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Posted by Hadley Galbraith
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on September 02, 2010 |
 That quote from Eleanor Roosevelt is close to Susanne Norris's heart. An educator at the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites, Susanne stays busy running a Discovery Center and a long list of education programs each using the historic homes in Hyde Park as teaching to tools in lessons about history, ecology, forestry, and many other topics.
One of Susanne's favorites,"Where do Human Rights Begin," takes place at Val-Kill Cottage, Eleanor Roosevelt's home. It builds on Roosvelt's accomplishments to help 7th-12th graders grasp the role of human rights in the real world. Those interested in teaching about human rights can join Susanne for a special workshop September 15. See below for details.
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Posted by Peter Rottenbucher
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on August 17, 2010 |
Peter Rottenbucher is an intern with the Hudson River Valley Institute at Marist College in Poughkeepsie. He is a History and Spanish double major with a strong enthusiasm for education and academia. Peter will spend his junior year in Madrid, Spain, hoping to master the language and later in life combine his passions for language and history.
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Posted by Steve Stanne, Hudson River Estuary Program, NYS DEC
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on August 10, 2010 |
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"Take your time."
This advice is so central to interacting with nature, according to Laurie Seeman and Joanna Dickey of the Strawtown Art & Garden Studio in Nyack, that they carry a tablet printed with these words into the woods when leading explorations of the environment through art.
Though their workshop gave special emphasis to this principle, it seemed that – spoken or unspoken - it was a common theme during Teaching the Hudson Valley's summer institute at the end of July.
Many teachers work in environments that put a premium on seat time and formal instruction -- readying students for tests. As David Sobel pointed out in his keynote, some schools go so far as to shorten or eliminate recess to gain a few more precious minutes for instruction. And I’m sure that my own kids aren’t the only ones with barely enough time to get through the cafeteria line before the lunch period is over. (Didn’t our parents tell us to take time to chew?)
A primary challenge of doing more place-based education in the field is prying open the school day to fit in the necessary time. And once one has leveraged that time, there is the need to figure out how to balance time spent in directed investigation of the environment with time devoted to less structured but often equally valuable interaction with nature.
At Olana, we were given time to observe nature closely in directed fashion. Carri Manchester and her educators sent us out on the grounds with paper and pencil to sketch. At first, the minutes crawled by as I selected a subject and tentatively drew the first few lines. But soon the task became consuming, and a half hour sped by.
Later, an exercise using a camera to frame views of nature elicited a similar response, as I became engrossed in the patterns of foliage, light, and shadow in Olana’s fern garden.
For some classroom teachers used to hectic schedules, the amount of time spent in undirected exploration of forest and stream during Tuesday’s Strawtown Studio workshop might have pursued the idea to the point of ignoring reality. Perhaps it was a luxury better suited to a summer camp experience.
But then… At the close of the workshop, as the rest of the group headed back to the conference center, a few of us took the time to more closely examine cases constructed of tiny stones by insect larvae living in the stream. While doing this, our attention was drawn to movement in a pool two feet long and a few inches deep that had become separated from the channel as dry weather diminished the stream’s flow.
The pool held shiny turquoise and yellow pumpkinseed sunfish – about ten of them, two to three inches long. Had these little fish been literate, they might have recognized what ensued as a deus ex machina – hands reached down into their disappearing domain, captured them one by one, and transferred them back into the brook.
Given the mud stirred up in the pool, our next discovery came with a start. Something slimier and larger brushed up against our fingers – a ten inch long American eel that had also become stranded. It probably didn’t need help (in moist conditions eels can travel overland) and its slippery writhing made it hard to catch. But eventually the hands from above had their way and moved the eel back into the stream so it could continue a life that began several years and over a thousand miles ago in the Sargasso Sea.
Take your time.
(Top photo by Laurie Seeman; bottom by Steve Stanne.)
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Posted by Shari Robinson, Lewisboro ES, South Salem, NY
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on August 05, 2010 |
 As I think about place-based education and
my first experience as a participant in the
THV institute, three events stand out.
First, the keynote by David Sobel reminded me, once again, about what authentic teaching and learning really looks like. In a past life I worked on the ATLAS Project: Authentic Teaching and Learning for All Students.
On that project I met Steven Levy, who now supports teachers in Expeditionary Learning/Outward Bound Schools. Steven was one of those extraordinary teachers who did things with his students like grow, harvest, and grind wheat to make bread; card, spin, and dye wool to knit into blankets; and learn how to repair bicycles to donate to less fortunate children.
The projects David described represent the kind of curriculum we need to be developing if we want to engage students’ hearts and minds in a world with infinite distractions and opportunities to turn off and tune out. (Editor's note: Check out David's latest book, Place- and Community-Based Education in Schools, co-written with Greg Smith, a previous THV keynote.)
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