past forty years. Her school music program was one of 12 in the country designated as a Model Music Education Program, and her writing has appeared in the American String Teacher. In addition to winning composition competitions, Rebecca was named the 2022 Maine’s Hancock County Teacher of the Year. She continues to nurture the love of learning through music and developing children’s books. All this has prepared her to become Liam and Finn’s Grammy.
MaryAnne Young is a lifetime resident of coastal Maine. She comes from a large family tree of educators and authors. After more than 38 years as an educator MaryAnne retired from Conners Emerson School. She engages with young learners as a substitute teacher and continues to write poetry and story songs. MaryAnne is inspired by the woods, waters and wildlife that surround the place she calls home. Her most joyful lifetime achievement is being a proud Mimi to Cameron and Maya…the new generation of Nature Lovers!A
Focusing on local environmental issues
Building Environmental Education from Community Resources
Sophie Diliberti, Justin Hougham, Brad Bessler, and Brooke Bellmar
ocusing on specific aspects of learners’ local context can increase their engagement in environmental education. One way for educators to pinpoint a community’s specific environmental circumstances is by adapting existing locally focused sustainability resources. After establishing the environmental issues that are relevant to the community, educators can maximize the geographic benefit of a local focus by incorporating geographic awareness and in-person exploration into their curriculum. This paper examines a case study in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: a lesson plan which adapts existing environmental education resources to pinpoint the local issue of stormwater management. The lesson also uses a StoryMap and walking tour to foster geographic awareness.
Community-specific issues: Strategies for educators to produce a more local focus.
Too often, environmental education focuses on issues that are removed from students’ lived experiences. Although melting icebergs and starving polar bears are compelling images, students must recognize that many types of environmental problems–and solutions–occur right in their backyards. Localized environmental education has been shown to be effective at increasing educational outcomes and sustainable behavior within communities (Ardoin, 2020, Fisman, 2010). Using specific community context ensures that the content of the lesson will be relevant to the lives of the students. While a field trip to a zoo or state park can certainly be interesting, knowledge about the environmental issues in places where students actually live provides a different kind of educational value.
Many communities have existing environmental outreach materials regarding specific local issues. Whether they come from university extension divisions, grassroots political organizations, or other local sources, these materials reveal issues that are important for community members to understand. Even if they are too young to understand those exact resources, students deserve this community knowledge, so the resources are worth adapting for them to consume.
Making the most of a place-specific focus by incorporating maps and in-person exploration.
Assuming a lesson plan centers around the specific context of the school and community, the next step is to maximize those benefits by explicitly focusing on geographic awareness and spatial reasoning in the lesson plan.
Using maps can increase spatial awareness and embodied learning for students, making maps a good starting point to accomplish this goal (Taylor, 2019). StoryMaps, a web-based Esri software which allows the user to incorporate maps, legends, text, photos, and videos into a spatial narrative, can provide a great resource for educators looking to incorporate maps into their curriculums. The interactive nature of a StoryMap allows students to engage with the geography of where they live and has been proven to increase geographic awareness (Purwanto et al., 2022).
Another way to harness the benefits of place-specific education is to provide opportunities for students to get outside and explore. In-person tours can be more productive if students have already learned the background of what they are exploring through a StoryMap or similar resource. Their questions will likely be less superficial after learning the basic context in the classroom.
Case study background: Milwaukee and green infrastructure.
Milwaukee is a city lucky to be situated at the confluence of three rivers and Lake Michigan. The city relies heavily on these bodies of water for drinking water, industry, transportation, and recreation, and they must be stewarded carefully to ensure long-term health. The city’s combined sewer system, which cleans wastewater and stormwater at the same time, is the foundation of many of its stormwater management challenges. The combined sewer system is useful most of the time: it filters pollutants out of runoff before releasing the stormwater into the lake. However, during some major storm events, the treatment plant receives too much water and experiences an overflow. During an overflow, the plant is forced to release unfiltered wastewater and stormwater into the lake. To avoid sewer overflows during storms, the city must minimize the amount of water that reaches the sewer system in the first place.
Milwaukee’s water-rich environment comes with essential benefits and difficult challenges.
A Milwaukee sewer overflow in 2010.
Green infrastructure (GI) is any modification to a built environment that mimics natural systems to provide some type of ecosystem service. GI is often applied to stormwater management, where it harnesses natural systems to filter and slow down water right where it falls instead of funneling it directly into sewer systems. Native plants with deep roots, rain gardens, bioswales, and rain barrels are all examples of GI used for stormwater management. The Village of Shorewood, a Milwaukee suburb that lies between the Milwaukee River and Lake Michigan, has implemented many beneficial GI projects as a response to its uniquely water-rich location and subsequent stormwater management issues.
Creating a map and walking tour for the Village of Shorewood.
In August of 2023, UW-Madison Extension worked with the Village to create a StoryMap that listed all the GI in the village (called “Shorewood’s Water Walk”). “Shorewood’s Water Walk” was useful in many ways but lacked a clear audience or use-case. This map is still linked on the village website, but has no designated users or associated events. You can find this this map here: https://arcg.is/15rmf90
In the summer of 2024, I redesigned “Shorewood’s Water Walk” so it could be used by local elementary schools. The new lesson plan, titled “Where Does My Water Go? Exploring the Shorewood Watershed,” includes a more targeted StoryMap and two walking tours, one that starts from each elementary school in the district. Instead of living on the village website, the new StoryMap and walking tours would go into the curriculum of local teachers to educate students about a very specific sustainability issue in their community. You can find this 2024 map here: https://arcg.is/10HvTX
The lesson’s StoryMap begins with a section called Shorewood’s Water History. This section uses pictures and diagrams to explain some key ways Indigenous water and land management differed from the city’s current stormwater management and combined sewer system. This section includes the interactive slider displayed below, which can be moved side-to-side to allow students to visualize temporal differences in state geography and Indigenous land.
An interactive sliding map to visualize Indigenous land before European colonizers arrived compared to in the present day.
Shorewood’s Water History also introduces the significance of the city’s combined sewer system and explains the concept of a watershed, which may be new to students using the map,
The map at the end of the StoryMap gives the students the opportunity to practice identifying GI before they leave the classroom to explore examples in the real world.
In the next section–Types of Green Infrastructure–the map provides picture-heavy identification and categorization tools for GI, using, when possible, pictures directly from examples in the village. This system of categorization is designed to give students the tools to identify and understand GI in the village. It uses categories designed by the Center for Neighborhood Technology. The image below captures an example of one of the types of GI included in the StoryMap.
Permeable pavement is one of nine types of GI that students will learn to identify from the StoryMap.
The StoryMap ends with a section called Identifying GI in Shorewood: an interactive map which shows different types of GI throughout the village. This adds geographic literacy in an interactive form, as students can zoom and click around the map. It also incorporates an application of the lesson’s content by asking students to identify what type of GI is located at each spot based on a picture and short description.
This one-mile walking tour demonstrates different types of GI located close to the elementary school.
The second part of the lesson plan is a walking tour designed to be led by the teacher after the students have spent time interacting with the StoryMap. The walking tour helps contextualize the StoryMap’s information in the real world, cementing it more firmly in the students’ understanding. The StoryMap, completed before the walking tour, should give the students enough context to ask more insightful questions, allowing the tour to focus on curious investigation rather than basic concepts.
Conclusion
Every community has climate and sustainability-related problems, needs, and solutions. From tree cover to invasive species to food sovereignty to public transportation, community awareness of these issues has the potential to create and manage environmental solutions. Toomey (2016) frames conservation as “…a social process that engages science, not a scientific process that engages society,” (p. 623) highlighting the importance of community outreach and education.
“Where Does My Water Go?” was initially a response to this need–an attempt to clarify and improve the engagement of the old StoryMap, “Shorewood’s Water Walk,” by narrowing its intended audience to elementary-aged students. During this process, it became apparent that adapting existing community resources can also be useful for environmental educators. It ensures relevance and contextual engagement for students, as well as provoking community engagement around important issues.
This lesson plan demonstrates two useful practices for creating environmental education lesson plans. First, it creates specificity and place-based relevance in district education by focusing on an environmental issue that is uniquely important to the area. Second, it maximizes that local focus by incorporating a map-based narrative (the StoryMap) and in-person exploration (the walking tour). These practices aim to spark student inquiry and curiosity.
In order to encourage even more active participation in the lesson, the ideal extension of this project would ask students to help create the StoryMap themselves. The co-generation of knowledge that this process could provide would keep students engaged and provide a unique opportunity to synthesize their lived experiences with information they learn from other sources.
Sources
Ardoin, N.M., Bowers, A.W., Gaillard, E. (2020). Environmental education outcomes for conservation: A systematic review. Biological Conservation, Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108224
Bodzin, Alec M. “Integrating Instructional Technologies in a local watershed investigation with Urban Elementary Learners.” The Journal of Environmental Education, vol. 39, no. 2, Jan. 2010, pp. 47–58, https://doi.org/10.3200/joee.39.2.47-58.
Fisman, Lianne. “The effects of local learning on environmental awareness in children: An empirical investigation.” The Journal of Environmental Education, vol. 36, no. 3, Apr. 2005, pp. 39–50, https://doi.org/10.3200/joee.36.3.39-50.
Niemiec, R. M., N. M. Ardoin, C. B. Wharton, and G. P. Asner. 2016. Motivating residents to combat invasive species on private lands: social norms and community reciprocity. Ecology and Society 21(2):30. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08362-210230
Taylor, K. H. (2017). Learning Along Lines: Locative Literacies for Reading and Writing the City. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 26(4), 533–574. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48541101
Toomey, A.H., Knight, A.T. (2016). Navigating the Space between Research and Implementation in Conservation. Conservation letters. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12315
Purwanto, P., Astuti, I. S., Hartono, R., & Oraby, G. A. (2022). ArcGIS story maps in improving teachers’ geography awareness. Jurnal Pendidikan Geografi, 27(2), 206–218. https://doi.org/10.17977/um017v27i22022p206-218
Images
[Digital Map] Milwaukee Estuary AOC Boundary. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, City of Milwaukee, WI, Milwaukee County Land Info, Esri, HERE, Garmin, SafeGraph, METI/NASA, USGS, EPA, NPS, USDA. https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/GreatLakes/Milwaukee.html
Was, M. (2010). [Photograph]. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. https://archive.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/getting-milwaukees-rivers-to-meet-state-water-quality-standards-wont-be-easy-b9948758z1-262245161.html
[Digital Map]. Milwaukee Public Museum. https://www.mpm.edu/educators/wirp/nations
[Digital Map]. Wisconsin Tribal Nations. Travel Wisconsin. https://www.travelwisconsin.com/article/native-culture/native-american-tribes-in-wisconsin
[Digital Image]. Earth.com. https://www.earth.com/earthpedia-articles/what-is-a-watershed-am-i-in-one/
Prostak, C. Charted Territory [basemap]. Esri. July 9, 2024. (July 2, 2024).
Author bio
Sophie Diliberti is an undergraduate at Macalester College. She is working in watershed education and outreach with the UW-Madison Division of Extension.
Field-based Research
How to Design Field-based Research Experiences
By Molly L. Sultany, msultany@nwacademy.org
High School Teacher, Northwest Academy, Portland, Oregon
Navigating Unchartered Waters
How can educators help students feel more connected to the outdoors while engaging with the work of research scientists? Scientific research may feel elusive to high school students, an unknown world hidden behind a technical paper, a puzzling chi-square analysis, or a p-value waiting to be deciphered. Yet, participating in field-based research may improve students’ intrinsic motivation, build resiliency, and enhance their sense of personal agency and responsibility (Marley et. al, 2022). I believe that teaching students outdoors introduces novelty and authentic learning opportunities into an existing science curriculum (Behrendt & Franklin, 2014). In addition, field-based research experiences provide a compelling alternative to a digitally dominated learning environment, often inundated with electronic media. Benefits to students’ well-being may include a longer attention span, multi-sensory experiences, deeper context for learning, a sense of comradery and feelings of community belonging, as well as reduced stress and fewer signs of ADHD (Grimshaw et. al, 2016). Overall, introducing a fieldwork component to existing curriculum may enhance student engagement, improve critical thinking, and foster positive interpersonal skills.
At our field site in Cannon Beach, Ofregon, students measured 3,807 ochre sea stars with 54 total search hours.
How to Engage Students in Field-based Research Projects?
· Build Your Professional Network: Connect with other educators at your school, district, or area interested in developing student-led research projects. Attend professional development opportunities for science education.
· Partner with Local Non-Profit Organizations: Become a member of regional and national non-profit groups dedicated to environmental conservation. This may provide opportunities for volunteering where you can meet like-minded individuals and build lasting community connections to enhance your understanding of local environmental issues.
· Lead with Student Interests: Brainstorm ideas for research projects with students. Start with a field trip to a nearby park, green space, or natural habitat. Find ways to discuss local conservation issues as part of your curriculum. Be inspired by students’ own personal interests, curiosity, and inquiry.
· Create a Science Lunch & Learn Program: Invite STEM professionals from your school community or region to give a presentation during the lunch hour for students about science career pathways, current research, or ways to become involved with the larger scientific community.
· Video Chat with a Scientist: Get inspired by programs offered through NASA, NOAA, and the Nautilus Live: Ocean Exploration Trust to connect students virtually to scientists to learn more about their research.
Wearing hip waders and waterproof gloves, Northwest Academy students measured ochre sea star (Pisaster ochraceus) size classes, and observed signs of sea star wasting syndrome.
Local Spotlight: Diack Ecology Education Program
After attending an Oregon Science Teachers’ Association (OSTA) meeting, I learned about the inspiring work of the Diack Ecology Education Program. This unique program provides Oregon educators with financial support and pedagogical resources through grants, workshops, and programming. Their goal is to provide guidance for teachers to develop effective student-centered, field-based science inquiry experiences. I admire the program’s values: commitment to local stewardship, opportunities for student leadership and decision-making, and an emphasis on outdoor experiential learning. Through their website (https://www.diackecology.org/), teachers can apply to attend bi-annual workshops taught by experienced science educators, where they learn how to construct a science inquiry project centered on local field work. The Diack program strives to help teachers develop greater scientific literacy and build civic engagement on themes related to local ecology, natural history, and environmental science.
Over the past ten years, the Diack Ecology Education Program has funded multiple student research projects at Northwest Academy, an independent high school in Portland, Oregon. Participation in this program has connected my high school students to the larger scientific community, including The Johnson Creek Watershed Council, Portland State University, U.S. Stockholm Junior Water Prize Conference, and the Oregon Environmental Science Summit where students had the opportunity to present their research in person to Dr. Jane Goodall. These experiences have transformed our high school science research program, and introduced students to the wonder, joy, and complexity of the natural world. Past projects have included a study of local stream health (2014), the role of diatoms as indicators of water quality (2015), and microplastics in beach sand (2017). Our most recent project (2022) had a dual focus on how marine biota respond to environmental change by studying the prevalence of sea-star wasting syndrome in ochre sea stars (Pisaster ochraceus) and documenting nesting success of cormorants during the summer breeding season.
Benefits to Students
After our field research at the Oregon Coast in 2022, I learned that participating in field research has many direct benefits to adolescents, with transformative effects on socio-emotional learning, scientific literacy, and the development of a civic identity. By taking part in challenging field tasks in an unpredictable outdoor environment, students may develop an improved positive self-concept and increased self-esteem, seeing themselves as capable learners. One of my students reflected: “I learned that I have much more patience that I give myself credit for, and that I am also good at paying attention to details when I am observing.” In addition to these changes in self-perception, I believe there is value in helping students see science in action beyond textbook learning. This may, in turn, deepen students’ respect for the natural world. The student leader of our field team shared: “I learned about the shocking effects of sea star wasting syndrome, and what this damage for the sea star population could mean for the rocky intertidal ecosystem. With little prior knowledge of the effects of climate change or any practical interactions with climate change, seeing the effects of sea star wasting syndrome on the sea stars was immediately eye-opening.”
Lastly, participating in a science project with relevance to a region may strengthen students’ civic identity and build meaningful connections with their local community. It may also help students cultivate a personal connection with the natural world. While exploring the tidepools, each field day brought novel discoveries, keen observations, and many more scientific questions. By the end of our project, my students had become fiercely protective of our beach field site, which hosted incredibly diverse rocky intertidal habitat home to invertebrates, from crabs to chitons. One of my students shared: “walking through the sea cave at the tidepools and seeing all the biodiversity, from sea stars to isopods, was my favorite part of fieldwork. I want people to treat the world around us with respect. Interacting with the public and teaching them about this small part of marine conservation was meaningful and important to me.” This newfound sense of stewardship for the natural world was accompanied by their desire to teach others, share what they had learned, and reinforce proper tidepool etiquette at the beach.
Fostering Teacher Professional Learning Goals
Immersing students in dynamic environmental field research may also benefit educators in terms of curriculum design, pedagogy, and improved content knowledge. Inspired by field experiences with my students, I decided to incorporate themes related to marine biodiversity, ocean conservation, and anthropogenic global climate change into my high school science classes. Fieldwork reinforced the value of fostering creative and critical thinking with a flexible mindset in my approach to science teaching. It emphasized an inquiry model of the scientific method, fostering science process skills from observation to questioning. For many students who participated in fieldwork, this experience led to other opportunities to share their research findings at local science fairs, conferences, and school events. All in all, I believe that participating in field-based research projects will remain a valued tradition for our science program at Northwest Academy.
Acknowledgments
A special thank you to Mike Weddle, from the Diack Ecology Education Program, & Jesse Jones, CoastWatch Program Manager.
Works Cited
• Behrendt M & Franklin T. A review of research on school field trips and their value in education. International Journal of Environmental & Science Education. 2014 9 (10).
• Grimshaw M, Curwen L, Morgan J, Shallcross N, Franklin S, Shallcross D. The benefits of outdoor learning on science teaching. Journal of Emergent Science 2019, 16 (40).
• Marley SA, Siani A, Sims S. Real-life research projects improve student engagement and provide reliable data for academics. Ecol Evol. 2022, 8 (12).