Education

    Mr. And Mrs. Mallard live near the Boston area of Massachusetts. Mrs. Mallard is due to have children, a group of several young ducklings, quite soon, so she and Mr. Mallard undertake the task of finding the ideal spot to make a home and raise their young flock. While scouring the landscape for the perfect place, the Mallards–Mrs. Mallard in particular–take into account two key qualities they believe denote an acceptable place to raise children. First, they need to find an environment with all the factors a duck needs to survive: water for swimming, food to eat, and land on which to nest. Second, the duck’s home must be safe, protected from all threats the Mallards believe to be particularly dangerous and impossible to abide. In doing so, the Mallards undertake the sacred task of the (most often human) parent, that is, to protect children from all possible avoidable harm as a matter of parental duty and necessity and as the only way to ensure the survival and wellbeing of offspring and safeguard said offspring from the danger of uncontrolled forces. In the short term, this course of action does accomplish the goal of keeping young ones safe and avoiding unnecessary injury or loss of life, but in the long run can prove detrimental to child development and hinder a child’s, or duckling’s, ability to properly asses risk and analyze sources of danger. Therefore, one cannot help but question whether the Mallards of Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings, in carefully selecting a site to nest, truly do what is “best” for their ducklings.

Hello Eco folks,

Here are some readings about Camden suggested by Michael for our class; I'm also including Michael's notes.  I'm posting them now in case you want to browse in them as we work on the lesson plans you're developing for our 5th grade partners.  We may also use some of these readings in other ways...

When reading Chapter 4 of Urban Wildscapes, I kept reflecting on my own childhood and how I was socialized in an environment that mostly restricted play in the industrial ruins. Even when reading about the industrial ruins, I was thinking about the picture I had of what that looked like and how for much of my life, playing or even spending time in that type of space did not seem appealing as they "allow wide scope for activities prohibited or frowned upon in other urban public spaces" (66). However, as I was thinking more deeply about this, I recalled how as children, my brother and I played in a construction site behind our back yard that was composed of many mounds of dirt, some foundations, loose nails--it was certainly an unregulated space and could be charactierized as an industrial ruin. David and I created a make believe town which we invited our other neighbors to play in. We claimed this space as our own and together all of us played games and took on roles and characters of townspeople in this place. While this construction site was not as clean, colorful, regulated, and supervised as the park a few blocks from our house, it did allow us to put more of our own stamp on how we navigated and managed the space, as well as how we were able to use our imaginations. 

What is striking about Katy Mugford’s chapter, “Nature, nurture; danger, adventure; junkyard paradise” is the four photos of children all in front of different landscapes. And they all have very grim expressions and the same awkward, unenthusiastic, reluctant postures.

This reminds of me of parents taking photographs of their children when on trips to various places, with the classic reluctant child pose. Why do we like taking family photos when we travel to new places, monuments, historic sites, etc.?

There are already countless of photographs and documentations — both professional and amateur — of the Eiffel Tower or the Capitol building or the Rocky Mountains, and yet we still take our own because they are not as meaningful as when they include a familiar, non-stranger person. When we know the subject, or we are ourselves the subject, of a photograph in any landscape, we are capturing ourselves inserted in that landscape. Printed out on a flat surface, that photo physically levels out the degrees to which we may be separated from the landscape. We become part of the landscape.

My family has countless photographs as well, of our own trips. I owe so much to my parents for giving me the lifestyle and platform that allow me to create a relationship with the many environments I’ve experienced. However, I don’t know if I’ve consciously gone about relating the books I read in my childhood with the way I learned about my ‘setting,’ my environment in the close world around me.

When I was little I loved climbing. I frequently put on a rather perfect impression of a mountain goat and, at the rocky outcroppings of the lake near my dentist's office, would jump from boulder to boulder, summiting each in turn to spend a brief moment standing on top and surveying the land around that to my three-year-old eyes possessed a sense of majesty.

At ten I still played at the park, running throughout aluminum and plastic playground structures sunk in to sandboxes. However I never let myself be limited by the parts of the play equipment and their "suggested use." I would climb on top of the monkey bars and crawl across them like a bridge. I would sit on top of the tunnel instead of crawling through it and slide down the seven or eight foot drop to the sandbox below. I would climb on top of railings and roofs and climb backwards up the slide.

One memory that really sticks with me, though, is from a trip to Yosemite at age thirteen. I was a teenager and of course thought I knew everything, and was very sure of my own limits. I wanted to climb Half Dome. It had been a dream of mine for years, since that three-year-old hopped between rocks and that ten-year-old abused the jungle gym at the neighborhood park. Unfortunately, my mom did not agree. I hiked and climbed whatever I could, but Half Dome is still a far off dream for me, something I'll have to do in adulthood (given I manage the funds to travel to California on my own).

I begin this paper with with a brief walk-through of my places of origin. The where-I-am-from’s. They are like stepping stones. Or building blocks. By contemplating this list I am browsing through my memories to find the right ‘slice’ about which to write this essay. I find that thought process is worth paying attention to in order to observe what triggers your mind to go in what direction, especially when searching through past experiences and emotions.

Gliwice, Poland
Houston, Texas, USA
Richmond, Virginia, USA
Georgetown, Washington DC, USA
Dupont Circle, Washington DC, USA
Nairobi, Kenya
Istanbul, Turkey
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, USA

View of Lake Delavan

House that looks similar to my old one

Delavan Lake Yacht Club where I attended camp

When I was first born my family bought a house up in Wisconsin along Lake Delavan. My family and I would drive the two hours from Chicago to Delavan and drive down narrow dirt roads until we finally reached the home. The house was considered to be located on the Island of Lake Delavan. The house was located in a somewhat secluded area with only 2 houses located in the block of land. Even though there weren’t many people around for me to play with I still enjoyed exploring the areas around my house and I still had my neighbors. My sister and I would visit our neighbors often because the family had a son who was roughly my age. We would either play in the house or go outside and explore.

            To begin, a quote from the ecology of imagination in childhood by Edith Cobb: “The child’s ecological sense of continuity with nature is not what is generally known as mystical.  It is, I believe, basically aesthetic and infused with joy in the power to know and to be.  These equal, for the child, a sense of the power to make...”

 It is strange to realize that in my first essay for a course on Eco-literacy, an essay on home and belonging, I never once entertained the idea of the environment, or the ‘outdoors’, as home. I unearthed one of my homes, “the body as home”. However, the body as home is not just one home, but many different factors coming together to form a whole. Your body encompasses your physical being, your consciousness, your emotions, your memory, where you have been and where you are going. I suppose that nature is in intrinsic part of the whole of ones body, and how perhaps the body is not the only home. For there two things that are always with me: my body, and the environment.