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Education for Environment and Community In Partnership with the University of Washington IslandWood’s residency grads explore best practices in teaching and learning, from forest lab to school gardens.
Urban Environmental Education Graduate Program In Partnership with Antioch University Seattle IslandWood’s urban grads gain real-world experience working in schools, community organizations, and government agencies to learn about how and why urban ecosystems work the way they do.
Both programs prepare educators to address 21st century challenges by using the environment as a context for teaching and learning as they work with a diverse population of children and young adults. Our classrooms are the urban and natural ecosystems that make up the fabric of our communities.
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How can learning be fun and interesting? How can we rekindle appreciation of nature?
by Chris Helander
educators are asking how do you reach young people who seem apathetic and unmotivated to learn. In old cultures before schools, books, and grades; people learned by being mentored. Using sto- ries, ceremony, games, and survival skills everyone and everything was a teacher. In the modern model of education learn- ing is force fed, sitting in chairs, listening to an adult spouting out information to be memorized. Modern children learning this way are trained to get their knowl- edge by memorization of someone elseís knowledge. They do not learn how to develop the questioning mind or follow their hearts to learn from their own experiences.
T We have all heard about the stud-
ies done on the modern human brain which show we only use 10% of our brains. Recent studies show an alarm-
here are many people who say our current model for learning is ineffectual. Parents and
For the questioning mind learning never concludes because it is an endless journey with an infinite number of destinations.
ing further decrease to between 5% and 7% thinking power. Could it be due to getting our information almost entirely through visually focused stimulation? These same studies done on people liv- ing in aboriginal cultures demonstrated brain use at 60% and up to 70% in the healers and trackers. Could it be due to using all their senses to get information about their world, which means using all of their brain to learn? These people
have never sat in a classroom, they donít read or write yet they use far more of their brain than the modern educated person. In aboriginal cultures not only the parents and extended family of the community are the mentors but nature itself is understood as a powerful and infinitely wise teacher. By observing nature we learn from the tress, from the animals, and from the birds. In our modern culture we learn almost exclu- sively from books, and lecture, while our young people are more inclined to learn from T.V.
At Coyote’s
Path Wilderness School one of the skills we mentor to others is the art
of survival skills. When I first began to teach, I taught as I had been taught in school. This was the “show and tell” what I knew about survival skills method. One of my mentors, Jon Young of Wilderness Awareness School, in his Art of Mentoring workshop, calls it the “drag and brag” style of teaching. After I had taken his workshop I asked Jon to come to Portland to teach a weekend of nature skills at Oxbow Park. I was at my teaching station telling my students
everything I knew about the Cedar Tree. Jon walked by, stopped and listened for awhile and then asked me “Are you asking them lots of questions?” I answered yes, but after he smiled and walked away I realized I had only asked a few questions of my students. I was deep in teacher “show and tell” mode. Giving answers even before I was asked a question. How much more meaning- ful would the experience have been if I had them find the answers by saying the following:
Everyone come over to this tree and smell the branches.
Now smell the bark. Which one smells stronger?
Has anyone ever smelled this tree before?
Why do people put it in their closets?
Do you think that works in the woods too?
So what could you use this for in the woods?
How could you use it in a shelter? Could you put it on your skin?
Go ahead rub a little bit of it between your fingers?
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On the cover: students from Bolton Middle School in West Linn, Oregon engaged in learning about the ecology of the Pacific
Northwest on a 4-day field excursion called “Biome Bonanza.” Article on page 28. Photo provided by author and teacher Lisa Terrall.
4450 Blakely Ave NE I Bainbridge Island, WA 98110 I T: 205.855.4300 Page 2
www.clearingmagazine.org CLEARING Fall 2017
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