I am now two-thirds of the way through my teacher-preparation program. My time with the middle schoolers has ended, and I am about to step into the foreboding world of the high school, where students taller than me with hormone-addled brains lurk, with their fully developed powers of sarcasm. At least, that is how it feels at the moment. I miss my 7th graders.
I have a lot of reasons to switch from the glamorous life of a conducting science in the field to teaching it. The journey has been a slow one, like dipping a toe into frigid waters before committing to wading in.
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Rookie on the Ridge
A chance to sit in on some high school classes on the Oregon coast was my first toe in the water. From there I went to Minnesota, feeling some trepidation about spending a fall educating the general public and school groups about the passing hawk migration. The first bus full of 5th graders had me quaking in my Extratuffs. A chaotic herd of children, who at any moment would realize that I carried no innate authority and would scatter to the winds. Enviously I watched my confident co-worker talk to them and marshal them into manageable groups.
Over time, and almost without my realizing it, I lost my fear of the kids. As someone quite a bit older than they, you automatically possess a sort of higher status. Why, you can drive, and don't outgrow clothes every few months! Clearly, you have it all figured out. Over time you learn to generate your own confident persona that makes chaos unthinkable. Kids know the drill.
My favorite groups actually became the chaotic ones. An after school program for at-risk youth came by on Wednesdays, usually no more than 6 kids from ages to 7 to 15 or so. As the van door opened, the little ones scattered excitedly into the woods like ping-pong balls, and had to be gently shepherded to an area where we could keep an eye on them. There we played games, colored paper bird masks, and brought them live birds. These were captured by our banding team and transported up the road by hand, often in a specially-adapted pringles can to minimize the birds' stress. We brought them out to an enthusiastic reception, went over the talking points, and usually gave the kids a chance to release it. Watching those city kids excitedly but gently stroke the back of a flicker, or watch a tiny chickadee spring away from their hands, was worth any amount of chaos.
Once we went to the after school center in Duluth because the snow was too heavy for them to come to the ridge top. One boy sat with us for half an hour, matching pictures of hawk species, before wandering away. A teacher came up to us and said in a hushed voice, "That was D... He never participates in things." Science and nature, a potent force...
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Fifth Graders in the Forest
Southwest of Tacoma, Washington is a long, sparsely populated peninsula, . At the bottom of it is an outdoor camp. Huge red cedars and gnarled maples shade the forest floor, crowded with sword ferns and thick brambles. Sunlight filters down through the leaves, and green-gray lichens and dozens of different kinds of moss carpet every open space. Through this marches bands of 5th grade students, learning about Marine Invertebrates for the day, or Birds, Tracks and Scats, and the Microforest. Each group was led by one of us for two and half days, then relinquished, never to be seen again.
I took my groups on bird hikes, giving them a matching game to get their heads in the zone, then going off to look for towhees and wrens. These two birds, considered common to the point of being boring, are nonetheless secretive and have marvelous songs. For the kids, hunting the underbrush for a bird that acts like a mouse was a great adventure, and being still and hearing it respond to a call was magical. The tiny Pacific Wren, a dull brown golf ball, was rewarding to find in the bushes and underbrush, and its song a repeating warbling melody that they won't forget.
On my last day with a particular group, the majority of them had joined a rough game of capture the flag, leaving the less rowdy kids to sit on the sidelines. Their help was enlisted in identifying a puzzling pink flower, although it took two separate field guides to find it: moonflower, an invasive. But success was ours nonetheless! A second flower, unknown to them, was pointed out, and no further help given. Eventually they had a name: western trillium, exactly right. One of the girls later wrote me a letter, which I intend to frame as a reminder for those inevitable days when teaching seems too difficult or pointless.
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Natural History in the Classroom
Student teaching has been a whole other adventure. You don't have the reset button that you do in outdoor education- your kids are there until June, not just three days. At the same time, developing that relationship and seeing them grow over the course of the year was awesome. I am so proud of them.
Since natural history is my shtick, the kids got one-day class pets: moths that I collected each morning and released when I got home. Together we worked to identify them, practicing making observations of their body shape, size, patterns and coloration. A troubled kid who otherwise could not be made to do any school work was enamored of them, and would ask, "Where's the moth today? Did you bring a moth today?". A snake I nearly stepped on one morning likewise joined us for a day, impinging on the days lessons but..."A snake! Can I hold it?" "I touched it! I've never touched a snake before!" "What kind is it?" The responses were worth it.
As the weather got colder they got more rock samples in place of moths. Rocks are great because they're so tactile- kids make connections with the colors, the shape, the feel of them. We even used a reddish one and blue-green one as an analogue for our red blood and the horseshoe crab's blue blood, both color differences due to iron and copper. Fossils collected from a local road cut and agates from the river elicited some good questions. Microscopes provided another cold-weather diversion. From a 7th grade struggling reader looking through a microscope at the structure of a feather magnified 50 times, "Can we learn about this? When do we learn about this?"
A millipede joined us after she/he/it became tangled in a dust bunny in my house, probably while trying to escape the cold. Surprisingly, they are very easy to keep on a healthy diet of dead leaves and occasional misting. They also don't bite, and are vegetarians. "Milly" crawled over so many kids' hands, and even those who reacted initially with disgust often came back later on to watch her many undulating legs on their palms.
Turning the smartboard on to livestream Cornell's live feeder cams is a great way to spend passing period at school. In the winter, I found the Panama feeder cam was the most reliably interesting, and a gaggle of students became (at least temporarily) listers, exclaiming with excitement every time a novel bird came on camera, and then helping me find the name for it. They became adept at identifying Clay-colored Thrushes, Euphonias, and the many varieties of Tanager. A huge Chachalaca and the Oropendolas were special treats. The last day I was there, the Raptor Education Program brought in live bird ambassadors, a kestrel and a hybrid barred/spotted owl. The students had some great questions, and the opportunity to see some local birds up close and personal.
Adapting what exists in the way of teaching materials is work. I am lucky that I have support in my life for these hobbies, and people I can reach out to for ideas and aid (E.C., looking at you). Beyond that, I've found I have to know my material very well, and not be afraid to take an idea and run with it. What the kids are learning is brand-new, as exciting as that moment that the idea of evolution first clicked and expansive world of biology was flung open to you. They have yet to learn the elegance of DNA's twining double helix, the leapfrogging curves of population ecology models. They should receive that knowledge in a context that makes sense to them, which will be particular to every region and school.
I left my students two weeks ago. I miss their budding personalities, the thirst for human connection (anyone but their parents), the unconscious drive for attention in any form. I think they're going to be ok. Hopefully whatever I've been able to do for them has fostered an interest in the world outside their doors, in the natural spaces that are only now waking up to the spring.
Top: A selection of student artwork from our habitat fragmentation segment, showing excellent attention to detail.
Bottom: Artwork from a project promoting the Earth Day assembly. Students had the freedom to use whatever style and materials they wanted, resulting in some beautiful silhouettes, creative use of clear glue, and a near-life-size Bigfoot, Oregon's native cryptid.
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