I teach because education is essential in changing popular opinion on crucial issues that will shape the future. I am motivated to teach about the environment because of the necessary shift from an environmentalism that benefits privileged people and neglects the voices of marginalized folks. This shift would also require a refocused emphasis Indigenous environmentalism, including Traditional Ecological Knowledge which emphasizes connection to one’s immediate environment and local ecology. Teaching environmental education, therefore, is an opportunity to bring historically oppressed voices of people of color and poor people into the conversation of environmentalism by including these voices and experiences into the curriculum. The Environmental Leadership Program creates this opportunity by emphasizing exposure to one’s immediate and local natural environment. I can convey my passion for the subject by establishing my gratitude for the magical, beautiful, local places my students and I get to learn in and sharing my excitement for the subject. My approaches are based on what I have seen work well and what has worked well for me as a student. These approaches include fostering round-table discussions allowing students to enjoy the process of curiosity and learning by following their own individual passions. By treating youths as equals and allowing them to teach in more of a guided conversation method rather than explicitly telling them facts, I believe students gain the most long-term knowledge both about the subject and how to have an academic conversation. For example, when taking a group of first graders on a field trip at Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, instead of naming the plants that capture their attention, I guide them in inquisitive questioning about their observations about the plant and what makes it unique. This process is both less didactic and more engaging for students and results in long-term retention of plant recognition.
Photo Credit: Katie Lynch
I also believe in instilling a sense of accountability and self-discipline by assigning specific roles and introducing incentives for focused and inquisitive behavior. This tactic has worked well specifically with first graders during a field trip at Mt. Pisgah where each section of the trail I picked a new “secret walker.” The secret walker was a student that was staying on the trails, being respectful to others (keeping their hands to themselves), and using observation skills such as fox feet or deer ears (shown in the picture above), to walk quietly using observation skills throughout the hike. The secret walker was given a laminated plant card, encouraged to look out for that plant on the trail, and allowed to lead the group at the front of the line. This friendly competition fostered good behavior on the trails with increased attention paid to each assigned plant card. In this way, without demanding focus, attention, or respect, students quickly regulated themselves and others and as a result paid more attention to the plants and animals throughout the trails. Framing the field trip and associated hike as usually reserved for “big kids” and as an especially difficult hike that I feel the students are prepared for has also made a huge difference in maintaining attention and minimizing complaints during the hike.
Photo Credit: Katie Lynch
A large part of my teaching philosophy is also based on evaluating the dynamics of each group of students and playing to their strengths. While recognizing difficulties that arise, such as lack of focus, chattiness, or disinterest, I use this opportunities to directly involve the distracted student and eventually address the cause of distraction. This may be due to something completely unrelated to the field trip, in which case it is my responsibility to specifically engage those students so that they have the most memorable and educational experience. For example, I recently had a blind student who would have been disinterested and unengaged in the existing curriculum which focused on visual observations. For our silent hike trail activity with this group of eight third graders, during which they spent time at different parts of the trail focusing on their senses and observations, I modified the cards to pay more attention to other senses: hearing, touch, and smell. This small adjustment included the blind student while engaging the rest of the group in exercises not focused explicitly on sight. The students were able to make astute observations about plants and animals on the trail unrelated to sight and explicitly enjoyed the experience of hugging a tree. Assessing personal strengths, difficulties, energy levels, intra-personal dynamics, and interference levels of chaperones is essential to maximizing the strengths of the group and creating the most educational and memorable experience.
Sample Materials
Photo Credit: Katie Lynch
Below is a link to the final lesson plan that myself and the rest of the Restoring Connections team developed. It is an engaged environmental educational curriculum that spans 3 different field trips in fall, winter, and spring, for Adams Elementary 4th graders.
a) Personal Reflection: As a student teacher with ELP, I have learned many useful techniques for maintaining attention, keeping students engaged, and integrating personal interests in order to achieve learning outcomes. Throughout the progression of this term, I learned how to effectively hold the space in order to maintain authority and attention with the group of students I was working with. To be completely honest, after my first ELP field trip with a group of first graders, I was convinced that teaching was not for me. I had extreme difficulty maintaining attention, enforcing the group agreements, and keeping excitement up. As the first group to do spring restoration/stewardship projects, I think I only had one or two students participate in the grade-specific activity which was planting wildflowers on the trail. I was disheartened, discouraged, and frustrated. However, after time for self-reflection and feedback from my peers and other teachers, I learned from my first extremely frustrating experience and returned resolved to get my students excited about nature while respecting both me and Mt. Pisgah Arboretum. One of the primary tactics that I used for maintaining attention and enforcing group agreements while on the trail was spending more time at the beginning of the trip developing a rapport with the students and building excitement for the trip ahead. Instead of using an animal-associated name game, I asked each student to tell me what their favorite activity to do outdoors was. This got students in the mindset of utilizing our outdoor classroom for both academic and personal gain as many students had individual experiences they wanted to share about being in nature. Another key tip that I gained after this first week was to immediately remind students of our group agreements -- staying on the trails, being respectful of nature, being respectful of each other, and being respectful of me. Without an immediate reminder, I found that students took advantage of me and would try to push my limits. Going forward from the first week, I used the first 10-15 minutes as a prime time to set the standard for the rest of the trip. During our educational trail hikes, I developed a sense of friendly competition as I chose a “secret walker” for each section of the cross-back trail that we walked. The “secret walker” was a student who was respecting our group agreements, listening to nature facts I shared with the groups, and not distracting other students. With the prestigious title of secret walker came the responsibility of leading our single-filed group, holding a plant identification card, and looking out for examples of the plant card they were holding to share with other students on the trail. Along with the unique techniques that I integrated into my field trip sessions, the attention getting techniques and group management tactics that I learned allowed me to become a continuously better teacher. The primary attention getting technique I used was to either centering all the students by sitting in a circle or by waiting until all students were following me when I prompted them with “If you can hear me touch your nose...if you can hear me touch your head...if you can hear me touch your knees…” etc.These new standards along with some basic attention gathering and group management techniques completely changed my experience as a guide for the Restoring Connections program.
b) Summary of student/teacher evaluations –re: learning outcomes The feedback from teachers and students throughout the term allowed me to discover the most effective way to teach during our in-class lessons and field trips. The majority of teachers gave both me and our team constructive feedback by telling us the attention getting techniques that their students will respond best to, or alerting our team of any trouble-makers in the class. However, one of the best ways that I personally was able to engage a student to achieve learning outcomes was in a field trip with a third grade student that was blind. Before the field trip with this student, I was told by his assistant that there were often not enough opportunities for this student to engage with curriculum as there were for his visually-abled peers, including our pre-trip lesson. As I lead the 3rd grade group with the most tactile stewardship project -- building mason bee houses with bamboo sticks in tin cans -- this student was assigned to my group. In my preparation, I knew many accommodations would have to be made to include this student in the multiple visual observation techniques that the 3rd grade curriculum included. I primarily made adaptations to the curriculum’s silent hike trail activity by replacing cards that would ask for the student to count “how many colors” they saw at a particular part in the trail with cards that focused on senses of touch, hearing, and smell, such as touching “three different kinds of lichen and thinking about the difference between them.” After the field trip, the student’s guide approached me and told me how much she and the student appreciated the accommodations and how they helped involve the blind student in achieving the learning outcomes.
c) Summary of community partner evaluations – re: project deliverables Working with the community partners for Restoring Connections, Mt Pisgah Arboretum and Adams Elementary School, helped our team to create a product that could easily be applied for years to come. Adaptability was essential in the development of our curriculum and became especially evident in the difficulties our team had implementing past curriculums that left out minor details of preparation necessary before class lessons or field trips. With our experiences implementing past curriculums and working continuously with our community partners, we were able to create a curriculum that included the goals of both MPA and Adams Elementary for a long-term environmental education program that integrated materials and environments available at MPA with the state and national standards expected by the administration of Adams. While the feedback from our community partners was not as directly integrated into our experience as the feedback from our team members, project manager, and program director, the feedback that we did receive was generally positive and supportive of our techniques. The MPA representative we worked with, Jenny, was extremely helpful in giving us feedback about trails and materials that would work best with each grade level.
d) Summary of ELP evaluations: As with any teaching experience, ELP has presented its fair share of challenges and obstacles. However, working as a team by developing and implementing past curriculums allowed consistent feedback from other student teachers, our project manager, and program director, in order to continuously improve our teaching methods and teamwork. One of the main techniques that our team focused on and gradually improved on was our group management techniques. As a team, we realized that without maintaining attention and excitement about learning outdoors, the learning outcomes of each grade would not be realized. Something specific that I learned throughout our many debriefing sessions was how to intentionally hold and maintain the space that I was teaching in. Instead of my original approach which was basically to continue talking until everyone was listening, I became more comfortable with stopping until I had everyone’s attention, or using an attention getting technique before continuing with the lesson. Therefore, as a group, each evaluation of field trips and in class lessons were primarily focused on group management and the success of maintaining attention.