Tuesday, October 11, 2011
learning the lesson
Did I say before that it is/would be valuable to post soon after the teaching on which I am reflecting? Didn't do it again.. And, I haven't been teaching a whole lot. This week I only have Friday to report.
Friday was Farmcraft with Fort Wayne 2nd graders. It was lovely weather. My group was interested and mostly excited. My experience was that it was a great morning, worthwhile and interesting, and I would guess everyone in my group learned enough to make the field trip well worth the 45 minute drive.
I was thinking about the children in my group being all African American. The chaperones were mostly African Americans. The teachers were white. We, at the farm, were white. I finished a Barbara Kingsolver book, Pigs in Heaven, this weekend (lots of free time). The book centers on a 7 year old Cherokee girl adopted by a white woman, and the concerns of some regarding her losses if she learns only white ways. It makes me think about what we provide to these urban children. I wonder if there is a part of environmental sensitivity, so critical to environmental literacy, that includes our sensitivity to human diversity. I am very aware that I don't have answers about this.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
That is an excellent thought to ponder. I wonder what we have to learn from them. This weekend at the conference, and the examples that Laura provided of increased footprints in Asian agriculture are certainly not ideas that white people taught them, but solutions that they developed for themselves. This is something that we should keep considering.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be great if there were farmcraft-type programs that explored the ways things were done in the Old Country (with several varieties)? I can imagine an Irish farm and an African farm and Native American village. It would be a great way to step through time into various cultures.
ReplyDeleteGreat book, with good connections to the group of Ft Wayners. They were different than other groups we have had here. I am glad they got the experience out here. It was very similar to many of my classes in Elkhart. That is one of the reasons I chose that school to teach in, many of them need these experiences.
ReplyDelete