April 30, 2015 - 10:49
Jody had asked me some follow up questions on my inquiry project, so to put all of it out there, here are the questions she asked and my responses! Hopefully they will help elaborate on more of the thought-process behind making my Junior Ranger Diversity Program!
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When you suggest that learners “find someplace quiet and with some nature around,” what are you thinking of as nature, and do you want them to think about this?
For the "find someplace quiet and with some nature around" I sort of left that open-ended and undefined on purpose, because different kids in different situations are going to have very different definitions of nature, and one of the goals with my booklet was to make it accessible to kids in all sorts of places, many of whom might not have the resources to travel outside of cities. So for instance, one kid who has more resources might be doing this booklet while visiting a national park or while on a weekend hike with their family and would define "nature" as the woods, away from civilization, while another kid who is not able to travel outside of city limits might define "nature" as a small park with nothing more than a tree or a little garden. I didn't want to define it much further to prevent alienating kids who have no resources other than a small park or even just a tree. I didn't think about doing this before, but I guess it would be really interesting/beneficial to have the kids first define what "nature" means to them!
In “Local Diversity” you return to the dual focus on social/human and bio diversity. I like this a lot, and wonder about being more expansive with this theme. For example, what if learners were invited to draw diversity – might this offer clues of another sort to the question of why diversity might be valuable?
I also like your idea of inviting the learners to "draw diversity" - another way of exploring what diversity "looks like" and why it is important, and it also gives more space for those learners who may work better with visuals than with words.
I found “Who was here before” to be a complicated page. What kind of access do learners have to Native cultures in their area in the present day? I’m wondering on what basis they would ‘respect this culture now’… On the other hand, I appreciate the way you’re treating Native cultures as actual, living people rather than as a static tradition without an everyday presence.
The "Who was here before" page was definitely my most difficult page to construct. The difficulty with making the booklet super open and accessible to all sorts of kids, is that many of them will have to turn more to resources like the internet/teachers/other adults to find questions, as oppose to kids who may be doing this in a national park, where they can turn to information at the park complex or talk to the rangers. It was definitely difficult on my part to figure out how to strike this balance, especially because this booklet is not location-specific. So I guess for that I was envisioning those kids who may be in cities having to turn more to teachers or to the internet to find their information - not ideal, but the best route I could come up with. I did really want to include this page, however, on Native cultures and people because I do feel like that is too often ignored when talking about environmental education, and many people from these cultures do still live in this country today and should not be ignored or treated as an ancient, irrelevant, static tradition. So although it was difficult to figure out the best way to create this page, I felt it was important.
Great to end with ‘take action’! But why go with a sign rather than asking learners to actually take an action? Or to come at this another way, the pledge strikes me as a kind of action, or at least a commitment to action.
The reason I chose to have them make a sign was because I just felt it was too abstract to tell kids to just pick one thing they could do and do it - I thought having them make something tangible, a physical reminder of this action, could make it more effective and have it be something they think about beyond just completing this booklet (it could even be things as simple as little signs to remind them to turn off lights in their house or unplug chords, things they could turn into habit). I envisioned both the creating of a sign AND the doing - I suppose next time I'll make that more clear!
Most compelling to me overall is the way you’re following an ‘ecological thought’ here in inviting learners to continually consider ‘nature’ and ‘humans,’ the ‘social’ and the out of doors as they think about diversity. This is a profound leap that strikes me as essential to reinvigorating environmental AND diversity education. Might you use some of this with your program this summer? I hope so!
I don't know the details of the program they're hoping to design yet, but this definitely feels like a really good starting point for me. It was very difficult at first to come up with appropriate activities that accomplished the goal I wanted, but I feel like after creating this I'm really in that mindset and have both concrete examples of activities and ideas, and many other ideas that stemmed from these. So I am sure it will serve me well in some way!!
Finally, what sources did you consult as you considered how to design this booklet?
As for sources I used, obviously I drew from a lot of the material we've used and talked about in class, plus I was able to draw from a lot of the sources we used in Anne's Ecological Imaginings course earlier on in the semester. This included Evelyn White's "Black Woman and the Wilderness", Carl Anthony and Renee Soule's "The Multicultural Approach to Ecopsychology", and Michael Maniate's "Teaching for Turbulence". I also drew from some outside sources I found myself, including Danielle Lake's chapter "Sustainability as a core issue in diversity and critical thinking education" (from "Teaching Sustainability"), Christina Marouli's "Multicultural Environmental Education: Theory and Practice", and Dorceta E. Taylor's "Making Multicultural Environmental Education a Reality" (from "Race, Poverty, and the Environment"). Additionally, I consulted the national park service websites for examples of junior ranger programs to help me in formatting them/getting a general sense of the layout and level of difficulty. I also in particularly looked at the junior ranger programs offered in the North Cascades National Park, where I'll be working, just to get some more ideas. (http://www.nps.gov/kids/jrRangers.cfm and http://www.nps.gov/noca/learn/kidsyouth/beajuniorranger.htm)