Teaching in the Outdoors - My Bag of Tricks

My Environmental Education Bag of Tricks Includes....

• ambulators to make a long walk seem shorter or more fun
• how to relate common games to environmental issues
• the developmental appropriateness of certain games
• knowing how to use all 5 senses
• being able to encourage thoughtful reflection
• nature journaling
• colors of nature game
• onion trail game
• call and responses
• animal allies role playing games
  
• hunter gatherer searches, games, scavenger hunts
• fantasy and map-making placed based education activities
• allowing kids to make up names for the plants that they're seeing
• comfort in leading a group of kids
• when to do an active vs. a quieter program
• how to be aware of potential safety issues
• how to inject a sense of adventure into nature exploration
• how to get parents and mixed age groups going
• ways of getting the attention of a group that isn't listening

I think I've got a lot more that I haven't written down, and I think I'll continue to add to this list whenever I learn new things. I love the fact that a lot of my classmates shared their experiences, too, so I can also approach them for advice if I need it.

Teaching in the outdoors (class journal 3)

One needs only to look at the dashboard of my car, the shelves in my apartment or inside the heavy boxes when I move to understand that I must be a hunter gatherer or collector. I have a feather that I've yet to identify on my dashboard, I have coral, rocks, shells, bone, animal track casts strewn about, and it's tough for me to resist the urge to pick wildflowers.

It may sound bad, but some environmentalists have told me that I'm stealing things from nature, but I know that by using my senses and it is always a thrill for me to seek new things in an environment. I think that we miss a lot surrounding us because we fail to really look at things, and by seeking certain colors, objects or textures we open ourselves up to observing a lot more in nature.

Also, by collecting different signs (as I did during my mammalogy class at the Harris Center last semester) you can really get to know an animal that you may never catch an actual glimpse of, like a bobcat, moose or fisher. I think some of the hunter gatherer motif actually involves a bit of adventure, too. It is an adventure to hunt for things, and it is a joy to discover something you've never seen. I felt at ease finding dragonfly enuvae once I found one, I saw them everywhere! I'd never seen something like that, evidence so fresh of emergence, and it was a thrill to me every time.

Teaching in the Outdoors (class journal 2)

Sitting in the marsh, if I were asked to write on this when I arrived here, I should describe only a few meager glimpses of life. A blue heron nest stands still and empty at the top of a dead tree, a few ripples of bugs on the surface of the water. But as I stared at the still water, I saw the first few glimpses of life. Newts swam underwater, a great match to go with the efts we were finding throughout the previous days. I caught a leech that was swimming (something I've never seen).

Apparently I have forgotten all of my freshwater biology, or I have never really been to a swamp, because everything we pulled out, every muck-filled bucket was full of life. Every bit of pond scum every bit of plant hid a living thing. There was life everywhere. And if only we could get people to go outside to see below the "mucky" water, see into the mud, see into the forest and open their eyes, their senses to that sense of adventure, we would feel so much more connected to the world.

I don't think I'll ever drive past a swam again and look at it in the same way...