Autumn Adventures

This week featured my final two Autumn Adventures (of three total). The experiences were polar opposite.

The first grade group had something like five or six parents and a number of quite rambunctious little boys. There were a number of times where I had to repeat myself several times, and when the kids did hear me they just ignored me completely. There were a number of stations where the parents kept talking, which modeled to the kids that it was ok to be obnoxious and rude. At one point I "sacrificed" the group and started teaching three kids who were actually interested in the topic at hand. I found myself silently counting the minutes for it to all be over, and when it was all over I fell to my knees. After lunch we were on the trail. While it wasn't perfect, being on the trail was exponentially better. They payed more attention overall, and the parents only talked in the back slightly. The teacher tried "catching" a snake by hitting it with a stick, but it got away.

The second grade group on the other hand made me happy to be an educator. The children were responsive, friendly, attentive, inquisitive, excited, intrigued, fun, a joy to be around. There were two parents in my group, who were very polite and helpful. While on the trail, a number of kids kept showing me random things they would find: leaves, and nuts, and seeds, and a millipede, and mushrooms. I told them it was alright to ask questions, and they asked A LOT of questions. They were well behaved on the trail and at the stations. We were about seven minutes late getting back from the trail, but it was only because we were having so much fun turning over logs and exploring. I am very very happy that this was my last group of teaching Autumn Adventures as it will remain in my memory with a hint of sweetness.

I'm not sure if the big difference between the two groups was age, or the number of parents, or just the kids in general. I didn't really change my teaching style in between the two groups. I had a bit more direction during the second group, putting a theme to our walk (wild edibles), but I'm not sure if an increase in confidence is enough for such a big change. Perhaps I should have been more governing with the first group, but that's just not my style. I don't want to spend large amounts of time playing babysitter - I just want to be silly and goofy and have fun learning and teaching about the beautiful world. The excitement of the second group was infectious, and I could have spend all afternoon with them hiking on the trails and overturning logs.