2012-09-21 Comfort in the discomfort

Post date: Sep 21, 2012 8:0:19 PM

This term I am teaching two sections of Elementary Curriculum and Instruction for Elementary Science. The current Alberta Program of Study for grades 1-6 science was written in 1996. It contains no references to engaging with Indigenous perspectives, but teachers are still expected to do so. I am hoping to blend the garden into my classes in a way which allows some of these conversations to arise. I find I have been struggling with all the things I hear teachers talk about with respect to the engagement - tensions around time, covering specific pieces of content etc. While my experience tells me that I really do not have to worry about these things, the tension still remains. A few of us have begun talking about the tension we feel and yet moving forward anyway as becoming comfortable with the discomfort.

Yesterday, my classes went into the gardens for the first time. Before going outside I told each class the story of how the gardens came about, the class that built them, the Elders we work with, and how the gardens are a community space for thinking about teaching / learning in general and engaging with Indigenous perspectives in teaching / learning in particular. In our class, we are currently discussing the Nature of Science, including the methods and processes scientists use in their work, and the manner in which we support students in developing similar skills, attitudes and understandings. A lot of scientific inquiry hinges on close observation; something that can be difficult for young learners (and even older ones).

I asked the preservice teachers to choose one plant in the garden and spend about 20 minutes making observations about it in any way they thought appropriate. We brought papers, pens, coloured pencils, crayons with us, as well as digital tablets and phones with cameras.

One of the things I find amazing about the garden is how working in it invites being present. Before we went out on the balconies there was lots of stress of regarding signing up for term project topics; questions about the tentative nature of science and how you actually get kids to buy into learning things that might change. Even the short walk up to the balconies was pretty loud and boisterous. But as soon as the classes came outside everything settled down. They looked at the plants, they touched the plants, they smelled them. There were some questions about plants names and uses, there was conversation but it was subdued. They became very involved in looking, writing or drawing, and looking again.

Some of the students sat right by the plants, others went back and forth between the planters and the picnic tables,

but (for the most part), there were just in the garden and with it.

Jackie Siedel (2006) has this fabulous piece about contemplative practice in teaching. In it she writes about taking an elementary class out into the school's small garden:

It is not very nice, but we go there anyway. A warm breeze softly blows against our skin. Each child has chosen a comfortable space. Writing and drawing. In their notebooks are pictures and words of trees, of insects, of leaves, of clouds.Everything that isn’t on the inside of the school. A child runs to me. She has drawn a seagull flying. Beautiful. Captured in motion. The motion of her smile. What she has seen. The curriculum tells us to learn about plants this year. Outside we are experiencing life, alive with our bodies. The soft roughness of the grass under stomachs. The rustle of the wind in the drying leaves. It is noisier than inside. Inside are the sounds of bells, feet in the halls, the loud heater fan in the corner of our room, the voices of 25 children in a small space. Outside there is room enough for all of us. For the trees, for the birds, for our bodies and minds. I see a child stroking a tree, feeling the bark’s ridges under his hands. He finds a crack and worries that the tree will die. No one asks if they are ‘‘doing it right’’ or complains about someone else bothering them in their work. Their bodies are grounded. A child who is never settled inside the school, writes and writes as he lays sprawled widely on the soft grass (pp. 1904-1905).

Her experience describes my students, who are 15 years older than hers (at least), but who still feel a need to connect to world outside the classroom. Why do being outside invite this kind experience? I'm not sure, but I know is that it does. It asks for a kind of learning that seems to arise from the willingness to just be with things.

When we went back to the classroom I ask them what they thought about the exercise. What did they notice? One of them shared a thought that made me remember why I am comfortable with the discomfort. She said (and I paraphrase), "First I looked at the flower, and went and drew something. Then I went back and looked again, and realized I could look closer into the flower. And I went and drew. And then I went and looked again, and saw even deeper into the flower. I think I could keep looking and looking and still find more. Observation isn't as easy as I thought."

Look at that. Science and life all rolled up together in the garden.

Reference

Seidel, J. (2006). Some thoughts on teaching as contemplative practice. Teachers’ College Record, 108(9), 1901-1914.