A Reflection on Connecting to Nature

By

Joe Baust

“I see and I forget. I hear and I remember. I do and I understand.” —Confucius

I have always been a person that needed to have the time to explore or experience something before I could make personal meaning. I had great difficulty understanding connections of what someone told me no matter how entertaining or charismatic they were in the classroom. I often found that without first-hand experiences, I would soon forget. And nature always helped me remember and make connections to other concepts and ideas.

Rachel Carson reminded me, “It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate.” (The Sense of Wonder, page 56) Imagine an experience in nature that is so true to this concept that children would never forget it and would be eager to explore again and again. This would help a child make what they had to learn more meaningful. However, there is significant practice that begins and sometimes ends with seat-based learning. It begins with a lesson plan, a behavioral objective, and ends with a formal assessment in the seated position. 

A Pied Piper’s Hold

A magnificent teacher of nature study, Dr. Bill Belzer, worked many years as a camp counselor outside Philadelphia. His inner-city campers’ ages eight through fourteen were the children Bill would invite daily to his nature study program. Every morning he would offer a creek hike, mud hike, or nature study of some sort. This optional activity excited a raft of campers to explore “nature.” Other activities that vied for the interest of the campers such as athletics, crafts had significantly fewer participants. Back in those times I wondered why this was the case.

What kind of hold did Belzer have over these children? All of them lived in Philadelphia row houses with concrete, blacktop and little green space. Why would a child that felt comfortable “in the city” want to try nature with Bill?

What I remembered as a child did not provide me with a reasonable answer. I always thought nature was something to avoid. For instance my brother went outside and played, came home dirty, and was often told he smelled, needed a bath, and was scolded for the errors of his ways. With this example in mind I stayed away from such scorn. But at camp I was eager to join the nature hike with Belzer. Why? What made this so attractive? Why was I so averse to getting dirty at home and at camp, in nature study, it did not matter?

At camp there were so many children following Dr. Belzer, The Pied Piper of Nature.  Initially I was demure about joining him. But as the other campers returned from their sojourns, they seemed happy and excited. That daily observation provided me with the impetus to join his hikes. I went to nature study because it seemed fun, and it was! Imagine a demure and careful child discovering they would be independently exploring as though we were Muir or Thoreau. Finding a Box Turtle or a Leopard Frog, walking through the creek, seemed more normal than being worried about getting dirty.

We were eager and ready to explore. It was a gleeful time! It did not seem to have structure and it meant an adult had confidence in us to use our instincts.  And, we were having fun, what a surprise to my stilted notion about learning and nature fostered by my mother.

Every time I went to Belzer’s nature study everyone was observing, touching, listening, so was our leader. Serendipitous connections were being made as things arose as we found things along the way. Occasionally Bill would say come over here. “What do you see?” It was not planned, it was spontaneous and we were attracted to this kind of play and exploration. Belzer was also as interested in what the children found as what he had stumbled upon. It was a true partnership in learning.

Bill started out with a very important idea. He “invited” learning and this took place in nature. To most children that was foreign to them. It was not about how important he was, his vast biological background, his degrees, but it was about children.

Long Term Memory

Many years later I remembered things in nature study with Bill. They were emblazoned upon my mind and the minds of many of the nature study campers. It was permanence created by an experience in nature that seemed vicarious but was a lesson in making connections to nature.

It was a time when learning was permitted, the kind that began with the child setting the parameters, allowing them to learn at their speed. Each child could go into depth or could choose to move on without the consequence the fear of consequences. It was okay to meet knowledge on the basis of what you wanted, something I often did not often experience in the classrooms I attended. Imagine, a child pacing her/his learning?  

Periodically a child or two would come to nature study with trepidations or indifference. Yet even the most strident and uninterested children, decided after a while of watching and observing were engaged. Seldom was there a behavioral problem because nature and Dr. Belzer had their attention. They became comfortable in the out-of-doors.  Under Belzer’s tutelage nature was harmless though we were taught to respect the natural world by his example.

Dr. Belzer’s themed sessions were “open and free exploration.” There were opportunities for every child, no matter the age or sophistication. The excitement was palpable and every day, a new experience was just as magical for every child. It was learning at its best! What we remembered was at least a sense of connection to nature, that we were part of it albeit for the short time we were there. It was a significant time. There were many who felt a connection to the natural world as a result of Belzer’s model of teaching and learning in nature.

So I Tried It

With this in the mind, I took the leap into this kind of learning at the university where I taught.  My first foray was teaching a “Teaching Science Methods Class” for undergraduate elementary education majors, persons training to become elementary school teachers. First, it was an invitation from a colleague to spend a free residential weekend at beautiful Land Between the Lakes with my students. We loved it. As a result, we made this experience a required part of their undergraduate program, ultimately giving college credit for their time in nature. As time went on we extended an invitation to colleagues to join us. To my amazement, colleagues in teacher education who were invited to these weekend environmental education forays, also agreed they were valuable. In fact, they unilaterally decided it was necessary for all of the middle school education majors to experience this in their program. They did this without my knowledge and I was pleased they saw this kind of learning in nature as necessary and valuable.

Encouraged I decided to extend this. I asked a colleague and friend who had a class of first graders, Holly Bloodworth, a gifted teacher in her own right, if we could provide a stream stroll for her class at Land Between the Lakes. She was ecstatic and so were the children. I was not sure that I would have willing undergraduates who would volunteer their time, but to my surprise I had several who said they would help.

Preparing for this experience there were many questions by the undergrads. One of them asked me: “Since these are such young children, will they be able to negotiate a small stream? Would they get tired? What will we do with them?” These were good questions that told me they needed some reassurance, as well as suggestions for them to try what we learned in nature at Land Between the Lakes.

The undergrad students and I talked about providing an open experience with some basic equipment, some small and larger stream nets, and plastic containers. The undergrads were concerned I did not require a lesson plan and yet they were happy I did not. I reassured we also had sufficient adult supervision to assist.

Each undergraduate was assigned a group of about four or five first-grade children. And with a splash, we were all explorers. The children were so excited with parents in tow for their support; with the children’s enthusiasm, parents were also engaged in the investigation.

At first, it seemed overwhelming to the undergrads, but they settled into the freewheeling experience. They tried to tell the children what they needed to see and were desperate to slow them down, but the children were undeterred. The undergrads discovered what the children wanted to do was not necessarily what they wanted them to see. So they followed the lead of the children, a very foreign concept for them.

There was such joy in the children and certain incredulity by the undergrads. The undergrads were barely keeping up, the very ones that said, will these children like this, what would they do? They experienced for themselves the magic of a stream stroll through the eyes of young children who were learning and soaking up the experience. Occasionally the groups would stop to sample the water, to try to catch a small fish, and they were off to the next part of their adventure.

Never again would these undergrads think their university training in the classroom would ever be as exhausting as this stream stroll. This was a ‘real world’ exposure to the joys and arduousness of teaching and providing discovery learning for children. Later they said it provided them with a chance to see the magic of nature, the pizzazz, the motivating force, the example of when we give children the opportunity to explore and learn by doing. It was energizing, exhausting, AND they believed it had great value. 

What the undergrads and I had confirmed was learning in the first degree, by “doing the real thing.” It made learning richer and more substantive, rather than reading about it.  We took the time to allow learning to take place. Did the first-grade children enjoy this experience? Is it something they will always remember? Undoubtedly!

Recently one of those undergrads, now a school administrator, called me and asked if I remembered the stream stroll with Holly Bloodworth’s first-grade class. He said it was a special time for him and was pleased he had that experience. I meant to ask if he encouraged this in his school, but in my glee to have some affirmation, I basked in the reminder of the event and his remembering it. This long-term memory by a former undergrad confirmed more of these kinds of things must be provided for teacher training.

Keller Speaks to Us

Helen Keller learned language through sensory/tactile experiences and adroitly connected them to abstractions. She connected her mind to ideas by feeling water or touching things, i.e. cold ice cubes or cold water. Her learning was purely tactile because that was a modality of learning that connected to her and because of the restrictions she had. This was the only way she had to learn language with meaning.

When I think of Helen Keller and how she acquired language, I ask, how does a person with all of their senses really know the word “stream?” How do we know what stream is without feeling it, exploring it, touching it?

A formidable authority in teaching language arts, Roach Van Allen, speaks about language experience as a way to remember an idea with his designation, “organic words.” We adopt words into our vocabularies on the basis of doing things. Some experts in language arts call these kinds of opportunities and the associated thoughts as sensory words or sensory connections.

I assert that nature, knowing the natural world creates an environment to learn and be able to grasp these “organic words” steeped in experiences in the out-of-doors. It takes time and it means we must understand that anything worth knowing, must allow learners to connect to this knowledge, on their time, not ours, and with sufficient opportunity to feel and touch and hear and see.

So What?

Learning about nature and our earth, to make a personal connection, must be through involvement in something over time. How can anyone value, much less understand the natural world, by being told, or reading about it first?

For many of us, learning about nature or anything requires us to have first-hand experience. The key in my mind to connecting anyone to purposeful learning, especially connecting them to nature is having actual experiences in the forest, stream, schoolyard, and so on. Anywhere children and adults have first-hand experience is a way to create a long-standing memory that can be used to explain relationships and more sophisticated conceptualizations.

Dr. Belzer was not steeped in educational learning theory. Yet the crux of the way he provided experiences in nature for children was as though he knew these things. He understood intuitively and implicitly the value of learning by doing. It just so happened he also became a child alongside children as he was not only the leader, but the explorer as well.

On the other hand, there are those who teach about learning, know the importance of learning by doing, but do not practice this, but only speak about it. They are ensconced in providing abstract experiences for their teachers-to-be with the hopes they will make the theoretical the practical.

I spoke with a colleague of mine at the university about teaching reading/language arts to elementary education majors. I asked what she did in her methods class. “Do you teach teachers-to-be using the “the language experience approach.”(Giving children a connection to words by first-hand experiences)  She responded: “We talk about it, but I do not have time to get through all of the material as it is. So we have no time to do it.”

I was saddened because the richness of experience is lost in a coverage approach. In my mind, much was lost so teachers-to-be never really learned using the language experience approach; therefore, there was little chance they would use this method in their own classroom.

I wondered whether this “covering the material” was also a symptom in other teaching methods classes. Does this happen in standard courses for undergraduates?  How many of these teacher-to-be have a hands-on experience in nature? If not, do they have a coverage approach in using environmental education and nature with their elementary students?

Learning about nature must be in nature! It must allow children to explore nature on their own terms. How is it that Dr. Belzer, a non-teacher educator, understood this and practiced this in nature, but others feel the compunction to tell about it, read about it, and then maybe have an experience if there is time?

Biology Classless

My youngest son had a high school biology class. When I asked him about it he told me he “hated it.” We read about it, we had lectures about it, and only had a few dissections. Two hundred yards outside of that biology classroom were two ponds, one that was eutrophic and one teaming with new life. It saddened me my son never saw these ponds that were so close to his Biology classroom, but so very far away. Biology is a class about ‘life” he hated. His dislike extended into college where he took as few courses in biology as he could. Coverage killed his ability to see the value of Biology in making sense of the world.

My experiences in learning about nature at a camp with Dr. Belzer and my observation of children and adults spending time in nature have also made me understand it is more important to experience nature than to cover material. Time does not have to be a reason we do not provide first-hand experiences in nature with children.  

When we attempt to connect children to nature or connect ourselves to nature, taking the time to explore is richly supported by Dr. Belzer’s nature study and is supported in theory. 

Rachel Again

Rachel Carson’s quote that resonates with me as it relates to nature and learning is: “I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel.” (The Sense of Wonder, Page 56)  Feeling has an intense meaning for Rachel Carson and should for all of us who want to connect to nature or connect others to nature. One can only feel nature by touching, hearing, seeing, and experiencing.

Time to use your senses, to touch, see, hear, and feel nature is the essence of helping people connect to nature. Without this connection how do we expect them to understand their actions impact other humans, other living things, and our environment? I submit feeling is a precursor to participation. How does one participate when we have not participated from the outset?  Without an affective connection (feeling), a connection of heart, how can we connect to the mind? Rachel Carson seems to make this point to those of us who will listen.

An Exhortation

Take the time to experience nature and environmental education; take the time to give others that opportunity; when we feel the need to tell, to impart, to read about it…step back and hear Carson and Belzer and many others telling us—“let them have their own experience, let them explore like the first explorer, let them feel the glee of simply touching, seeing, hearing, and feeling nature.” That is how we should do it!

PostScript

Thanks to my teachers and friends Dr. Bill Belzer, Dr. Terry Wilson, Dr. Dick Usher, and Dr. Joe Lombardi plus many others who allowed me to see the importance of learning about our earth and environment through discovery and varied experiences. It is by their example that I credit how I teach and have taught over the years.

 

Note: With gratitude, I honor the photograph of Dr. Bill Belzer for this post. The picture was taken by a skilled photographer, Mr. Ed Reindle. He has the eye and knack for capturing people without fanfare but in their truest form. Ed, a mentor to many, the director of our camp, a model in honoring the value of helping children, provided this picture to me for this blog post. But most of all for his lessons he has taught to all of us, I am indebted.  (JAB)