February 3, 2015 - 00:00
When thinking about constructing an ecological curriculum, I really had to think about what an ecological curriculum is. I have a lot of ideas about what it isn’t—it isn’t hierarchical, it isn’t human centric, and it isn’t a series of statements accepted as truth. But what is ecological learning? The metaphor that I will explore in this project is how ecological learning (and therefore, an ecological curriculum) is a system. It is the interconnection and intersection of many parts that equally contribute to the “whole”. It is a learning style that promotes symbiosis, interaction, engagement, and willingness to change. It also represents learning and teaching as something that is infinite and boundless because each time you answer a question, a thousand more are raised. This is like in a system, each time you discover the function of a specific component, you will then question the different components that make up that function. These questions will forever tug at our imaginations and feed our hunger for learning. I envision this sort of question- and imagination-based ecological learning to be like looking at a solar system, and subsequently zooming in a gagillion-fold to observe a single electron. I still need to do more thinking and imagining of my own about how “ecological learning as a system” will play out in classroom curriculum. But I do know that it will involve a lot of question asking, collaboration, and imagination.
Sarah Kay, a wonderful poet, wrote a piece entitled If I Should Have a Daughter and performed it for a Ted Talk. At one point she said, “I’m going to paint solar systems on the backs of her hands so she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, “Oh I know that like the back of my hand””. This reminds me that ecological learning is limitless. It also reminds me that my hands are both too small to catch all the knowledge and pain of the world, yet also entirely too big to undeniably understand.