Environmental Leadership Program Reflections
ELP is a continous learning experience. The following three excerpts are my reflections on how our team and myself incorperated feedback from our community partners, students, teachers, and project managers into our work
Feedback from Students and Teachers
One of the main changes that we were encouraged to make from teachers was to let the kids have more free time to explore in nature. A lot of these kids do not get the opportunity to regularly explore nature so bringing them out to MPA is such a special treat. We often get wrapped up in the activities we are trying to facilitate and following the schedule, that we forget to just let kids be kids in a sense. Activities such as fairy house building are so important for this reason. This is an opportunity for kids to freely explore the incense cedar forest and just spend un structured time in nature. This is a great way for kids to build connections with the natural world and to want to return to MPA in the future. Over all, we received a lot of positive feedback about our work and methods from the teachers we collaborated with. This was really affirming after working so hard for a term to create these curricula. As someone who has worked with kids a lot I was surprised at how infrequently we experienced complaining from the children about hiking or participating in activities. I genuinely think that the students really loved their time out at Mt. Pisgah and really loved the activities as well. Some were more popular than others. We noticed that tree tag trivia was really popular for the first graders and fairy house building was really popular for the kinders. With this in mind, we tried to allot more time for these activities so that the kids had as much fun as possible while still getting to every activity we had planned.
Feedback from Community Partners
Our community partners were so helpful each step of the way in providing us with foundational knowledge and tips, and allowing us to use their space and work with the students at Adams. Some of the most useful feedback I received was from our community partners at MPA. We spent a whole additional day out at MPA with August Jackson to learn more about the natural history and local species. This really prepared me personally for leading the field trips and made me feel much more confident when we actually took groups of students out there. We also got some great feedback from the Principle of Adams elementary who expressed the positive changes he sees in the kids when they get back from the field trip. Overall I think comments like that solidify the importance of what we are doing and motivate us to continue our work when it gets tough.
Feedback from Managers
After every field trip our team, including our project manager and project overseer, would sit down and have a lengthy debrief about the field trips and class visits. This gave us an opportunity to figure out what was and was not working and how we could change that moving forward to make the next lesson that much better. During this process we got a lot of great feedback from Katie and Kassandra about how we can improve our field trips. One of the most useful tips was making sure that we had morning roles assigned in the classroom for when we arrived so that everything would go as smoothly as possible. Another great idea that we incorporated into our curricula was to include a set script for how to address ground rules at the beginning of the field trips. This is important because we were all doing our own thing and I think important messages were getting lost in translation. During the classroom visits Katie always reminded us to check in with the teachers prior to the field trips on Thursday to make sure we had all the necessary information. We also got some great feedback about how to make sure our gratitude cultivation at the end of the field trips was strong and really made the entire field trip come together. Overall Kassandra and Katie had great tips for us along the way to make sure everything went as smoothly as possible and that we did not leave out any key details.
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Individual Reflection
After each in-class lesson and field trip facilitation I identified new ways to improve them for the next time. Overall, I felt that the major change in implementing the book story in the in-class lesson rather than the personal story was a great change made based on feed back from the pilot. I think this change also increases the usability of the entire lesson plan because it takes stress off of future facilitators to create and memorize a story about the fairy slippers orchid. Another great take away from the in-class lessons was learning how to be more adaptable with managing children. As time went on I think my skills in that regard definitely got better. It is no easy feat getting 20-30 5 and 6 year olds to be quiet during story time and to remind them to hold their questions until the end. It is also important to make sure children feel heard though. I noticed sometimes when children would not get the chance to share their thought it can be disheartening and it is important to make sure they feel validated and comfortable sharing. I really learned the importance of enforcing the “quiet hand”, it is easy to quickly loose control of a class room and enforcing small rules like that make the day a lot easier. Each field trip was such a different experience. It all depended on the group of children we got, and unfortunately the weather did occasionally play a big part in the day as a whole and getting to do all of the activities. The biggest take away I got from the field trips was to go with the flow and almost tailor each field trip to the specific group of kids. It was way more successful wen we allotted more time to the activities they were enjoying the most. Some days we even re-adapted activities completely to fit the mood for the day and to make sure the day flowed well. As far as usability, I found the importance of really making sure the curriculum followed a recipe format when other folks piloted my curricula. Of course things always make sense in your own head but it is important to make sure that the curricula can be used by anyone since we want this program to last a lot longer than just this one year. Being adaptive and reminding myself to think about how someone else would interpret the curricula was really crucial in making sure we produced a final product that would be successful in the future.
Note: all photographs were taken by Restoring Connections team.