by editor | Sep 1, 2025 | At-risk Youth, Climate Change & Energy, Equity and Inclusion, Indigenous Peoples & Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Language Arts
First-person narratives bring climate change closer to home.
By Lauren G. McClanahan
“So, is her house actually sinking?”
“Yes, Heather, it is.”
“But, that’s so sad! I want to do something about that!”
No doubt my preservice secondary education student, Heather, is familiar with the topic of climate change. Everywhere we look, we see media coverage. But there still seems to be something missing. There still appears to be a disconnect, for my preservice teachers, anyway, between what they read about online and what they see in their day-to-day lives. And this has huge implications for their futures as public school teachers. One way to address this disconnect has been to put a face to the topic of climate change. By connecting all of my “Heathers” to students who live in places where climate change is having actual, observable effects, a topic that was once only theoretical to many of my students becomes real.
Kwigillingok, Alaska, vs. Bellingham, Wash.
My teacher-ed students at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., come from multiple walks of life, are at different points in their educational and working careers, and have different goals for their futures as middle and high school teachers. However, one commonality that my students tend to share is their geography. Most hail from western Washington state—up and down the “I-5” corridor. Take the freeway north, and in 15 minutes, you’re in Canada. A few hours south, and you’ve crossed into Oregon. On a daily basis, my students don’t give much thought to climate change. No doubt, many claim to be “green” through-and-through. They recycle, use compact fluorescent bulbs, and buy local whenever possible. And these efforts are important; but as for the big changes—the catastrophic ones happening in our circumpolar regions—my students just don’t see it. In contrast, the students of Kwigillingok, Alaska, see these changes every day and can document firsthand how their village is changing because of them.
Kwigillingok is a small Yup’ik fishing village in western Alaska that sits along the Bering Sea. With a population of about 400, the residents depend on a subsistence culture to survive, much as they have done for thousands of years. Fishing, hunting, and creating and selling crafts are as integral today as they have been for centuries. However, our warming earth is now threatening that culture.
I began working with the students of “Kwig” several years ago, when one of my former students was hired to teach in the Lower Kuskokwim School District. What started as a simple pen-pal relationship between her high school students and my college students slowly transformed into the project described here. And while the students have changed over the years, the questions that they were asking of one another became more focused, until we decided that the topic of climate change was the main issue that everyone wanted to discuss.
The biggest challenge faced by the residents of Kwig is the melting of the permafrost, that layer of frozen ground that lies just below the earth’s surface and that is supposed to stay frozen year-round. Recently, that permafrost has begun to melt, and as a result, major changes are taking place. Many homes and other structures in the village are beginning to sink, leaning to one side as the permafrost they were built upon begins to shift. In addition to sinking homes, new, invasive species of plants are beginning to take root and grow, which in turn is slowly changing the migratory patterns of big game such as the local musk ox populations. Fishing, too, has been affected by the warming trend, and fish camps have had to relocate depending on the changing location of the fish. These are big changes that can be seen and felt and experienced daily in the lives of Kwig’s high school students. It was these changes that they wanted to tell us about, to tell the future teachers “down there” to share with all of their future students. They wanted to let everyone know that climate change is real and has a face and a name—hence the “First Person Singular” project. This was a project to create a warning for the rest of us, those of us who do not have to prop our houses up with sandbags or who do not have to go hungry due to a lack of fish in our rivers. Or at least not yet.
The “First Person Singular” Project
As mentioned, the relationship between Kwig and WWU began when a former student of mine was hired into the district. I had always been interested in Native cultures and found this to be an opportunity to weave that interest into the literacy classes that I teach. The more the students shared with us about their culture and their harsh, yet beautiful landscape, the more I felt as if I had to visit. In an initial visit, I met with the teachers and students at several village schools. I saw firsthand what the students of this region had to share with my students, not only from a cultural perspective, but also a scientific one as we delved deeper into the issue of climate change and its effect on their culture.
Recently, one of my current students approached me about completing his student teaching internship at the Kwig school. “I just want a very rural, very challenging school setting,” he told me. Well, did I have the place for him! Luckily, my intrepid student would not mind hauling his own water, which is what he would have to do, since many of the buildings in Kwig have no running water. He did, however, have the luxury of a newly installed incinerator toilet in his cabin—preferable to a Honey Bucket. Before he left, my student (a future English teacher) and I had talked about doing a project with his students that would combine disciplines and allow the students’ own voices to be heard. The concept of place-based education, of focusing curriculum on local issues, had been an important part of our university classes, and my student wanted to try it out. He liked the combination of using the local setting as the classroom, and letting his students “direct” their learning—two of the main components of place-based education. So, with his students’ input, a project was decided upon, and I made plans to come up and help facilitate the project after he eased into his new role as student teacher. I figured that another visit would give me an opportunity not only to formally observe my student teacher, but also work in person with this project and these students that I had been thinking about for some time.
Before I traveled to Kwig for the second time, I asked the high school students (with whom I communicated by email) to photograph any evidence of climate change that they could see in their village. Then, once I arrived, my student teacher and I sat down with each student to talk about the photos they had taken. This technique of using “auto-driven photo elicitation” (as it is called in the field of visual studies) proved to be beneficial. Auto-driven photo elicitation is simply when people involved in a research study take their own photographs, and use those photos as the basis for later interviews (Clark, 1999). The photos gave us a starting point—something on which to focus our conversation. Otherwise, I was afraid that the conversation might become too abstract, or even too uncomfortable (seeing as how the students had never met me face-to-face, but only through email). However, by focusing on the photos, we were able to get to the heart of what was important to the students. After all, we were talking about their photos, of evidence of climate change in their village.
After we spent time talking about the photos (individually and as a group), I asked students to pick a favorite photo and write about why it was the best choice to illustrate the effects of climate change. Because we had talked about the photos first, the writing part was easy. They could describe, in detail, why their photos mattered, and why their audience, my preservice teachers, needed to know about them. Then, after they had written their paragraphs, I asked students to read their paragraphs (or parts of their paragraphs) into a digital voice recorder so that we could incorporate their own voices (literally) into our final product. One of the students even volunteered to play the piano so that our project would have a soundtrack.
One of the students photographed a leaning building. He described it this way:
“The world is changing. It’s getting warmer and warmer. Ice is melting everywhere, even underground. The melting of the permafrost causes hills, houses, and other buildings to sink. Permafrost is a section in the ground where everything is frozen. It melts and refreezes around the year, but lately, there has been more melt than freeze. If we don’t do something, we could lose this beautiful land that we lived in for thousands of years, forever.”
He then wrote the same paragraph in his native Yup’ik language, and read them both aloud. This was powerful. Another student photographed seagulls that were hanging around later in the season than usual. She explained that “it’s unusual for them to still be here [in October], which suggests that [the ground] is not as cold as it looks.
Once the paragraphs had been written and recorded, students responded to several prompts that they created themselves, such as, “What is worth preserving in Kwig?” One student responded, “We don’t have a lot of money. We need to stay near the ocean so we can fish. We don’t want to have to move farther and farther back every few years. We can’t leave, but we can’t stay, either.” When asked what message they wanted to send to the preservice teachers in Washington, one student said, “Please understand that what you do down there has a great impact on us up here. Understand that we’re all in this together. Climate change doesn’t just affect polar bears—it affects people, too.”
The project’s final phase was to put our photos, words, and voices into a very short iMovie. The students helped plan the sequencing, and then we put it together. And while the “film” was only four and a half minutes long, it sent a strong message to the preservice teachers it was meant to educate. After viewing the movie, one of my preservice teachers wrote, “Now that I know this—now that I have seen these kids’ faces and heard their stories—I can’t ‘un-know’ it. Now I have to decide what I can do about it, both in my classroom, and in my everyday life.”
Larger Implications
Place-based education, while not a new concept, is particularly well-suited for the inclusion of student voices. With its aim of grounding learning in local phenomena and students’ lived experience (Smith, 2002), it can be easily adapted to fit any number of school curricula. For example, nearly every city or town has local issues that can be studied in greater depth, be they environmental issues (toxic wastewater), social justice issues (migrant workers’ access to health care), or issues dealing with the economy (how city taxes are used to fund local schools). In the case of our project, climate change was an obvious topic for exploration, given our fortunate connection with students in the far North. Plus, the topic fits nicely into the definition of “sustainability education.” Within WWU’s Woodring College of Education, our underlying assumption is that education for sustainability (as opposed to education about sustainability) will result in citizens who are more likely to engage in personal behavior or contribute to public policy decisions in the best interest of the environmental commons and future generations (Nolet, 2009).
Personal Implications
When students take control of their learning, and take control of how that learning can be demonstrated, amazing things can happen. For the Kwig high school students, they learned that they had not only some very important things to say, but also an audience that was receptive to and respectful of their words and ideas. For my preservice teachers, they learned that they are not the experts on everything, and sometimes they have to step aside to let the experts step forward (in this case, the students themselves). This idea of relinquishing power in the classroom can intimidate a new teacher, but it is an important lesson, especially regarding student engagement.
After viewing the high school students’ film, my preservice teachers had a lot to say about place-based education, and how this project connects students to their local communities, and society as a whole. One student commented, “Obviously, the kids in the movie care about what is happening to their homes and land. We need that heart in schools, or what they are learning means nothing.”
Many students also commented on the topic of climate change. “Now I know why I take the time to recycle! It’s not much, but it’s a small step I can take to help preserve the world’s cultures.” Another student said, “Now that I know this—about the challenges facing Kwig due to climate change—I feel obligated to do something about it.” Climate change now has a name and a face. It’s personal.
Similar projects that focus on topics of local concern could be created within other curricula. Any place-based study could benefit from hearing the voices of those most affected. Travel to each place is certainly not mandatory. Using even simple technology such as email or Skype could connect classrooms across town or across the world. Because, in the end, it is all about the relationships that can be forged as a result of storytelling. The more we know about others through their stories, in their own voices, the more inspired we might be to recognize those voices in our own.
References
Clark, C. (1999). The autodriven interview: A photographic viewfinder into children’s experience. Visual Sociology, 14, 39-50.
Nolet, V. W. (2009). Preparing sustainably literate teachers.Teachers College Record, 111(5).
Smith, G. A. (2002). Place-based education: Learning to be where we are. Phi Delta Kappan (April), 584-594.
Lauren G. McClanahan (Lauren.mcclanahan@wwu.edu) is a professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash.
by editor | Sep 1, 2025 | At-risk Youth, Critical Thinking, Experiential Learning, K-12 Activities, Schoolyard Classroom
by Abigail Harding and Corwyn Ellison
“We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.”
-—John Dewey
When we walk silently in the forest we allow ourselves to deepen our connection and strengthen our appreciation for the natural world. Suddenly, we hear animals unfamiliar to us, and observe natural phenomena we never stopped to notice. Exposure to the natural world and reflection is beneficial to physical and mental well-being. The psychological power of a reflective solo walk is astounding—so much so that conscious reflective thought has been shown to change the very structure of our brains.1 Experience-based learning is more powerful when coupled with reflection. Reflection is defined as an intentional effort to observe, synthesize, abstract and articulate the key learnings gathered from an experience.2 When implemented intentionally, solo walks provide a context in which both experiential education and mindfulness converge for the benefit of student learning.
A solo walk is a relatively simple concept: an individual walks alone on a trail or perhaps through the neighborhood to connect, reflect or reason through an event, emotions, or anything else that comes up during that time. It is not novel, but can be revolutionary for the individual participating in it. Using solo walks to introduce observation and reflections skills to students is not only effective in learning, but also important in connecting with themselves, the community, and the environment. In this article we will provide a framework for conducting solo walks with students in natural settings.
What is a solo walk?
A solo walk is an independent, thought-provoking walk through a relatively isolated area. A key goal of a solo walk is to practice observational skills and promote critical thinking, and introspective thought in students. This is accomplished through both the solo walk itself, and reflective journaling and debriefing after. During the walk students are guided both in their direction on the trail and mindful awareness by cards spaced ten to twenty feet apart on the ground. The cards may include a topical quote, a prompt for journaling or action, a direction, or perhaps a question to ponder. These cards can be customized and adjusted to suit the needs of the students and to meet learning goals. Common categories for cards include introduction/closing, thought-provoking questions/quotes, observation/sensory prompts, directional signs, and anything in between. For example, a card may say, “Stop here until you hear two bird songs” or “Where was this boulder 100 years ago? 1,000 years ago?”
How do you do a solo walk?
A non-complex trail or route should be chosen ahead of time. To avoid confusion, a card indicating direction of travel should be placed at all junctions the students encounter during their walk. A typical trail length is approximately ¼ mile. Two instructors or adults are necessary for the solo walk. The process and implementation should be discussed ahead of time. Students begin by gathering at the head of the route. Instructor A will introduce the solo walk as a reflective activity and play a game with the students as they wait to begin their solo walk. Be clear to students about expectations, the benefits of doing a solo walk, and why it is important for them to walk slowly and silently throughout. Emphasize that if they see someone in front of them, they should slow down, perhaps spend more time at the current card, and give the person ahead time to walk out of sight.
After roll-out, Instructor B leaves to set out the cards on the trail. Approximately five to ten minutes later, instructor A begins sending one student at a time down the trail for the solo walk. Each student is sent down the trail in two-minute intervals. The order in which they are sent can be determined ahead of time by the instructors or the decision can be student-directed.
At the end of the solo walk, Instructor A will be waiting in an area in which students may silently sit and journal reflectively about their experience. This location should be large enough for the entire group and should be comfortable for students. After all students have returned and journaled, Instructor B will walk the trail, pick up the cards, and rejoin the group. At this point a debrief will occur. Since students will be arriving to the end location at different times, it is important to have an activity ready for them to complete while they wait. This could be journaling, drawing or using watercolors to illustrate something they noticed during the walk, sitting quietly and observing, or any other quiet independent activity.
The debrief
Debrief is one of the most important components of a solo walk, particularly when it is focused on reflecting, synthesizing, and sharing their experience. Responding to one to two pre-written questions in a journal while students wait for the rest of the group is a constructive activity that prepares them for sharing later. To accommodate different learning styles, offer students a choice of responding in a way that feels valuable to them i.e. writing, sketching, or a combination. Once all students have completed the walk and journaling, give them an opportunity to share in pairs and/or as a group. The act of sharing their experiences can be very powerful, but also recognize that not all students will want to share to a large group and, in those cases, sharing with one other person is sufficient.
Some examples of debrief questions can include:
What surprised you about this experience?
What was your favorite card? What cards would you include?
What advice would you give other students for their solo walk experience?
What are two things you learned and can use in daily life?
Use a mix of questioning strategies to draw out student reflection, and be clear about discussion norms to ensure emotional safety during a group debrief. Using the solo walk cards again for debrief is an effective way to provoke group discussion. Solo walk cards can be placed in a pile on the ground, students can then pick their favorite card and share with the group why this card was chosen. Similarly, cards with a variety of emotions written on them may be used to promote a deeper discussion about feelings.
Table 1. The solo walk implementation guide
Goal To practice reflection, critical thinking, introspective thought, and scientific observation skills.
Objective Students will be able to:
· Journal in a reflective manner
· Complete a solo walk in an isolated area
· Participate in group discussion in a meaningful way
Audience Age group: any age
Number of individuals: 10-15
Duration How long is the lesson? 60 minutes
How long will it take to follow up the field experience? 10-20 minutes for debrief
Location An appropriate trail route and length based on the group’s abilities and needs. Check location ahead of time to identify potential risks. Alternative options include: school hallways, or any green space that provides opportunity for solitude.
Management and safety Students are supervised at beginning and end of trail. Trail is appropriate in level of difficulty and complexity. Junctions are marked with clear directional signs. Emotional safety is addressed by partner walking or pairing a child with an adult.
Equipment · Prompt cards (25-50)
· Activity for before and after solo walk
· Writing utensils
· Student journals
The debrief activities are an excellent opportunity for both teachers and students to assess student experience, knowledge and insight resulting from a solo walk. This information can be used to guide future learning activities and goal setting.
Teaching applications
Solo walks as a tool
For teachers, a solo walk is a versatile tool that can be planned to meet a variety of learning objectives. How you frame the activity, when you conduct it, what cards you choose, the order in which they appear on the trail, and the debrief strategy are all opportunities to guide students towards a specific goal or outcome. For example, a solo walk can be used:
In the beginning of a week to introduce students to and help them connect with a new setting
To ground a group of individuals with mindful awareness and space for reflection
At the end of a week so students can reflect on all that they have accomplished and how they might transfer these skills to their daily lives
Before and/or after a team building activity
Solo Science
In science education settings, students are often bombarded with new techniques and terminology. Solo walks provide the solitude necessary for students to ponder, dissect, and make sense of complex concepts in a tangible way. Because solo walks are inherently independent, students can use scientific tools without any external influence, and think critically of the world around them without fear of failure. Instructors may choose an investigative topic to center the solo walk around or design a mini independent investigation to be conducted during the solo walk. For example, an investigative topic may be plant and animal adaptations. The pictures below are examples of how we have woven scientific practice into the solo walk experience.
Connecting to classroom and beyond
Solo walks offer an incredible opportunity for students to develop awareness and practice active reflection that is an essential and valuable tool in lifelong learning. It can be a transformative experience and its adaptability make it a valuable tool for teachers. Give your students ownership over their experience by having them create their own solo walk cards. Cards can be written in any language, made of recycled material, cut into shapes, etc. Get creative and make it work for you and your students!
Advice from the field
Here are some tips gathered from a survey of 39 outdoor educational professionals with experience facilitating solo walks:
• Keep objectives broad, learners will get different things from the experience. The learning goal can be as simple as having time alone in the woods and it will still be powerful.
• Utilize a variety of cards and consider how the cards you use will support a larger theme or create a desired experience or outcome. Use short, relatable quotes from a diverse group of people with different backgrounds and cultures.
• Check the trail ahead of time and bring a few extra cards and markers to take advantage of teachable moments. Let the trail speak to you. If it is windy, use rocks to weigh the cards down and if you are teaching in a place like the Pacific Northwest, make sure your cards will survive the rain.
For some students, walking alone in the woods can create anxiety or bring out behavioral challenges. Work with students on ways to help them feel safe and explain that it can be a challenge by choice. You can help by sharing your own experience with solo walks, pairing students together or with an adult, being intentional with the line order, giving directions silently, etc.
Have fun and get creative!
References
Kolb, David A. (2014). Experiential learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Case Western Reserve University. Prentice Hall PTR, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano & Bradley Staats. March 2014. Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Improves Performance. Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. Retrieved from https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/learning-by-thinking-how-reflection-improves-performance.
Wilson, Donna & Conyers, Marcus. (2013). Five Big Ideas for Effective Teaching: connecting mind, brain, and education research to classroom practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Zelazo, P. (2015). Executive function: Reflection, iterative reprocessing, complexity, and the developing brain. Developmental Review. Volume 38, 55-68.
Abigail M. Harding and Corwyn A. Ellison are environmental educators and graduate students at IslandWood and the University of Washington.
by editor | Sep 1, 2025 | Critical Thinking, Environmental Literacy
Tangible Connections
The Value of Community Agreements
by Alyssa Caplan and Summer Swallow
ABSTRACT
Student-generated community agreements serve to create a positive learning community in residential outdoor environmental programs. This activity is essential and creates opportunities to reveal connections between people and ecosystems by weaving together Native Education, diversity, team building, and hands-on learning. Visualizing connections make community agreements both tangible and meaningful for students. In fostering these connections through collaboration, students are introduced to stewardship through four lenses (Embracing Adventure, Helping the Environment, Exploring Here and There, and Living and Learning in Community). Students reflect on time spent building their community and experiences of stewardship by creating a web out of yarn.
The world is full of connections, and as educators we strive to facilitate appreciations and awareness among students by helping them to see the benefits of diversity, and how, through our differences, communities become stronger. As instructors at IslandWood, an outdoor school in the Pacific Northwest located across the Puget Sound from Seattle, we provide an immersive residential outdoor educational experience for fourth through sixth grade students. We have four days to create memorable experiences for our students, and this hinges upon quickly creating a community of trust and support, especially given that many students who come to us have spent little to no time in a forest setting.
The Four Pillars of Stewardship
At IslandWood, our goal is to create positive and impactful experiences where children are engaged with their natural environment while also connecting with IslandWood’s four pillars of stewardship: Embracing Adventure, Helping the Environment, Exploring Here and There, and Living and Learning in Community. While at IslandWood we encourage students to “Embrace Adventure” by trying new things in the garden, climbing the forest canopy tower (a 118- foot tall retired fire lookout station which allows students to see the various layers of the forest canopy), participate in a night hike, work as a team to ‑complete challenges and more. Students “Help the Environment” by reducing food waste, learning about compost, becoming a lifelong member of the ‘Dirty Pocket Club’ (picking up trash) and learning the principles of “leave no trace”. We help students to “Explore Here and There” by making connections between IslandWood and their home communities such as helping them identify fauna and flora they may see at home. Our last pillar of stewardship is “Living and Learning in Community”. Students are constantly engaged in this pillar with community agreements, trail roles, repeated opportunities to turn and talk about a prompt, meet people outside their normal friend groups, and meet children from other schools in the dining hall and during group games. Throughout the week we honor moments in which we see students exemplifying these pillars and ask them to reflect upon moments in which they saw others doing the same. This scaffolding encourages students to take responsibility for their impact upon the community and realize their individual influence.
In order to create a positive community atmosphere and set our students up for success, our team collectively creates a Community Agreement, which elicits knowledge from the students about what makes a caring and healthy community. Using a scaffolded approach, we begin by asking our students to reflect on community agreements they may have already encountered at their schools, in their classrooms, or with sport’s teams. Most, if not all, of those elements are applicable here at our IslandWood campus, as this is a “School in the Woods” not a sleepaway camp. There are many ways to make a community agreement, some of which are thematically illustrated in the form of a tree or tea, others can simply be a list of ideals. Specifically, we would like to focus on the construction and implementation of the Community Web, our twist on a communtiy agreement. Regardless of the theme, the Community Agreement is a living document and it can be added to and adjusted as different situations arise within the team.
Creating a Community Web
“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”
—Chief Sealth (Chief Seattle)*
Field groups read this quote out loud to initiate a conversation on the concept of community. Additionally, it is used for brainstorming who Chief Sealth was and his impact on creating connections between native and non-native people (for more information on teaching children about tribal sovereignty, see resources below). Many of our students, being from the Puget Sound region of Washington, know a little about Chief Sealth’s impact. When asked to recall information we often hear responses such as “he was a famous Native American chief who talked with settlers.” Recognition of the historical importance of Chief Sealth and how he contributed to building bridges between people is an example of how one can strive to increase connections and strengthen positive interactions within diverse communities. This also pays homage to Chief Sealth and his people, whose ancestral land we now occupy, helping students to forge meaningful connections between their neighborhoods and IslandWood.
Once we’ve discussed the power of interconnections and prior experiences with community agreements, we then unveil the template for our team agreement on a large piece of butcher paper. In the center is the foundation of our web with the title, “[Team Name] Community Agreement” surrounded by a strand for each of our students, chaperones and instructors (Figure 1). Before we begin filling it out, we discuss characteristics of each visible aspect. Each team member chooses a strand to which they add their name and a strength that they will contribute to the team this week, it is important that they then share that strength out loud to the team. Generally these strengths are characteristics such as humor, artistic, problem-solver, helpful and kind. Occasionally, students respond with traits such as ‘crazy’, without context this could be misinterpreted, for this student it meant having lots of energy and therefore carried a positive connotation. By verbalizing traits, not only are we checking for understand but also learning how students view themselves and how they are comfortable contributing towards the team. Once each team member has added their name and positive attribute, we then brainstorm what sort of behaviors we want to see within our team. The goal with this is to establish team behavior norms to ensure we have a safe and fun week of learning and exploring. Behaviors brainstormed here generally include: be respectful, listen to each other, have fun, to be safe and neighborly (Figure 2). We explain that as team members exemplify these behaviors, they will get to draw a line that connects themselves to that behavior, thus increasing connections between team members and showcasing personal growth. In acknowledging the daily progress of our students, we are tapping into the reward pathway of the brain (Zadina, 2014, p. 102).
At the end of each day we revisit and review the community agreement, add our behavior lines and a loop around the outside which symbolizes team building and connections becoming stronger between the team members (Figure 3). These additions enable the students to literally see the connections being created within our team, being able to visualize these connections adds meaning to the activity and utilizes the visual oriented regions of the brain (Zadina, 2014). This can be used as a formative assessment to see how connections between students, and behaviors of an individual, have changed over time.
Creating these tangible bonds allows us to take the web a step further and make an analogy in which we discuss how our community is similar to those within a natural ecosystem. Different organisms rely on one another for support and if one were to be removed from the web, the whole system would change. This then leads to conversations about interdependent relationships occurring in nature, as well as discussions about how diversity make a system stronger. This can begin with a conversation on diversity within natural ecosystems – the more connections within a system, the greater the resilience in the face of change; “higher-diversity communities generally are more productive and are better able to withstand and recover from environmental stresses, such as droughts. More diverse communities are also more stable year to year in their productivity” (Reece, Wasserman, Urry, Minorsky, Cain & Jackson, 2014, p. 1217). This same principle coincides with diversity within human populations – the stronger and more diverse the connections, the stronger the community, “students benefit from exposure to cultural as well as intellectual heterogeneity, and they learn from one another” (Haberman, 1991, p. 294). This allows for a transfer of learning to the classroom or home community, and can lead to discussions about how students can increase their connections and build bridges between communities. For example, teachers could create opportunities for service learning projects in which students are directly interacting with their larger ecological and personal communities such as habitat restoration projects. As Haberman puts it in his article, Pedagogy of Poverty versus Good Teaching, “we need graduates who have learned to take action in their own behalf and in behalf of others” (1991, p. 293). With such a project, students would utilize elements of collaboration, apply practical skills and continue their engagement with the four pillars of stewardship.
Tying It All Together
We end the week in a circle around our community agreement, for a final review, we reflect upon the connections we built this week and the ways in which we have engaged in stewardship. During a quiet minute of reflection, we prompt the students to think about how they have honored the agreement, and how their teammates have done the same. Students use the four pillars as a framework for sharing a time they themselves exemplified a pillar and then honor a moment they saw a teammate doing the same. Once everyone has had time to collect their thoughts we pull out a ball of yarn and explain that they will be creating their own stewardship web. One student begins sharing how they accomplished a pillar and then, while still holding the end of the yarn, passes the ball to any teammate and shares with the group a moment they saw that member demonstrate a pillar. Whoever receives the yarn does the same, first for themselves, then for a teammate. This continues until the last person to receive the yarn honors the first person who spoke. Once someone has received the yarn, they may not receive it again. The yarn is then tied off, the web having been completed (see photo above).
We ask the students to hold the yarn loosely in their hands, then together take a collective step backwards and ask if they could feel the yarn being pulled through their hand. At this point we revisit the words of Chief Sealth and explain to our students that everything they did this week impacted everyone in the team. That all of our actions are truly connected, no actions truly occur in isolation. We tell the kids how proud we are of their hard work and dedication during our week together, asking them to remember this team and community as they prepare to leave IslandWood. We then invite them to break off a piece of the yarn to carry with them, as an ever present reminder that they, and their actions, matter.
Our ultimate goal towards creating a positive learning experience for these students ideally is then transferred to their regular school and home life. The strength of connections is fundamental to becoming an active world citizen. Highlighting the contributions of all team members serves to illustrate the value of diversity and inclusion. Regardless of their young age, the power of their actions creates a ripple in the vast and ever-changing web of life.
Author Notes: More information on teaching children about Tribal Sovereignty can be found through the Washington Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s (OSPI) office of Native American Education’s curriculum: Since Time Immemorial: Tribal Sovereignty in Washington State (indian-ed.org)
Summer Swallow, an avid bryophyte enthusiast, and Alyssa Kaplan, a passionate social justice advocate, enjoy spending their time teaching 4th – 6th graders at IslandWood, an residential outdoor school, on Bainbridge Island, Washington while working on their Master degrees at the University of Washington.
by editor | Sep 1, 2025 | At-risk Youth, Critical Thinking, Data Collection, Technology
by Greta Righter
As an instructor at IslandWood, an environmental learning center on Bainbridge Island, WA, my week with students is fleeting. I have four days during IslandWood’s School Overnight Program (SOP) to explore and investigate the natural world with groups of 4-6th graders, and it never seems to be enough time. At IslandWood, students gather for four days of learning on 250 acres of a forest ecosystem, engaging in science, arts, and team-building activities and lessons. Just as they are beginning to distinguish a Western hemlock from a Douglas fir, and communicate well as a team, it’s time for them to pack up and head home. Most of the students are from the Seattle area, coming from various socioeconomic backgrounds, and may or may not have access to nearby green spaces in their home neighborhoods. As a newcomer to the field of experiential outdoor education, I still have a nagging voice that wonders if my students might walk away feeling like they can only engage with the natural world if they are in the forest. One aspect of teaching outdoor education that often feels most challenging is the transfer of learning: how can I best encourage students to carry their wonder and excitement of the natural world home with them, even if home is an urban setting? In this article I will describe an experiment with integrating technology into my field studies, and how it made that nagging voice in my head a little quieter.
Transfer of learning, or the ability to apply knowledge learned in one context to new contexts, can feel like the ‘achilles heel’ of outdoor education (Brown, 2010). Students are removed from indoor classrooms, plopped into the woods for a week to learn about nature, and then shuttled back to their desks a few days later. As one outdoor educator put it, “a major and persistent challenge for outdoor adventure education is the extent to which the learning experiences of students affect change beyond the immediate outdoor environment” (Brown, 2010, p.13). Programs like IslandWood’s SOP seek to create continuity in this experience through pre- and post-visit lessons to the classroom. Still, many outdoor education programs do not have any means of assessing transfer of learning. As I wave both hands goodbye to the buses pulling away each week, a little voice in the back of my head always wonders… “What will they remember? Did I make an impact?”
Citizen Science & Phone Apps
Recently, I decided to focus my field instruction on the theme of citizen science. The National Geographic Society defines citizen science as “the practice of public participation and collaboration in scientific research to increase scientific knowledge” (National Geographic Society, 2012). With my student field group we broke down this term and defined citizen science as ‘regular people who make scientific observations’. I also provided some examples to my students of large citizen science projects that are going on around the world. In the interest of weaving citizen science work into my lessons, I experimented with the iNaturalist app in the field because it is user-friendly, it has a generalist focus on species identification and location, and it has the ability to connect users to other citizen scientists making similar discoveries. iNaturalist describes its function as ‘a place where you can record what you see in nature, meet other nature lovers, and learn about the natural world’ (iNaturalist.org, 2012). It seemed like the perfect tool to integrate into SOP, which focuses on making observations, and supporting claims with gathered evidence. The iNaturalist app provides a more interactive medium for recording and utilizing data, while also connecting those observations beyond the IslandWood setting.
The Struggle with ‘Screen time’
I felt some apprehension about introducing technology into outdoor education. As someone who experiences the outdoors as sanctuary, a place to escape the dings and rings of computers and phones, it made my heart hurt a little bit to bring a glowing screen into my field studies. I wondered, are technology and place-based learning inherently at odds with each other? Does gazing into a glowing screen detract from the experience of being immersed in the natural processes of the world? As a self-proclaimed luddite, one who fears and avoids the rapid progression of our tech-focused society, it felt like going against the grain to introduce technology into my field instruction. Worries about technology failures, lack of access to the internet, and encouraging more screen time amongst a generation of students who I honestly believe need less screen time riddled my mind. There are many who share this concern – a number of studies have linked the increase in mobile screen use among children to a variety of adverse outcomes including (but not limited to): decreased ability to recognize human emotions (Uhls, et.al., 2014), increase in childhood obesity rates (Chen, et.al., 2014), difficulty sleeping (Cajochen, 2011), and increased anxiety and depression (Twenge, et.al., 2017).
On the other hand, I believe that nothing is ever black and white. Technology does not have to be the enemy, and teachers and parents should not have to be suited up in a constant battle against it. Screens are here, and they are here to stay, and there are many good reasons for integrating technology into all areas of instruction. The need for future generations to be highly proficient in various forms of technology is of increasing importance (Haberman, 2010, p. 85). Also, technology offers a different medium of learning, and can broaden students’ connection with the world beyond their classroom. But that’s the classroom… how would it work to use an iPod out in the field?
How Did It Go?
The learning goals for our week of citizen science studies were for students to 1.) work together so that each student would input a new species identification into the iNaturalist app 2.) be able to describe what citizen science is, and 3.) give an example of how and where they would use this technology at home. In order to ensure successful integration of technology in the field, I made sure to establish some ‘tech norms’ before getting started:
Tech Norms:
Only the instructor (myself) will carry and use the iPod.
We will only utilize the phone for the iNaturalist app.
Everyone will contribute one species identification to the database.
We will work as a team to help each other identify and input new species.
On our second full field day each student chose a specialist name tag – they chose between: Mycologist, Botanist, Zoologist, Entomologist, Ornithologist, & Marine Biologist. I explained that this was not the only thing they could explore – in fact, everyone’s goal for the day was to be a leader of investigating their specialization for the whole group. The mycologist could call others over when they found a mushroom they wanted help identifying. The ornithologist could ask others what colors they saw on that bird that just landed in a nearby tree. Our goal was to work together. Each student was equipped with a unique field guide, and other tools they might need to study the details of organisms, such as binoculars, magnifying glasses, and jars to collect specimens.
I immediately noticed that students were highly motivated to identify the plants and creatures they were discovering because of their interest in the iNaturalist app. Just as writing assignments geared towards a real audience can increase student motivation, so does recording observations and species identifications for a world-wide database (Norton-Meier, Hand, Hockenberry, & Wise, 2008). We talked about the fact that our identifications may not be accurate, but that was not the goal of the lesson. I reminded them that their goals are to practice using field guides, to work together to identify species, and to contribute their findings to the iNaturalist database for other citizen scientists, just like them, to review.
Our first species identification was at Blakely Harbor – a Purple Shore Crab (Hemigrapsus nudus). Students were eager to identify the gender of the crab, and wondered if there was a place to input that data into the app. I wasn’t sure so we searched together, and we found that there is a space to add general field notes so we put the gender there. After the Purple Shore Crab, we identified a Glaucous Winged Gull (Larus glaucescens) and an Acorn Barnacle (Balanus glandula). Back in the woods there were ambitious plans for moss and mushroom identification. I input all of the ID’s just as the students wanted me to, even if we weren’t 100% sure that they were correct. That’s part of the beauty of the iNaturalist app – it connects us to other people who are making the same discoveries, reviewing our pictures, and it allows them to reach out to us if they think we may have erred. Just as my students worked together to pour through the pages of their field guides, all scientists work together to make discoveries and make sense of the world around us.
Transfer of Learning through Technology
Apps like iNaturalist provide a familiar and intriguing medium for recording observations and create a means to transfer those observation skills from the outdoor education experience back to the student’s life at home. Each of my students left IslandWood with iNaturalist written down in their journals and a location they thought might use the app at home. This week I gave my students a tool – a real live tool. Not a theoretical idea or feeling, but something tangible that they can walk away with and use in their day-to-day lives at home or school. They can use this tool to continue practicing their observation skills, nurturing their own interest in the environment, and connecting with other citizen scientists. Through sharing this technology with my students, I realized that even though I chose to limit my own screen time, it is unrealistic for me to expect the same of upcoming generations. As long as the generations of a highly technological world are going to be using phones and tablets, then perhaps we, as educators, should be striving to create the best possible outcomes for this screen time.
References for this article can be found on the web version at http://www.clearingmagazine.org/archives/
Greta Righter is an instructor and graduate student at IslandWood on Bainbridge Island, WA. She is pursuing her M. Ed. in Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Washington.
by editor | Sep 1, 2025 | Equity and Inclusion, K-12 Activities
AGES: 13 –18+ years old
CONTRIBUTED BY
Center for Cities + Schools University of California, Berkeley
y-plan.berkeley.edu
What does resilience mean to you? Psychologists, ecologists, and economists, cities, schools and businesses, and individuals all over the world have developed their own definitions. Increasingly, these once disparate uses of resilience are converging into a cohesive system; ultimately shaping the society our children will inherit. This lesson allows adults to work toward a new, comprehensive understanding of the term resilience for and with young people.
MATERIALS
• Pen, paper, and clipboard for each student
DIRECTIONS
Take students on a tour through the school and its grounds. As you walk, ask them to list evidence of “resilience” or lack of resilience. This evidence could be about the physical space, the school community, or even themselves.
Sample prompts for students include:
Physical
“Are there recent improvements to buildings or grounds that you see? Are there murals or student work in the halls? Things that used to be broken? Things that have been broken for too long?”
Social
“Whether and how do clubs or groups at your school support students or overcome issues at the school? Does Student Council improve the school? If so, how? What sports teams or clubs create a supportive environment for members?”
Personal
“Does walking through the lunch room or a particular spot on the yard remind you of a time you or a peer were able to overcome a bully? Does walking past an old classroom remind you of failing a test? Did you improve your grades? Do you have friends at school who support you?”
End your tour outside the school, and discuss what students have noted as physical, social, and personal resilience. Are there particular spaces that they see as more or less resilient, or make them feel personally more or less resilient? Now focus on the outdoor space. Let students go to their favorite part of the grounds. While they are there, they should list evidence of resilience and lack of resilience. Is the grass beaten back into a natural trail? Are tree roots breaking a concrete path? What plants, animals, or insects are here, and how well are they thriving? Is a creek allowed to run through the property or is it underground? What evidence of resilience do you see in the natural world around you? What impact are people having on it? Note examples of both resilience and things that are not resilient.
Bring students back together. Ask if they think their school is resilient? How could it be more resilient? Allow time for a discussion. Finish by asking each student to write a working definition of resilience that includes the factors they saw today.
