In the Middle of Things -- Meta Reflection

As I look back at the past month and a half of this class, many interesting thoughts and memories begin to bubble up.  Firstly, it was really cool to meet/reconnect with those at my table group.  I thought it was going to be a bit weird having already finished internship and returning to a class of second year Ed students, but by some happenstance, Bobby, Willow, Renee, and myself sat together.  The four of us seem to have similar thoughts an opinions a few aspects of Environmental Education, although our view are different enough that we are able to have intriguing conversations with one another.  Which is why I imagine we became group members for the Action Learning Group Project.

The ALGP is going very well thus far.  We all held interest in the current disconnect between children and the environment.  I actually have a disconnect with the environment.  I don't dislike being outside by any stretch of the imagination.  I just prioritize my time differently than I feel I should.  That's why I plan to go out every day during the break.

Checking out my past couple of blog posts, there seems to be one topic that really stands out -- Indigenous rights in Environmental Education.  Indigenous rights is something I've been interested in since my first year at the university, and blending that is my passion for environmentalism is of great interest.  That's why the past week or so has been incredibly enjoyable for me.  I'd be lying if I said that I keep up with reading (Not just for this class, every single class I've ever taken), but the Canoe Pedagogy and the Raven/Coyote readings were fantastic retroactive reads -- both of which I have saved and intend on using in the future.

One of the biggest things that hit me during this class is the fact that I went about teaching Environmental Science all wrong.  I taught the class for a month during my internship last semester.  To be fair, the curriculum wasn't finalized during the time I was teaching, so I was flying solo for most of it.  I did more classwork than I did anything else. Rough, I know, but I did try to get in contact with someone for help, but they didn't get back to me, unfortunately. Life goes on, I suppose.  I now have a whole lot of resources if I ever return to teaching EE.

Braiding of the Love Letters

Although there were many great love letters & poems in the group that I was in, I found Jenna DeBoth's and Mikayla Boen-Wira's to be the ones that I really enjoyed the most and the ones that I wanted to braid with.

Firstly, I wanted to comment on the medium in which Jenna wrote hers.  The limerick style was fantastic!  It really blends both of my fields of study -- English and biology -- quite well.  The addition and rational behind the word "Hyperbole" was hilarious due to the fact that limericks are all about hyperboles.  Mikayla and I both took a letter approach, but that is where our stylistic similarities end.

Jenna and Mikayla took a bit of a hypothetical approach to their assignments.  They both wrote to the idea of a person. Jenna's was to a "perfect" eco-literate person, and Mikayla's was to her future children.  Mine, however, was to a friend of mine who I believe to be far along on the path to eco-literacy. Seeing as I wrote to a person who actually exists, I was able to bring in some specific eco-literate activities (ethical eating, commune living) whereas Jenna and Mikayla mentioned some more general ideas of eco-literacy (which isn't meant to sound rude / discrediting).

I think one thing that we all agree on is the complexity of what it means to be eco-literate.  As Fritjof Capra states in his 2007 article "The definition of sustainability implies that in order to build sustainable communities, we must understand the principles of organization that have evolved in ecosystems . . . [t]his . . . is what we call "ecological literacy"" (10).  In one way or another, all three of us touched upon this idea within our writing (re: commune living, Mikayla's children looking back to her time).

Letter to an Eco-literate person

My letter can be found here.