Bringing Nature to Students

8/9/2019 Bringing Nature to Students

1/6

Closing Remarks

The other day I talked to you about autistic children's voices which are only heard with greatdifficulty after many years of work from parents and educators. Today, I want to tell you about

voices you will never hear or at least have great difficulty understanding very well. I am

referring to the voices of plants, animals and ecosystems that are slowly but surely being silencedbecause they are disappearing.

Before you think I am completely crazy, please hear me out because I have a message for you,my fellow educators.

It is said that first loves are the most intense and something you never really get over. Some of

us are lucky that these first loves remain with us always even if the form of the love evolves overtime. So it was with me as a little boy as I watched the birds coming to our backyard feeder,

chased frogs at our family cottage in Georgian Bay and collected spring memories of white

carpets of trilliums in hardwood forests. My love of and curiosity about the natural world has

continued unabated to this day.

My interest in the natural world paid my way through university. It gave me my first teachingjobs in parks, wildlife centres and ecological reserves in various places in Canada and the United

States. It has also given me new insights into places I have vacationed in the Americas, Europe

and around the Mediterranean Sea. I have been incredibly privileged to work with manywonderful, talented people and seen truly breath-taking wildlife events in amazing natural

settings.

But I am disturbed because within my lifetime I have seen the environment change in a verynegative way. I know birds best so will give you two examples from the ornithological world. A

predator songbird, the Loggerhead Shrike, which was at one time an uncommon but regularresident in rural Ontario, is now almost extinct. Once abundant birds, like Barn Swallows, arenow much less common. Other people, who are familiar with our areas of biology, could tell

you similar tales of declining orchids, butterflies, frogs and fish. Additional signs of

environmental stress are everywhere: urban sprawl in every city, signs of changing climate andthe widespread use of chemicals that has affected wildlife and the environment as a whole.

There is no question that Homo sapiens is a very successful species but this has come at a terrible

price. The great English botanist Norman Myers states it well:

Our responses to natural environments has changed little in thousands of years.

We dig them up, we chop them down, we burn them, we drain them, we pave them

over, we poison them in order to mould them to our image. We homogenize theglobe.

Eventually we may achieve our aim, by eliminating every competitor for living

space on the crowded Earth. When the last creature has been accounted for, we

shall have made ourselves masters of all creation. We shall look around, and weshall see nothing but each other. Alone at last.

My remarks are not meant to get everybody depressed. But, you ask, what can I do? While I

could go over the usual list of ways all of us could lessen our environmental footprint, I will not.

1


2/6

Instead I want to suggest yet another role I see for you the educators, a role for which you are

uniquely suited.

The problem, as I see it, is we have lost touch with the natural world. Most Canadians now live

in cities. Our daily lives seem far removed from the natural world. We believe some how that

our technology will conquer all problems.

"Most of the technology that has so radically transformed human life over the past

hundred years has saved lives, cured illness or improved communication. But the

speed and volume of these new discoveries has imprinted on us the idea that

endlessly accelerating growth and technological change are good in themselves. We

have indentured ourselves to the master called 'Progress' and neglected to look after

the planet on which all depends."

From page 1X, Thinking Like a Mountain by Robert Bateman

Teachers can and should be taking a critical role in reacquainting students with the natural world.

Here are some steps we as teachers should be taking.

1. This must start with knowing the names of some common plants and animals. It is easy to

destroy that which we do not even know the name of.

Again Robert Bateman comments.

.my philosophy of educationis based on respect: respect between student and

teacher; respect for our cultural heritage; and respect for our natural neighbours.

We've lost our respect for other species partly because we don't even know

their names. Names matter. Any teacher knows how students value being

recognized by name. Hunter-gather peoples can identify thousands of species of

plants and animals, but the average North American can manage only about ten.

Yet the average North American can recognize about a thousand corporate logos.

We need to reverse this situation and reverse it fastand the best way to do this isthrough education.

From page 27, Thinking Like a Mountain by Robert Bateman

Naming is just the beginning.

2. There are amazing life history stories of animals and plants. Such stories come from everycorner of world including from the local Ottawa area:

The buzzing noise you hear right now on hot days in Ottawa treetops is the adult malecicada. Did you know that the larval stage of a cicada spends 13 to 17 years in the

ground sucking the roots of trees before changing into an adult? An individual adult

buzzing in the trees will mate and die in about two weeks.

2


3/6

Many of the small songbirds now nesting in the Ottawa area will, by August, start tomigrate at night using the stars for navigation to their wintering grounds in the Caribbean

islands, Central America and South America. Most will migrate through southern

Canada and through the United States and then fly across the Gulf of Mexico non-stop;

some migrants using the Atlantic Flyway will take off from the Maritimes and keepflying until they either drop into the Atlantic Ocean or land safely on the South American

mainland.

Local frogs in our area have an "anti-freeze" in their blood which allows them to

hibernate at the bottom of local ponds and marshes without freezing to death.

Tell these life histories to your students through stories, books and videos. They will be amazedand thrilled by what they hear and learn.

3. Get students involved in hands-on monitoring programs that you can do easily at or near your

school. Project Feeder Watch and Skywatchers are two ways students can actually helpscientists collect data.

4. Familiarize yourself with your local natural world; this will make it easier for you to help

your students. A walk in the local woods or fields can be a healthy rejuvenation for your soul

and body not to mention a great learning experience for yourself.

5. Have your students keep a nature journal of animals and plants in their backyard, in their

neighbourhood and around the schoolyard. Observing and note-taking is an important skill still

used by scientists today.

6. Take your students to a special local natural area near you. The Ottawa area is blessed withmany natural areas that are easily accessible to students (Gatineau Park, Mer Bleaue Bog, StoneySwamp to name just a few). Give them a first hand wildlife experience.

7. If you are uncomfortable with becoming the local expert about the natural world, use theexpertise of local institutions. The Canadian Museum of Nature, local Conservation Authorities

and the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board outdoor education centres (Bill Mason and

McSkimming Centres) all have interpreters who can give your class or school a wonderful

guided tour outside or of their museum collections.

8. Make your school grounds into a natural laboratory by doing some natural plantings and

landscaping. Schoolyards can be very sterile places for wildlife. The Canadian NGO Evergreeneven helps schools do this.

9. Bring the issues of the natural world to other subjects besides Science. Think of Math, Art,English (Reading) and Social Studies. Current events was my favourite way of doing this with

Grade Six students in Switzerland.

If you think I am dreaming in technicolour, think again. Remember the movie we saw last week,

The Paper Clip Project? Look what a small middle school in rural Tennessee did. Why could

you not do the same with your class in suburban Ottawa/Gatineau or even downtown

3


4/6

Ottawa/Gatineau studying the natural world and environmental issues? Use your imagination

and the possibilities are endless.

Remember you have the power to change the attitudes of least some of the coming generations.

Even if you expose your students to some small aspect of the natural world during the school

year you have done much good. Who knows that wet slog through the marsh, knowing that frogis called a Wood Frog or watching the Monarch Butterfly emerge from its chrysalis may set that

student on the road to be the next David Suzuki, Charles Darwin or Jane Goodall.

Make the voices of the natural world be heard and understood; that is the only way they will

never be silenced.

4


5/6

Some Natural History References

Books That Make You Think.

Bateman, Robert. 2000. Thinking Like a Mountain. Penguin Books Canada, Toronto. ISBN:067089303-X.

Heuer, Karston. 2006. Being Caribou: Five Months with An Arctic Herd. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto.ISBN-10:0771041225

Louv, Richard. 2008. Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder.Algonquin Books. ISBN - 13:9781565126053

Suzuki, David and Holly Dressel. 2003. Good News for a Change: How Everyday People Are Helping thePlanet. Douglas & McIntyre, Toronto. ISBN-13:978-1550549263

Wilson, E.O. 2002. The Diversity of Life. Belknap PressISBN-10: 0674212983

Reference Books.

The Peterson Field Guide Series (Houghton Mifflin) are an excellent starting point to identifying plants oranimals. For students, there are simplified versions called Peterson First Guides.

Bennet, Doug and Tim Tiner. 1993. Up North: A Guide to Ontario's Wilderness from Blackflies toNorthern Lights. Reed Books Canada. ISBN 0-409-91101-1.

Bennet, Doug and Tim Tiner. 1997. Up North Again: More of Ontario's Wilderness, from Ladybugs to thePleiades. McClelland and Stewart, Toronto. ISBN: 0-7710-1115-6

Movies/Vidoes

Anything by David Attenborough and the BBC Wildlife Unit in Bristol, England. Try Life of Birds, Life ofMammals, Life in the Underbrush (Insects), Life in Cold Blood (Amphibians & Reptiles), The Blue Plant:Seas of Life, Planet Earth.

March of the Penguins. (2005)

Winged Migration (2001)

Websites

Evergreen at http://www.evergreen.ca/en/index.html Information on naturalizing school grounds (seeLearning Grounds)

Canadian Wildlife Federation at http://www.cwf-fcf.org/ You can order free posters and other teacher

material on various natural history topics.

Hinterland Who's Who http://www.hww.ca/index_e.asp Free booklets about a variety of Canadian birdsand mammals in both French and English.

World Wildlife Canada http://wwf.ca/ See Schools for a Living Planet

Ontario Naturehttp://www.ontarionature.org See Teaching Naturally for books available for teachers onOntario wildlife and habitats.

5
http://www.evergreen.ca/en/index.htmlhttp://www.cwf-fcf.org/http://www.cwf-fcf.org/http://www.hww.ca/index_e.asphttp://www.hww.ca/index_e.asphttp://wwf.ca/http://www.ontarionature.org/http://www.ontarionature.org/http://www.evergreen.ca/en/index.htmlhttp://www.cwf-fcf.org/http://www.hww.ca/index_e.asphttp://wwf.ca/http://www.ontarionature.org/


6/6

6

Documents

Bringing Nature to Students