by editor | Dec 18, 2014 | Place-based Education
Phenology Wheels: Earth Observation Where You Live
By Anne Forbes, Partners in Place, LLC
This article originally appeared in Earthzine – http://earthzine.org/
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aking a habit of Earth observation where you live is a fun and fundamental way to practice Earth stewardship. It is often our own observations close to home that keep us inspired to learn more and allow us to remain steady advocates for solutions to today’s daunting problems. Earth observation done whole-heartedly becomes skilled Earth awareness that leads to profound relationships with the plants, animals, and seasonal cycles surrounding us in real time, whether we live in the city, suburbs, or countryside.
Courtesy Anne Forbes.
One way to track Earth observations is an activity called Phenology Wheels, suitable for individuals, families, classrooms, youth programs, and workshops for people of all ages. Phenology is a term that refers to the observation of the life cycles and habits of plants and animals as they respond to the seasons, weather, and climate. A Phenology Wheel is a circular journal or calendar that encourages a routine of Earth observation where you live. Single observations of what is happening in the lives of plants and animals made over time begin to tell a compelling story – your story – about the place on our living planet that you call home.
Why a circle? We usually think of the passing of time as linear, with one event following another in sequence by day, by month, by year. Placing the same events in a circular journal, or wheel shape, helps us discover new patterns (or rediscover known ones). We can use the Phenology Wheel to communicate about what is really important or interesting to us.
Here’s the General Idea
A Phenology Wheel is made up of three rings in a circle, like a target. To become a Wheel-keeper, you select a home place, such as a garden, a “sit spot,” schoolyard, watershed, or landscape that will be represented by a map or image in the center ring, the bull’s eye. Next, you mark units of time – such as the months and seasons of a year, hours of a day, or phases of a lunar month – around the outside ring, like the numbers on the face of a clock. Then, as you make specific observations of what is going on in the lives of plants and animals and the flow of seasons, you record them within the middle ring using words, phrases, images, or a combination.
Here’s How To Get Started
Because the wheel is round, you can begin a Phenology Wheel for Earth observation at any time of year.
Although you can pick among different time scales for the outer ring, let’s begin here with a year of seasons and months.
Courtesy Anne Forbes.
1. Draw a set of nested circles on a large piece of paper. You can do this by tracing around large plates or pizza pans, by using an artist’s compass or by making your own compass out of a pencil, pin, and string. You may also purchase a kit of print Wheels or a set of digital PDF Wheels online.
2. If you are making your own Wheel, write the names of the seasons and months on the outer rings.
3. Select an image for the center to represent the place or theme you have selected and to anchor your practice of observation in time and space.
Maps for the Center: If you choose a map, will it be geographically accurate or symbolic? Will it be traced or cut and pasted from an existing map, or will it be a map of your own creation?
Tip: Use a web-based mapping system such as Google Maps to print a map and use it to trace selected features as a base map for your Wheel.
A Centering Image: If you choose an image other than a map, will you create your own image or use one that you find already in print material? Will you use a photo, make a collage, or choose a found object, like a leaf or feather?
Tip: Children often enjoy a picture of themselves at their “sit spot” or other place they have chosen to track their observations.
4. Establish a Routine: Observe → Investigate and Reflect → Record
OBSERVE: What do I notice in this moment? What is extraordinary about seemingly ordinary things? What surprises me as unexpected or dramatic?
then
INVESTIGATE: What more do I want to know about what I observe? What questions will I seek to answer through my own continued observation? What information will I search for in books or from mentors or websites?
and
REFLECT: What does my observation mean to me? How is it changing me? How does it help me explore my values and beliefs?
then
RECORD: A routine of frequent observation provides the raw material to transform your blank Wheel into a circular journal as you record images, symbols, or words as you observe the passing of the seasons in your home place.
Tip: An interactive diagram of this process can be found under the Observe & Record tab here.
5. Share and Celebrate: Use your Wheel to report or tell stories about what you learn from and value about Earth observation in your home place.
Like a wheel on a cart, time turns around the hub of your home place;
the metaphor is a journey taken through a day, a month, a year,
or a lifetime of curiosity and appreciation.
Of course, you don’t have to keep a journal to explore and appreciate your home place on earth and the home place in your heart. What are the dimensions of your home place in this moment? What marks of time’s passing do you observe? The more playful you are with these questions, the more you may feel a part of your home place and committed to co-creating its well-being with others in your community.
Courtesy The Yahara Watershed Journal.
Welcome home.
Example #1: The Yahara Watershed Wheel
About twelve years ago, a group of like-minded friends gathered by my fireside to reflect upon what it means to live in this place we call home in Dane County, Wisconsin, USA. We chose to think of the Yahara Watershed as our common home place, and the series of seasonal events that occur in a typical year as the time scale to track. We put a map of the watershed in the center of a large Wheel of the Year, with units of time going around the outside rim, much like a clock, but using seasons and months instead of hours. We then went around our own circle, each speaking of the defining moments in the natural world and in the lives of people enjoying it throughout the months of a typical year. The artist among us sketched the images onto the Yahara Watershed Wheel that you see here. The detail in the enlarged image represents the unique happenings in March and April: pasque flowers in bloom, the return of redwing blackbirds and sandhill cranes, woodcock mating dances, first dandelions, and spring peepers in chorus.
Courtesy Anne Forbes.
Example #2: Poems of Place
In reporting on this Wheel filled with seasonal poems by 4th and 5th graders about the large school woods, just outside an elementary school “backdoor” in Cambridge, Wisconsin, teacher Georgia Gomez-Ibanez writes, “Because the woods is so accessible, the children spend quite a lot of time there developing a deep sense of place, including keen observational skills and a heightened imagination, all enhanced by the affection they have gained by years of exploring, learning and stewardship.” This selection of student poems illustrates how Phenology Wheels can be used to enhance language arts as well as science curriculum.
Example #3: Local Biodiversity
In another example from Cambridge Elementary School in Wisconsin, teacher Georgia Gomez-Ibanez reports that a classroom studied the biodiversity of the area where they live. Each student picked a different animal or plant from their adjacent woods or prairie for the center of an 11-inch Wheel and then did research to tell the full story of the life cycle in words. The example here shows the work of one student who studied the Jack-in-the-Pulpit wildflower.
The next step would be for the students to combine their information for single species onto one large 32-inch Wheel and use it to explore the dynamics of the ecosystem that appear through food webs, habitat use, seed dispersal mechanisms, and so on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Courtesy Anne Forbes.
1. Where do I get more information?
If you are ready to start a Phenology Wheel for yourself, family, classroom or youth program, or any other interest group:
• Visit the Wheels of Time and Place website for instructions, resources, and a gallery of examples.
• Download a curriculum for youth developed in partnership with Georgia Gomez-Ibanez, an elementary school teacher, and Cheryl Bauer-Armstrong, Earth Partnership for Schools, UW-Madison Arboretum.
2. Where do I order pre-made Wheels?
Order the blank Wheel templates as a digital download of PDF files or as a complete toolkit, Wheels of Time and Place: Journals for the Cycles and Seasons of Life. The latter includes a set of print Wheels in 11-inch and 24-inch sizes, a code to download the PDF files, and an instruction booklet – all in a recycled chipboard carrying case.
3. What size should my Wheels be?
Some people prefer 11-inch Wheels because they are compact, portable, and can be easily duplicated in a copy machine on 11 x 17-inch paper. You can trim them down to 11-inch square if you would like.
When people share the 24-inch Wheels, their faces often light up with excitement. This size, or larger, works well if you have a large clip board or a place to keep it posted for frequent use or when people are working on one Wheel in a group.
Of course, if you make your Wheels by hand, you can make them any size you like. If you purchase the PDF files, you can enlarge them up to 32-36 inches at a copy or blueprint shop.
4. What if I’m already a journal-keeper?
Some people who already keep a written journal use the Wheels to review their journals periodically and pull out observations to further explore and put on a Wheel. It’s amazing what patterns and stories can emerge.
5. Can the Wheels be created from databases?
Frank Nelson of the Missouri Department of Conservation has used wheels called Ring Maps, A Useful Way to Visualize Temporal Data to show trends and reveal patterns in a complex set of data.
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Anne Forbes of Partners in Place, LLC is an ecologist who seeks to integrate her scientific and spiritual ways of knowing. For over 35 years, she worked on biodiversity policy as a natural resource manager and supported environmental and community collaborations as a facilitator and consultant. Her years of spiritual practice in varied traditions, most recently the Bon Buddhist tradition of Tibet, inspire her commitment to engaged action on behalf of present and future generations. She failed her first attempt at retirement and instead created the Wheels of Time and Place: Journals for the Cycles and Seasons of Life.
Contact: anne@partnersinplace.com.
by editor | Dec 18, 2014 | Critical Thinking, Learning Theory, Teaching Science
How Big is Science? Can I Discover its Dimensions?
There is great beauty in thoughts well conceived and clearly expressed.
This is science, when it is skillfully done.
by Jim Martin
CLEARING Associate Editor
(Photo by Jim Martin also!)
When I first taught high school science, I assumed that published curricula would provide reliable instruction for my students. Midway through my first year, it began to dawn on me that this might not be so. The curricula the school used was organized so students studying it would learn about science. This, besides being rather boring, would not do what I expected. I believe students come into my classroom to DO science, to become scientists. A much different process than learning about.
By this time in my career, I had learned that students’ brains could think; all by themselves. Sort of an ‘Oh, duh’ thought, but new to me. What first put me onto this was observing students move from serial to parallel processing as they developed conceptual understandings. That, and reflecting on student frustrations and failures in lab when I assumed that their lab manuals had been written by authorities who “knew.” Thinking about these frustrations and failures revealed to me that students, and many of their teachers, hadn’t acquired the knowledge to comprehend the content as it was laid out in our texts and manuals.
My flag, the whirring that my antennae have learned to make when I’m not being careful about where I’m headed, was the perception expressed by students that, “this is harsh.” I can’t think of a better way to describe it; texts and manuals that were filled with directions and expectations insensitive to where students were at this stage of their educations. And me, expecting them to learn from them as written. The labs, in particular, were replete with concept load, where more than one concept lies embedded in words meant to clarify. What we do to enable our students to learn should never evoke the comments I heard. If we care for our students, and expect them to discover the beauty of our discipline, we should teach effectively. So, I ask, Is empowering students in science something that we can learn to do for practically every student who enters our door?
Science is a product of human endeavor, and can be learned. Look at the good teachers whose students learn to express themselves in competent poetry and art. We can do it in science if we become competent and humane practicioners. This tells me that all of the pedagogical classifications our profession employs – Maslow’s pyramid, hierarchy of cognitive function, inductive/deductive, etc. – reflect expressions of central nervous system function, expressions emergent from our brain at work, and that these underlying neurological processes aren’t as complex as the concepts and classifications we use to describe, understand, and manipulate them.
It takes confidence for a teacher to move from the recitation of facts to the manipulation of concepts in the solution of problems. In fact, examination of this transition provides some useful successive approximations which can be used as signposts to move ourselves from one end to the other on the spectrum. Science engages concepts and processes along with the brain’s mechanisms for generating critical thinking and learning for understanding. While complex to address individually, they all come into play when you do science. Just as similarly complex combinations of concept and process come into play together in painting an image, writing a poem, swishing a three-pointer, or playing a long, slow, syncopated sax line.
How do you prepare your students to engage in self-directed inquiries in the environment, while also preparing them to take standardized tests on the content they are expected to cover? A good first step is to prepare yourself. We can start by looking at what teaching inquiry looks like along a developmental continuum from fully teacher-centered to fully student-centered; a line with particular dimensions. The names of the stages along the continuum describe its dimensions, and the time to learn to express each dimension is the length of a particular piece of the continuum. Let’s picture different ways you might execute a streambank restoration project, and develop our continuum along that process.
There is a creek about four blocks from your school, and you have learned that the city wants to restore a section of its bank for a wildlife observation park. When you inquire, you find that part of the project involves planting native riparian trees. How might you exploit this as an opportunity? Let’s say you begin this work at what I’ll call the Fully Teacher-Centered level, in which you instruct the class on the project, show them how to plant the cottonwood cuttings you will be using, and have them set up pots and plant their cuttings in them. You will show them how to measure the cuttings’ growth, and graph their data. Typical teacher tells, students do, classroom learning. During all of this work, you have been attempting work in which you have little or no experience, especially in involving students in work outside the classroom.
You can begin to move toward the next phase, the Introducing Student-Centered level, by finding ways to make the activity, while it is not student generated, become relevant to them and enables your students to feel that this new learning is important to them. You can do this by engaging them in selecting learnings they would like to attempt. Let’s say one student, when planting her cutting, asks which end goes into the ground. A tough question if you’re not a botanist, which I am not. So, you suck it in and respond, “I don’t know. How can we find out?” (The most beautiful words a teacher can utter!) What happens next is up to your students. They’ll answer their question, and you’ll have grown at least another inch and a half in stature.
In this stage, you and your students will become aware of your need to learn more about the community outside the classroom. You might have already involved them in work outside your classroom organized by a local environmental education organization. You make sure your students have practiced the work they will do before going out in the field. And you might find yourself looking for other teachers who take their classes out into the field, and helped them become active members of effective work groups. In this stage, you still rely on other knowledgeable people, especially environmental educators, to facilitate your work.
Another thing to look for, and in future expect, is students who begin to see their role in making field work eminently doable. Students who are involved and invested in the work, and empowered as persons. They will become partners with you in planning and doing the work; and, in doing the learning and research to comprehend what they have discovered.
If you continue this work, you will find yourself at the next level, the Teacher:Student-Centered Level, where you and your students collaborate on the project from its initial conception to the final product. You initiate projects, and then include your students in designing and doing the project. You are experienced now in involving students in work outside the classroom and exploiting the curricula embedded there. Student work groups know what to do and how, and practice tasks before going into the field. You know how to design, organize, and implement the work, and to integrate the field work with curriculum. The results of their field work are brought back to the classroom by the class for discussion and follow-up work.
As you continue in this work, you will find yourself working at the Fully Student-Centered Level. You have a set of partners in the community whom you work with to design, develop, and execute projects in the community, and to tie them to your classroom curricula. You work closely with your students to plan field work and classroom followup. Students are organized into effective work groups who, working together, have developed the skills to carry out their field work, are involved and invested in their work, reach out to help others in their groups, communicate effectively, and can be counted on to make sure their equipment and materials are ready to go. You facilitate this by maintaining effective contact with your partners and agencies. You have eyes out for opportunities to expand your network, while ensuring you don’t overextend yourself.
It is surprising how little it takes to move a teacher from the textual delivery of facts and information to the contextual delivery of understanding. Experience in initiating, doing, and communciating self-directed inquiry is a key piece of the puzzle. In spite of this effort, and most school science is taught from texts, standardized labs, and worksheets. In time, teachers will be the decision-makers in their schools, and schools will become dynamic centers of learning. In the meanwhile, we have to do the best we can to teach well and let others know what we’re doing.
Science has many dimensions. We’ve begun to enter a discussion of the amount of structure we impose upon our students’ efforts, and the amount of structure we build into our approach to meeting students’ needs. As with any kind of learning, we expect the learners to move from dependence on instruction to independent activity. Do we, in our classrooms, allow that? Do we allow this for ourselves?
This is a regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin that explores how environmental educators can help classroom teachers get away from the pressure to teach to the standardized tests,and how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula. See the other installments here, or search Categories for “Jim Martin.”
by editor | Nov 20, 2014 | Critical Thinking, Environmental Literacy, Learning Theory
Helping Teachers Gain Competencies in a Technological Age
Is Active Learning, Learning?
by Jim Martin
Because active learning requires practice and feedback on thinking like an expert (a scientist), it demands considerably greater subject expertise by the teacher. . . . [A problem that] will remain until college science teaching improves to the point that all students, including future K-12 teachers, graduate with a solid understanding of science and a better model for good science teaching and learning. . . . Most people, including university faculty and administrators, believe learning happens by a person simply listening to a teach¬er. That is true if one is learning something very simple, like “Eat the red fruit, not the green one,” but complex learning, including scientific thinking, requires the practice and interaction described earlier to literally rewire the brain to take on new capabilities.
– Carl Wieman
Wieman is describing what I view as the historical residuals that impede effective teaching in today’s schools: We are leaving the educational needs of the Industrial Revolution, and embarking on the needs of our Technical age, and evolved social and cultural structures. Rote learning limits human empowerment, yet we still, in large part, rely on it.
The two issues Wieman describes both limit the education our students receive, and perpetuate the problem because under-prepared graduates make under-prepared teachers. Teachers are the only people who can correct this. Teachers can’t give effective feedback to learning students if they haven’t the requisite extensive experience and knowledge of what they are teaching to do so. A teacher who has done the science, and comprehends the concepts and processes involved in what is being learned, will have a much better perspective to process a student’s efforts, place them within a meaningful context that the student can respond to, and observe for first, critical, steps toward learning for understanding. For a teacher without the background to comprehend and do the science, a student’s efforts which seem to be going in the wrong direction might be interpreted as being altogether wrong, the appropriate material in the text or instructions pointed to, and the student moved on; perhaps even to learn what was to be learned, but not empowered as an autonomous learner. And less likely to become a competent student. Ultimately, what was to be learned will not be learned well enough to remain in memory after the test.
If teachers are to engage their students in active learning, which has the capacity to produce effective long-term conceptual memory, we all need to help build an environment where teachers are assisted to become competent in the concepts and processes they teach. Since I started tracking teacher preparation for the content they are asked to teach, about half are reported to have had the coursework and/or experience to teach it. Wieman finds a similar pattern. Even those who teach teachers aren’t immune. A chemist, who mentored science teachers for a federal education support agency, didn’t know that cold creek water which was overhung by vegetation and aerated by an upstream riffle might have what appears to be an elevated dissolved oxygen content. This is a real deficit, and we all need to do something to resolve it.
Environmental educators have generated an enlightened public which has produced a State, Oregon, that is an epicenter for streambank restoration in the world. We’re now faced with a nation which is near the bottom in science education among the highly developed nations. Environmental educators can help inexperienced science teachers gain the confidence and expertise they need to improve science education in our classrooms. Everything we need to do that is on our sites and in our heads. We only need the bootstrapping will to take the first step – sit down with someone of a like mind, talk about what needs to be done, then, together, sit with someone else and do the same.
Here’s one I experienced years ago at a constructed pond within a large industrial area. The pond was connected by a canal to a large natural lake. There was a parking lot on one side of the rectangular pond; a large drain pipe removed water from the parking lot and surrounding area and dropped it about ten feet from its open end into the pond. We visited one Spring as part of a science inquiry workshop. Teacher participants were practicing water quality observations, and asked to decide in each of their groups where to make their observations.
As we gathered to review their findings, most groups’ dissolved oxygen (DO) measurements were within the range we’d expect for pond water at the temperatures they’d recorded. Two groups, however, recorded very high DO values. One group had made their observations in the center of a large algal bloom at one end of the pond, and they decided that, since these were algae producing the high DO levels, the levels observed there represented excellent water quality. The other group had measured water quality at the place in the pond where water flowing out of the drain pipe splashed into the pond. Their DO measurements were higher than those in the algal bloom. This group decided that, since the water leaving the drain pipe must be polluted, the high DO values represented very poor water quality.
What would you have interpreted from the DO data and places where the observations were made? Those teachers were using the science they knew, and taught, but in a place outside the classroom or lab. What might they have thought and said if it were their students who made the observations, and their interpretations of the results were different? Perhaps even the opposite of those they had made themselves?
We’ve all been faced with dilemmas like this. How do we respond? How might a teacher respond who has never made a scientific observation outside the classroom? Perhaps never made one at all? (Or the chemist who didn’t understand dissolved oxygen dynamics in a natural environment?) How might an environmental educator respond to this issue? By that last, I don’t mean give the correct answer; I mean relieve the deficits in experience and understandings that brought the problem into existence.
Most issues in education become issues because we don’t lay the practical and conceptual foundation our careers require. To fix it, we need to jack up our structures, rebuild their foundations, lower the structure back on a solid foundation, then let the creaks, groans, and cracks in the structure tell us how to reorganize it. This is something our top-down educational organization is unable to do. We have to do it ourselves. I say that teachers who are comfortable teaching inquiry science, and environmental educators who are comfortable reaching out to teachers, need to get together to bring science back to young people in ways which restore its inherent interest, excitement, and empowerment.
Working together, environmental educators and teachers who routinely engage their students in inquiry, are a practical hope for building a stronger science edifice in our schools. Current efforts from the top of education’s administrative structure to embed a common core curriculum and new science standards in the schools haven’t, to date, funded the basic professional development support that a large number of teachers will need to bring these initiatives to life, and make them a basic part of all education in the nation. A good way to make this happen, in an effective, non-punitive, way is for the work to start in the classroom, supported by teacher mentors and environmental educators.
Why do I include environmental educators in words about science inquiry education in classrooms. Because inquiry education relies on active learning, which is an effective way to build conceptual learnings into long-term memory. Active learning is the teaching modality that most environmental educators use. The familiar concrete referents students and their teachers will use at an environmental site make learning to do and understand science inquiry much more effective. And because school curricula, even though it may be so disguised that it seems appropriate only to school, is actually about the world we live in. You can find it embedded in nearly every place you see, from a busy neighborhood business area to a riparian forest or a mountain stream.
It’s been my experience that teachers respond well to developing the capacity to take charge of their science curricula by beginning with inquiries in a natural environment, zoo, or school neighborhood. Inquiry workshops which introduce groups of teachers to science inquiry in places with familiar concrete referents, then use these experiences to transition participants into science inquiry with the materials they have in the classrooms, are a good first step in improving science education. If it could be arranged, environmental educators and teacher mentors would ensure that a large number of these teachers would complete the journey to become those who, along with their students, routinely learn for understanding. And are willing to help empower other teachers.
Here are two sets of five assessment statements which have been used with effect, and which would emerge from the classrooms of teachers who have been freed to teach science as it should be taught. Freed because they have overcome the obstacles their teacher preparation and current punitive emphasis on standardized test results place on them. Freed to give effective feedback to their learning students. A teacher who has done the science, and comprehends the concepts and processes involved in what is being learned, will have a much better perspective to process a student’s efforts, place them within a meaningful context that the student can respond to, and observe for first, critical, steps toward learning for understanding.
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards teacher certification program effective professional teaching propositions:
1. Teachers are committed to students and their learning;
2. Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students;
3. Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning;
4. Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience; and,
5. Teachers are members of learning communities.
I believe that #2 above is not effectively addressed by current reforms. The five propositions listed above lead to what comes next:
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Measures of Effective Teaching and Cambridge Education Project teacher assessment assessors developed by students, themselves:
1. Students in this class treat the teacher with respect,
2. My classmates behave the way my teacher wants them to,
3. Our class stays busy and doesn’t waste time,
4. In this class, we learn a lot almost every day, and
5. In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes.
Becoming comfortable and experienced in teaching inquiry-based science is a fundamental step in meeting these propositions because it engages a paradigm shift which provides you with a more realistic perspective about science and students becoming scientists.
This is a regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin that explores how environmental educators can help classroom teachers get away from the pressure to teach to the standardized tests,and how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula. See the other installments here, or search Categories for “Jim Martin.”
by editor | Oct 23, 2014 | Language Arts
The Power of Storytelling:
Earth Tales and Activities
Show the Way for Living in Balance
by Michael J. Caduto
©2014 All Rights Reserved
From Siberia to the tip of South America, and from Africa to Polynesia, stories have grown from the very Earth upon which they were first told. Through these tales, the natural world speaks to the people who walk upon it and who use it to stay alive. But stories have wings, too, which loft them upon the winds of our imaginations.
Traditional tales contain the wisdom that countless generations have harvested by living close to the land, growing their own food and making the things they needed with their own hands. In order to live, they had to take care of the soil, the water, the plants and the animals. As the stories show, people eventually learned that the harm they caused the world around them would one day come knocking on their own door. The care they showed would be returned in kind with food, clean air and water, and materials with which to fashion tools and other necessities. In this way, stories are a kind of medicine, a way of healing the wounds of life.
In many stories it is clear that traditional cultures believe that all of nature is alive: those things that move, and those that do not. There is a breath of life in a tree, a hawk and the long wind that blows across open places and gently bends blades of grass. A spirit lives in the shadow that grows between the hills as the sun sets, in the rocks of the hills themselves, in the moon that rises into a starry sky, in the sweet smell of a flower and in the joy of a newborn fawn. Over and over in the old tales we read of the common faith in a benevolent, unseen Creator of the wonders that surround us. Like the natural world, stories are sacred and are treated with respect and reverence.
We All Have Native Roots
No matter what culture, or cultures, our ancestors come from, traditional stories can help us trace our roots back to their source. We all have ancestral ties to Native peoples who lived close to Earth. Their wisdom lies deep in our memories. One common thread that runs through the stories is the belief that we are a part of nature, and that the community of people and the natural world depends upon a mutual, respectful relationship. Although we cannot help but change our environment as we live in it and use its resources to keep us alive, we can do everything possible to have a positive impact and nurture the natural world.
Besides entertaining and helping to teach moral lessons, stories help to explain the natural world; they carry on our spiritual beliefs, our artistic traditions and the particular ways we use language. The wisdom of Earth stories is both a link to our past, and a lifeline to the beautiful, healthy Earth we want to leave as a legacy for future generations.
Earth Tales and Activities
In this section I present “The Wisdom of Nature,” an original retelling of a traditional Swahili story from Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar in eastern Africa. The story is adapted from my book Earth Tales from Around the World and it appears on my storytelling CD, The Wisdom of Nature and Other Earth Tales. The accompanying activities are designed for children of ages 5 to 12. As with all stories in Earth Tales, the activities suggested in the back of the book can be created and adapted to suit the home environment of the intended audience. These particular activities are oriented to the plants and animals of North America and are adapted from the book Keepers of the Animals: Native American Stories and Wildlife Activities for Children.
This introduction and story, “The Wisdom of Nature,” are used with permission from Earth Tales from Around the World, ©1997 by Michael J. Caduto (Golden Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing). The story also appears with permission from the storytelling CD: The Wisdom of Nature and Other Earth Tales, ©2014 by Michael J. Caduto (Luna Blu®). The activities, ©1991 by Michael J. Caduto, are adapted with permission from Keepers of the Animals: Native American Stories and Wildlife Activities for Children, by Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac (Fulcrum Publishing). The illustration by Adelaide Murphy Tyrol is used with permission. Activities may be used only as needed for normal classroom use. Written permission is required from the author to copy this story and introduction in any form from: Michael Caduto, P.O. Box 1052, Norwich, VT 05055, USA. Phone: (802) 649-1815. Copies of these books and information on related books, music and programs can be obtained at the P.E.A.C.E.® website: www.p-e-a-c-e.net
The Wisdom of Nature
Swahili (Tanzania)
©2014 by Michael J. Caduto
All Rights Reserved
In the thick brush at the edge of the hill country lived a magnificent snake. Its eyes blazed and the scales that covered its skin were as hard and strong as any shield. Venom flowed from its long, curved fangs. In the moment of its hunger, this huge, powerful snake devoured any wild animal it desired.
One day, the snake sat sunning itself in a small clearing. Being close to the ground, the snake sensed a roar in the distance. Its tongue picked up a strong scent. Upwind, some young hunters were burning the brush to drive the game animals into the open. Crackling flames rushed toward the snake
As it searched for refuge, the snake slithered out of the low brush and into the open along the border of a farmer’s fields.
“Please help me hide,” asked the snake. “The hunters are coming. They will kill me.”
When he saw the snake, the farmer was afraid.
“Do not fear me,” the snake called out to the farmer. “I will not harm you.”
The kindhearted farmer took pity on the snake, as he did on all animals that were in need of help.
“Quickly,” said the farmer as he opened the mouth of a large, empty grain bag, “crawl into this sack. The hunters will never think to look for you here.”
As soon as the tip of the snake’s tail disappeared into the mouth of the bag, some hunters approached. They were following the faint trail left by the snake’s belly as it slid along the ground.
“Have you seen a large snake come this way?” they asked the farmer.
“No,” he replied. “I have been working here all morning and have seen no sign of a snake. You must be reading an old trail.”
“Thank you,” said the hunters, and they walked on. When they were a safe distance away, the farmer opened the grain bag and whispered, “Come out, the danger has passed.”
The snake crept out of the sack, threw its coils around the farmer and held him fast.
“Let me go!” screamed the farmer. “I have just saved your life!”
“That is true,” replied the snake. “But I have not eaten for many days. You will make a good meal.”
“Then you will not let me go?” asked the farmer.
“No, I am starving.”
“Before you eat me,” said the farmer, “you could at least repay me for saving your life.”
“That is only fair,” said the snake. “I agree. Now what do you desire?”
“Let us have others decide whether you should eat me.”
“If that is your wish, so be it,” agreed the snake.
The snake followed the farmer to the edge of the field where a coconut palm tree had been planted. The tree listened carefully as each of them told his side of the story.
“Well,” replied the coconut palm, “I know the nature of human beings. They eat my nuts and drink the sweet milk inside. Some even use my leaves to thatch their roofs. Why should I save a human being? I say the snake should have its meal.”
“Let us ask the bee,” said the farmer.
“As you wish,” replied the snake.
“You must be joking!” replied the bee. “Human beings smoke us out of our homes and steal our honey. They never give us thanks. I have no compassion for the farmer.”
“Perhaps the mango tree down by the road will understand my plight,” thought the farmer. “Snake, let us go ask the mango to give us its judgment.”
“Lead on,” replied the snake.
Once it had listened to their stories, the mango tree spoke. “Year after year I stand here as generations of human beings pass by. They cool themselves in the shade of my branches and eat my fruit when they are hungry. Some break off my branches for firewood or to use as the shafts of spears for hunting the wild animals. Not once has a human being thanked me. Farmer, I see no reason why the snake should not eat you.”
“How could this be?” exclaimed the farmer. “Why should my life be such a trifle in the eyes of nature?”
At that moment, the farmer spotted a gazelle grazing along the riverbank. To the gazelle the farmer now pleaded his case.
In response to his story, the gazelle told a tale of its own. “I am often the difference between life and death for the human beings. Without my meat, they would starve and perish. Because I am so generous, people take me for granted. Your life, farmer, belongs to the snake.”
A baboon was listening from where it sat on the branch of a nearby tree.
“Every creature does what it must in order to survive,” said the baboon. That is the way of nature.”
“But what of the snake?” asked the farmer.
“One cannot blame the snake for its hunger,” replied the baboon. “Like you, the snake is part of the balance that exists in the world.”
A snake is meant to eat its prey,
it catches as it can.
Its food will try to get away,
escape’s the way of man.
“What, then, do you have to say about whether or not I should eat the farmer?” asked the snake.
“First, you must show me exactly how it happened,” said the baboon. “That sack does not look big enough to hold a snake as magnificent as yourself.”
The farmer then opened the bag and the snake crawled in.
“Are you able to close bag with the snake inside?” asked the baboon.
“Yes,” replied the farmer as he drew the cord tight and tied it securely.
“Now, farmer, we will see what you have learned,” said the baboon. “Once again, the fate of the snake is in your hands. Now what are you going to do about it, hmmm?”
Activities
Prey, Tell Me
“Every creature does what it must in order to survive,” said the baboon in this story. “That is the way of nature.” Indeed, each plant and animal has specific adaptations, physical (genetic) traits and behaviors that better enable it to survive and reproduce in its particular environment. Among animals, many survival adaptations relate to eating or being eaten.
Activity: Solve some riddles that describe the survival adaptations of some prey animals by guessing the animal’s identity.
Goals: Understand what a survival adaptation is and learn some defenses of certain prey animals.
Level: Ages 5 to 12
Materials: Riddles and kids.
Procedure: Discuss the meaning of interrelationships and give examples of different kinds of animal relationships. Be sure to include examples of animals that have both positive and negative effects on each other. Ask the children to think of their own examples.
Define and discuss the concept of survival adaptation with the children. Have them call out some examples of offensive adaptation of predators and defensive adaptations of prey animals.
Now tell them they are going to hear some riddles which describe some adaptations of animals that are often hunted as prey. With older children, have them come up and take turns reading the riddles. You will need to do the reading for young children. The riddles vary from easy to challenging.
PREY, TELLME (RIDDLES)
- My home is a burrow in the ground. I only come out at night when it is cool and damp and when I am not likely to be seen. Lots of animals, especially early birds, love to eat me, but I can scoot down my burrow quickly if someone tries to grab me, and I am very sensitive to vibrations in the ground. Don’t fish around too long for the answers?
I am a (worm).
- I am a great swimmer from the minute I am born, I float almost as well as a cork. If something comes after me I use my webbed feet and tiny wings to skate quickly away over the water. The predators who spot me and try to attack from below see down when they look up. You may see me eating plants or fish.
I am a (duckling).
- My long ears, keen hearing and sensitive nose help me to detect danger from far off. I can make a fast getaway if spotted. Still, I come out from sunset to sunrise with darkness as my cover. I have a habit of twitching my nose. My tail is short and my feet are lucky.
I am a (rabbit).
- I sing my song when summertime is aging and autumn is on the way. I don’t sing with my voice though. Some people know I wing it. My long antennae help me to sense when danger is around. Still, my kind often become lunch for birds, shrews and even tiny snakes. I might live under a rock or spend my time in a clump of grass.
I am a (cricket).
- You know me well around your garden. My skin is bumpy and bad to taste. I eat ants and flies with a long, sticky tongue. When you pick me up I release the contents of my bladder to startle you into putting me down.
I am a (toad)?
- My skin of scales is a good hint. I am small and quick with a colorful tail. When a predator comes and grabs at the tip, I snap it off like the flick of a whip.
I am a (skink).
Adapt and Survive
Adapting is not simply a matter of following a pre-determined program of adaptations like a robot. Many times, like the human being in this story, the animal that survives is one that can learn from its environment and make choices based on individual situations. For animals, threats can come from both the natural world and from the actions of human beings.
Activity: Play a game of choices to see if you are as adaptable as the coyote—to see if you can adapt to survive in a changing world.
Goals: Understand that change—both natural and human-made—is a normal part of an animal’s existence, and that adapting to change is necessary to survive.
Level: Ages 9 to 12
Materials: Copy or copies of “Coyote’s Choice: Adapt and Survive,” other materials as needed depending upon the format you use for this activity, such as a game for each child to play individually (one copy for each child), or a course that children will walk through while making the decisions (index cards, each with one of the numbered situations set up as separate stations and any props you may want to add to create a more life-like course for the children to experience).
Procedure: Discuss the adaptability of coyotes, how they have expanded their range in recent years and the many changes which are constantly occurring around them to threaten their existence. These changes can be natural, such as floods, fire created by lightning, drought or a food shortage. Change can also be caused by people, for example, clear cutting a forest, damming a river or setting out traps or poisoned bait to kill animals. Coyotes are experts at adapting to change, moving to a new habitat when they need to or sensing danger when it is near and avoiding it, even if it means turning away from food that looks suspicious when they are hungry. They do not always make the right choice, however, and cannot always adapt successfully. Sometimes they survive, sometimes they do not.
Have each child read the following story, making choices along the way as they think a coyote might make. Even if a child makes the wrong survival choice at a certain point in the story, he or she is to continue on to the next station, and so on, until reaching the end of the story. When all of the children are through, have them share their choices, adaptations and experiences. How many of them honestly made all of the right choices and were able to make the necessary changes to survive each time? Which choices made it most difficult to make the right survival decisions? Which choices were the easiest?
Note: This activity can also be set up as a fun series of stations in which the initial situation is described and illustrated and children must choose one course or another by turning over a card or lifting up a flap to reveal the consequences of their decision. Then they can move on to the next station to test their wits there.
COYOTE’S CHOICE: ADAPT AND SURVIVE
- You are a tiny coyote pup and your mother has gone off to hunt for food. While you wait in the burrow a strange piece of thin wire on the end of a stick is pushed toward you from the door of your den. You see it coming and are afraid of it so you:
a. cower back against the wall of the burrow to escape.
b. attack the wire by biting it.
Answers:
• If you chose (a) you survived.
• If you chose (b) you were snared and taken away by a hunter.
- You are now old enough to do some hunting on your own. There, up ahead, you see a dead animal that looks like it is more than big enough for a whole meal. When you get closer you see some strange tracks in the soil and smell an animal you have never smelled before. You are very hungry, but afraid to go closer to the dead animal. After watching a while and looking for signs of danger you decide to:
a. eat the meat of the animal.
b. turn away and search for another meal.
Answers:
• If you chose (a) the meat was a poisoned trap set by a farmer and you are a goner.
• If you chose (b) you survived.
- It has not rained for a long time, the plants are dying and animals are becoming scarce. You are very weak, yet you feel an urge to travel to look for food. You begin to walk away from your burrow but you find it hard to walk. You decide to
a. push ahead and look for water and food elsewhere even though it means risking using up your last energy.
b. return to the burrow and wait for the rain and food to return.
Answers:
• If you chose (a) you survived.
• If you chose (b) starvation set in and you became too weak to leave your burrow. You did not survive.
- You come to a place where people are living because you know there is usually some food nearby. There is a place up ahead where the smell of food is strong, yet danger is very near and threatening. As night slowly advances with the setting sun, you decide to
a. sneak in and eat as much of the food as you can under the cover of darkness.
b. turn around and seek food elsewhere.
Answers:
• If you chose (a) you were able to eat safely while protected by the darkness. You survived.
• If you chose (b) your last strength was used when searching for food in another spot. You did not survive.
- With your strength restored you travel a short distance seeking shelter—a place to sleep and digest your meal. There is a strange burrow above ground up ahead. It is large and the morning sun shines off the strange smooth skin into your eyes. You climb up into it and try walking through the place that looks like the entrance, but you bump into something you cannot see. Finally you find an opening in the skin on the side and walk in, only to find many strange smells meet your nostrils. You sniff a few times and suddenly feel very tired. You decide to:
a. lie down and sleep here.
b. move on to look for a safer place.
Answers:
• If you chose (a) you slept in an old abandoned car and made it your temporary shelter. You survived.
• If you chose (b) you found a large hollow tree to rest in and slept safely all day. You survived.
- When you wake up the sun is setting and you are hungry again, but not starving like before. You leave your burrow and walk until you come to the edge of the woods. You see a field with some furry animals in it eating the plants, but you are not sure it is safe to enter the field or whether those animals are food or not. As you move closer you notice a freshly-killed rabbit in front of you. There are those strange tracks around it, like the ones you saw near that dead animal with the strange smell some time ago. But this meat smells good as you approach it and your hunger deepens. Then, as you move even closer, you notice something sticking out of the ground near the rabbit. It looks like it has large teeth and is made of the strange skin of that burrow with the smooth shiny skin. You look all around one more time to make sure that none of the dangerous animals who walk on two feet are around, then you
a. pounce on the rabbit.
b. run off into the underbrush, sensing danger.
Answers:
- If you chose (a) you felt a sharp, cold pain climb up your leg from one of your feet. Your foot is in a steel trap and there is no way out.
You did not survive.
- If you chose (b) you survived.
- If you have successfully survived by making all of the right choices so far, you will now raise a new coyote family. On the way back to your burrow you meet a coyote and decide to take her or him as a mate. Soon, the next generation of coyotes is born and you have pups of your own to feed.
Living In Balance: The Circle of Giving and Receiving
In “The Wisdom of Nature” the bee and the mango tree complain that the human beings take what they need but never give thanks. The gazelle says that its meat keeps the human beings alive, but that the human beings take it for granted. Many Native peoples see reciprocity—the Circle of Giving and Receiving—as essential to living in balance with nature.
Activity:(A) Make a list of all the gifts we receive from plants and animals. Practice
using only what is needed and giving thanks when receiving each of these gifts. (B) Create a special gift to return the generosity of the plants and animals.
Goals: Understand how numerous and varied are the gifts we receive from plants and animals. Realize that living in balance involves using only what is needed, not being wasteful and giving thanks to complete the circle of giving and receiving.
Level: Ages 5 to 12
Materials: (A) chalkboard and chalk or felt-tipped markers and newsprint, masking tape. (B) same materials as in (A) plus: pencils, paper, crayons, construction paper, scissors, glue, tape, very large sheet of paper such as brown postal wrapping paper, pictures or photographs of plants and animals as models for the children’s drawings, other materials as needed to complete children’s own, original projects.
Procedure A: Opening the Circle—Receiving. Use the children’s ideas and your own thoughts to make a list of the gifts we receive from plants and animals. Brainstorm a list of plants and animals that help to bring the gifts to us. Have the children go through an entire day by saying “thank you” to a plant or animal, or plants and animals in general, each time one of these gifts is used, eaten, worn, etc. An example is “Thank you honeybee” for honey and beeswax (a common ingredient in lip balm).
Encourage the children to be especially careful to use these gifts wisely—to take only what they need and not be wasteful.
Procedure B: Completing the Circle—Giving Back. Now tell the children how this story of “The Wisdom of Nature” reminds us that the plants and animals give us many wonderful gifts, and that living in balance means, in part, to return the gifts we receive by giving something of ourselves back. Ask the children to call out ways they may do this and write them down for all to see. Save them for use later.
Have each of the children write, in his or her own words, a poem or other form of saying “thank you” to the plants and animals. Children may draw a picture to depict a feeling of gratitude. Very young children may need pictures or photographs of the plants and animals to help them visualize the images for their drawings.
Create, on a large sheet of paper, an outline of a coconut palm, mango or other chosen tree, such as an apple tree. Have each child write or place her or his form of
“thank you” inside this outline. Pictures may be cut out and glued or taped on. The tree could even be entirely filled with pictures or illustrations to form a collage.
Follow through by having the children add other ways of giving thanks to the plants and animals as they think of them.
Michael J. Caduto is the creator and co-author (with Joseph Bruchac) of the best-selling Keepers of the Earth® series of books and resources. He recently released two new storytelling CD’s of stories from around the world: The Rainbow Garden—Tales of Wisdom (ages 5-10) and The Wisdom of Nature and other Earth Tales (ages 11 and up). Michael travels widely as an award-winning author, master storyteller, ecologist, educator, poet and musician. His work draws from the global well of Earth wisdom and he has worked closely with many Native peoples. His most recent books, Catch the Wind, Harness the Sun: 22 Super-Charged Science Projects for Kids and Riparia’s River received the Teacher’s Choice Award and Green Earth Honor Book Award.
by editor | Jan 2, 2014 | K-12 Classroom Resources
By Jim Martin
CLEARING Associate Editor
hat if science teachers did science before they began teaching? Might a teaching model like this be possible to employ? Instructive to explore? There have been initiatives which followed up on this possibility. Their results were encouraging, but never replaced learning about science in publishers’ materials via college teacher education courses, which are simpler and less expensive to do when they are textbook-centered. The fruits of this choice have been a large fraction of K-12 graduates who haven’t achieved their potential.
What do students have to say about the way they are taught? Might some insights emerge from their comments? There is very little record of K-12 education from students’ own personal view point. Do they know whether their educations are worthwhile? A few people have looked into this, and have found that, when asked, students feel that classroom time is well spent when students treat the teacher with respect, behave the way their teachers want them to, stay busy and don’t waste time, learn a lot almost every day, and learn to correct their mistakes. Perhaps they have an intuitive understanding of an environment conducive to learning. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards teacher certification program finds that students do well in school when their teachers are committed to them and their learning, know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students, are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning, think systematically about their practice, learn from experience, and are members of learning communities. Two complimentary views of what underlies effective education.
Taken together, these findings indicate that students know when they are taught well, and present the foundation of a clear plan for teacher pre- and in-service education. Had the K-12 graduates who didn’t achieve their potential applied questions such as stay busy and don’t waste time, learn a lot almost every day, and teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students, to their teachers and curricula, and their assessments been considered in improving science teaching, might they have led to science courses which encouraged students to achieve their potential? Would they have led to pre-service science teachers actually doing science as part of their preparation for teaching science?
My experience tells me that doing science is important for science teachers. The need for science experience is a need that environmental educators have the capacity to respond to. The environments they work in abound with the kind of work pre- and in-service educators can do: mitigation, restoration, assessment, etc. They all contain the kernels of science inquiries to do. Working in collaboration with environmental educators, agency staff, and teacher education faculty and staff, pre- and in-service teachers could gain hands-on experience on the ground that they could get in no other way. My own experiences tell me that what emerges from this kind of collaborative work is science teachers involved and invested in the content that they teach, and empowered as teachers unencumbered by bureaucratic pressures outside their classroom doors; the experience necessary to change teachers’ views of science, a paradigm shift, that moves their locus of control for teaching science to within themselves, and away from the political winds that blow through schools. A key piece of the puzzle, this respite gives them a chance to develop effective science curricula.
What is it about doing science in environments outside the school that makes it so effective? I’d say that the reasons are many. An obvious one is that doing science in a familiar setting is less intimidating than doing it in a lab, which is much less familiar than, say, a quiet streambank. Another is that our brain learned to learn in the world outdoors. So learning science in a natural environment means learning in the brain’s inductive-constructivist way of learning. I’ve learned that, when teachers begin by doing science in a natural environment, they develop reasons to go into the lab, and labs become familiar places. What if we tried that? What would happen if environmental educators, agencies and organizations, and schools of education gathered together to explore the idea of a collaboration to provide pre- and in-service hands-on science education for teachers? There are all kinds of possibilities in collaborations like this.
If you’re a teacher, think back to your pre-service classes. Did you learn about a thing in class, then go out to experience it? How closely did what you experienced resemble the picture you had in your head back in the class? What if you had done the work first, then returned to the class to learn the underlying conceptual structure? Imagine a pair of pre-service teachers working together with an environmental educator, a restoration specialist from the City’s Bureau of Environmental Services, and a teacher with her students, to restore a reach of a stream flowing through a residential area near a school. Imagine further that the pre-service teachers are charged that day to identify and describe the characteristics of effective work groups. This in addition to doing the scheduled work of the morning.
The next day, back in the School of Education, all of the members of the class relate their experiences and report the characteristics of effective work groups that they had observed. Might discussion and negotiation of meaning elicit a clear concept of effective work groups, and posit connections between that and other elements of human learning? How might experiences like this influence these pre-service teachers when they do their one-year teaching internship? Would they affect the quality of their students’ educations when these interns begin full-time teaching? How would this look if a full-time teacher worked with the group from time-to-time as a mentor? If the full-time teacher would be the supervising teacher when the interns did their year in her classroom? This may never happen, but you can organize your own experiences to make this kind of experience one that you achieve yourself. All of the pieces of the puzzle are out there; they’re just not seen as elements of a functional whole. We have to learn to open our minds to recognize the relationships between what seem obviously disparate elements in a confusing world.
We’re not going to have this handed to us. But you can hand it to yourself. Find an environmental educator who is doing a restoration. Work with her. Then get your students on board. You’ll be outside your comfort zone. That’s okay. Keep your focus on what you want your students to learn, and make sure that part works. Look for workshops and institutes that provide valuable experience. In one summer institute, a teacher who had never ventured outside the classroom experienced her first encounter with the real world. By the end of the institute, she knew how to find a wetland, figure out its parameters, and design a project for her students. She had done science, and moved it into a perspective that removed its anxiety, made it eminently teachable. So she looked up an environmental educator she had met during the institute who suggested a wetland restoration project along a city-sponsored trail. The environmental educator agreed to help her plan, meet City bureau of environmental services staff, provide a training for her students, and point her toward a private granting organization which funded just this sort of project. She did the project, and continued on this path.
Let me step away from science for a moment and tell about plays my 7th graders performed when I first began teaching below college level. If I hadn’t done drama, I’d never have just hung two sheets from the ceiling light fixtures along the length of the room and said, “The side toward the windows is the audience, the side toward the blackboard is the stage. What shall we do?” My locus of control would have been too far away from me to even think of doing that. Luckily, I’d done plays for years. We picked a play, edited it, gave it. Then students, in groups, asked to write and do plays for the lower grades. And did them. I’d have been scared to death if I hadn’t acted, directed, constructed, written programs, made props, etc. I’d have simply followed a published play with directions. To the letter. And thought I was teaching drama. And I’d certainly not let them go off to the lower grades on their own. They’re seventh graders; get real.
Once you do science, it is not as intimidating as you first perceive it to be. Like me if I’d never done drama. Or, for all of us, the first time off the diving board, hitting a softball, etc. Now, you are focusing on particulars, so experience no unfocused anxieties about vague worries. We’re all good at that; once we focus on particulars, we begin to nail them down and work toward mastery. Get the start, so you know what you want to understand and do, then look around for resources like courses, workshops, knowledgeable people. Experience doing the work, then take control of your curriculum.
This is a regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin that explores how environmental educators can help classroom teachers get away from the pressure to teach to the standardized tests,and how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula. See the other installments here, or search Categories for “Jim Martin.”
