Using the Senses by Lindsey Konkel
11/03/07 10:14 AM Filed in: Essay
After
spending countless hours in the windowless nutrition
research lab handling animal milk and fecal samples
at the National Zoo in Washington, DC this summer, I
decided it was time for a change of scenery. Labor
Day weekend, I made my way here, to the School of
Conservation, to begin my career as an environmental
educator. As an environmental educator, I facilitate
experiences for middle-school aged children with the
natural world, out of doors - the out of doors part
is my favorite part. Working indoors, in the confines
of a laboratory this summer made me realize how
important the outdoors is to me.
Teaching in the outdoors is really a love affair with the senses. With so much to see, hear, smell, and touch, the outdoors is an ideal setting for learning about the natural world. Learning outdoors is an experience unlike any other that a schoolroom confined by walls can provide.
Perhaps the most exciting sense for the students (and me) to exercise in the out of doors classroom is touch. Positive experiences with touch at a young age can evoke fond memories later in life, memories that may later draw us back to the source of that pleasurable childhood experience, in this case, nature.
Earlier this week, as I led a group of sixth graders back through the woods after a rigorous and invigorating afternoon on the always popular Challenge Course, a small milky colored frog about the size of a quarter jumped across the trail in front of me. Quickly I snatched it up and held it tightly in my hand – one quick look at the brown X on its back told me that it was a Spring Peeper, a common species of frog in Stokes State Forest. I turned around and told the students that I had a frog in my hands. A small boy at the end of the line with wide eyes asked me, “Can I see it?”
“Sure, you can even hold it,” I said. His eyes grew even bigger.
I placed the tiny frog into his cupped hands. His lips curled to form a single word, “Cool.”
Cautiously, gently, he ran one finger over the frog’s cool, moist back. The Peeper sat tolerated this touch, sitting calmly for a moment before jumping from his hands to his shirt and out of sight into a pile of leaves.
“I have never seen a frog up close or held one before. That was so cool,” he later confided in me.
A feeling of touch, a sense of wonder, a place in nature - for me, this is what it’s all about.
Teaching in the outdoors is really a love affair with the senses. With so much to see, hear, smell, and touch, the outdoors is an ideal setting for learning about the natural world. Learning outdoors is an experience unlike any other that a schoolroom confined by walls can provide.
Perhaps the most exciting sense for the students (and me) to exercise in the out of doors classroom is touch. Positive experiences with touch at a young age can evoke fond memories later in life, memories that may later draw us back to the source of that pleasurable childhood experience, in this case, nature.
Earlier this week, as I led a group of sixth graders back through the woods after a rigorous and invigorating afternoon on the always popular Challenge Course, a small milky colored frog about the size of a quarter jumped across the trail in front of me. Quickly I snatched it up and held it tightly in my hand – one quick look at the brown X on its back told me that it was a Spring Peeper, a common species of frog in Stokes State Forest. I turned around and told the students that I had a frog in my hands. A small boy at the end of the line with wide eyes asked me, “Can I see it?”
“Sure, you can even hold it,” I said. His eyes grew even bigger.
I placed the tiny frog into his cupped hands. His lips curled to form a single word, “Cool.”
Cautiously, gently, he ran one finger over the frog’s cool, moist back. The Peeper sat tolerated this touch, sitting calmly for a moment before jumping from his hands to his shirt and out of sight into a pile of leaves.
“I have never seen a frog up close or held one before. That was so cool,” he later confided in me.
A feeling of touch, a sense of wonder, a place in nature - for me, this is what it’s all about.