Elise Articles

What happens when you cross an English teacher with a Nature Center?
               For me anyway, you get to hunt for stories: stories about nature’s cycles, about the connections between the living and non-living, about the roles all of us in the system play. Beyond the details however, I am even more interested in the story’s feel: what does it feel like not only to know about the story of the whole but also to know yourself in it? Put another way, how might a learning time in nature literally in-form us? Working at Boxerwood invites me to explore that question daily.
           Is there a way to learn nature, I wonder, by also being nature, by emulating in our approach to learning the qualities of natural systems themselves?
           As Education Steward this fall, I have felt my way into the pleasures and challenges of teaching at Boxerwood by designing lessons with two levels of knowing in mind. The first is the conceptual or verbal level of knowing. The second is pre-conceptual (affective?) or non-verbal. Both, in my mind, have a role to play. A casual observer of a Boxerwood class would certainly notice our interest in the conceptual work at hand, how we help kids see, speak (listen and respond) about nature’s patterns and rhythms (the stories) using words familiar to their science classes. Less noticeable however, might be the quiet work, our efforts to release nature from the object of study and instead become our teacher. Is there a way to learn nature, I wonder, by also being nature, by emulating in our approach to learning the qualities of natural systems themselves? Conceptually, the stories that interest me in nature are those that underscore that dynamic balance between form and flow: the way purpose is balanced and qualified by opportunity, the way, in short, the garden grows. Beyond concepts, How might our activities, I wonder, also “teach” Nature by not only what we teach, but how. More specifically, How might our class activities, I wonder, also honor this open-ended dynamism and even more pointedly, doing so without tumbling into chaos?
           Armed with plans, but limber with the need to carry them out to the letter, we become small bands of responsive dynamic wanderers, alert as the wild itself, and deeply part of it.
          In the end, it’s as simple an idea as being receptive to the teachable moment, in other words, being open to what is. If, in the midst of our trek to the Hollow, we encounter two turtles trekking to the wetlands, we face a choice: do we adhere to the lesson (an abstract notion really) or attend to what is very immediately before us? What would nature do? What would a bird looking for food do? What would any kid in his innocence do? That’s what we do. Armed with plans, but limber with the need to carry them out to the letter, we become small bands of responsive dynamic wanderers, alert as the wild itself, and deeply part of it.

These Gifts

      Another frosty morning at Boxerwood, another gaggle of 8 year-olds wiggling and giggling down the driveway toward Munger Lodge and morning adventures yet untold. What’s in store this day? Will we meet nose to nose with a red-striped turtle? Play hide and seek with a frog? Make friends with the earthworms (“look, Elise, he’s wearing a bandage!”)? How about all of the above plus building a tiny home from pine needles and pokeberries or jumping up and down in the lush detritus of the forest floor (“Hey! It’s like a mattress!”)? Maybe instead, we will pass a bird nest hand to hand like a secret, or crawl on our bellies spying on jays. Maybe we will even do nothing at all, feeling our feet root down to the earth, our arms branch wide to the sky. Maybe we can be like trees, and in stillness know what they know.
       Maybe we will even do nothing at all, feeling our feet root down to the earth, our arms branch wide to the sky. Maybe we can be like trees, and in stillness know what they know.
      Whatever happens, it will be fun. Whether we are mapmakers or water detectives or soil investigators or spies in the bush, we will be so busy measuring, poking, digging, and hunting that we might not notice the formal science vocabulary words seeping into our discussion, the way the three activities of the morning keep referring to one another, the way we seem to grow smarter and smarter as the morning progress, the way, by lunchtime, we can look across the Gardens and see stories unfolding around us like a thousand plays. Look! A squirrel finding lunch! A cattail filtering water! A tree trunk turning back to soil!
       This is my goal anyway, why I get up and drive every morning from South River to Boxerwood and with my volunteer colleagues sign on for a morning’s adventure. Certainly we have concepts to convey and points to make, and really, wouldn’t it be great if a batch of nature visits could save the world? These days, though, I’m feeling less ambitious. This world of ours—let’s first just meet it: know it, feel it, be it.
        Environmentally speaking, am I hopeful about the future? Let’s just say I am hopeful about our infinite capacity to connect with the living world around us now: the world beneath our feet, at our fingertips, before our eyes, within our grasp, the one that makes us gasp at Frog’s splash or race breathless and yelling through a gauntlet of flaming red maples. A nourished heart, that’s what I want.
        Quick, as the events from the fall drift skyward like smoke from the fire, what memory still burns bright? Beyond the lesson plan, the schedule, the worksheet page, the way one small boy in a pint-sized wheelchair can look across the Gardens and in the sunshine of lunchtime, murmur to all of us again and again, “how lovely, how beautiful!”
       No matter how many times we’ve studied the water cycle or saved the Bay, at the end of the day --and this fall season--these gifts, for me, suffice.