Chesapeake Bay Ecological Field Trip: Access Opportunity #2

Overview of Access Opportunity #2

In this section I shall describe a second outside opportunity that I researched and made available to my students. I shall show how I encouraged my students to take advantage of this opportunity and how I developed partnerships with families in support of the learning environment.

African Americans have historically had limited access to natural, pristine places as a result of socio-economic and cultural constraints. Consequently, many minorities are concentrated in urban areas wherein green spaces are sparse and often inadequately maintained. Moreover, the prevalence of violence renders the outdoors particularly perilous. Further, it is becoming increasingly evident that minority groups (especially African Americans) experience poorer health outcomes partly as a result of residing in areas that are more polluted, more industrialized, experience heightened ambient air temperatures during summer and breathe air of diminished quality, containing higher concentrations of particulate matter that compromise the functioning of multiple organ systems, increasing morbidity and mortality measurably. Observationally, asthma is alarmingly high among my mainly adolescent Black male students and this accords with national data for this demographic group. Because the aforecited generalizations hold true for my students, I was intent upon providing my pupils an opportunity to immerse themselves in Nature with the threefold purpose of (I) reinforcing the centrality of Evolutionary Theory as the bedrock of biological science and a major focus of my instruction, (II) underscoring the effects of human activity on the environment, and (III) catalyzing an increased appreciation of Nature by allowing them to explore the outdoors in a safe, stimulating, and psychologically salubrious setting. My research, as shall be elaborated anon, yielded an eco-educational retreat on the Chesapeake Bay as an ideal destination for achieving this threefold aim—an enjoyable and enriching way to integrate many of the ideas I had impressed upon my students throughout the year, culminating in our unit on Evolution and Ecology.

A prodigious process of planning was necesseary to actuate this access opportunity. As I shall describe, several promising opportunities were conceived, explored and ultimately abandoned or postponed for various reasons before the Chesapeake excursion was proposed and approved. In this process of approval it was necesseary to opoerate on three fronts: (I) to convince the academic administrative leadership of the school that this trip was a an appropriate intellectual investment for my students (II) to convince the non-academic adminitrative leadership (given our school's charter structure) that this trip was worth the considerable financial expenditure and (III) to convince parents that the breif period of separation from their children was a potentially positive, character-fortifying experience that would be memorable and momentous. On the latter front, my students were my main mouthpiece, as I urged them to prepare their parents psychologically for parting with them for a week's time--something that most had never done and found quite difficult. Once I succeded in eliciting the assent of each of the aforecited stakeholders, tedious yet crucial steps followed as a matter of course. These included the customary issuing and collecting of permission slips, preparation of special permission slips authorizing nursing staff at the retreat site to administer medication at the requisite times for students so prescribed, voluntary coordination with teaching aids assigned to students having Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and coordination with the retreat's dining facility to ensure suitable fare for those students having food allergies, special dietary needs and preferences. These laborious logistics were well worth the effort, I contend, as the following description of this second access opportunity shall show.

Initial Explorations of Alternative Access Opportunities: My Residence

The final selection of the Chesapeake retreat (i.e. North Bay) was itself akin to an evolutionary process. I sought a destination that was sufficiently distant from where my students reside. Though a seeming modest criterion, this has great import in my estimation. For few of my students ever leave the region of Baltimore City that they live in and the vast majority have never left the state of Maryland. Rurality was another of my research requirements, for, again, none of my students ever venture outside of the urban areas of which they are accustomed (indeed, veritably confined). Because I live in a beautiful, forested area in the Appalachian hills of Pennsylvania, my first thought was to have the whole class camping around my residence. I realized that this would be impracticable for a class-wide trip (though a smaller version of this plan remains in the works).

Initial Explorations of Alternative Access Opportunities: Gettysburg

Secondarily, I considered a region close to my residence that could accommodate such a large group. This area was Gettysburg—specifically, the Gettysburg National Military Park/Cemetery. For several weeks I conducted physical reconnaissance of this park. Though the site has majestic, mountainous scenery and is steeped in history that is most relevant and should arguably be sacred to every African descendant of slaves, it lacks the strong ecological element that my conceived access opportunity was intended to afford. Therefore, this prospective access opportunity was postponed for a more propitious juncture.

Initial Explorations of Alternative Access Opportunities: Wild Plant Foraging

Edible wild plants are among my research and personal interests. I have made several trips to a retreat in rural Virginia to learn from an acquaintance and expert in the field who operates a resort called Earth Connection School of Primitive Living Skills. This, I mused, would be a great opportunity for my students and it would reinforce lessons in ecology and evolution that was our present focus. Upon contacting my acquaintance, he was quite willing to accommodate us. However, upon further exploration of his personnel resources and lodging limitations, it was clear that this otherwise ideal excursion could not be efficiently executed on a class-wide scale. Similar to the two previous plans, this ambition has not been entirely abandoned, only postponed and is under consideration as a small-scale access opportunity. While it might be objected that my students have virtually no access to areas where they might effectively forage off the land, I maintain that possessing the skill and knowledge is inherently empowering. Evidence indicates that the present pandemic is impelling people to seek the simplicity and security of outdoor spaces with greater zeal. Arming my students with an understanding of how to sustain themselves in the wilderness would open doors to many practical possibilities in these uncertain times and provide a potent counterbalance to lives dubiously dominated by digital devices.

Ultimate Access Opportunity: Chesapeake Bay

After internet searches, conversations with colleagues, and connections with an acquaintance from The University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) who knows the director of an ecology resort, I finally settled upon a suitable site: NorthBay Adventure Camp. Together, my acquaintance and I visited the site twice before I committed to organizing the excursion thereto. The factors that made the site ideal included (I) its pristine, natural surroundings (II) its educative orientation (III) its considerable distance from the urban area of Baltimore City (~75 miles) (IV) the training, expertise, and ecological enthusiasm of their sizable staff and (V) their ability to offer lodging our large group. The latter of the five factors was particularly important for the cabins in which my students would be staying could accommodate parent chaperones. Myself and my grade-level colleagues quickly communicated this to our students’ parents and solicited available volunteers for the week-long excursion. Unfortunately, this exercise in outreach reinforced several facts that actually underscore the importance of such an access opportunity (I) how few parents in this demographic can afford to absent themselves from work for a span of several days to have an immersive educational experience with their children (II) how few Black males are actively involved in the lives of Black children [Note: Only male guardians were solicited to be residential chaperones in the all-male cabins.*] (III) how few of the latter could even conceive of being able, practically, to be present at such an experience and (IV) how critical male educators (particularly Black male educators) can be, since it is we who fulfilled the shortfall in residential chaperones and provided the essential bonding experience that this access opportunity was also intended to forge. In conversations I had with male parents of my pupils, this realization (i.e. their practical and wholly understandable inability to be present at such a momentous occasion) was manifestly bitter to them. Uniformly, they expressed profound appreciation for the opportunity that their children were being afforded and some reflected how their lives might have been different if they had been granted similar opportunities. In the end, not a single male parent was able to serve as a residential chaperone, though one was able to briefly visit during the day. Every parent contributed some monetary amount, however small, in order to defray the considerable cost of the trip, which was funded by private philanthropic donations to the charter school coffers. The pride of the parents in making this gesture (which amounted to no small sacrifice in some cases) was evident and many verbalized their gratitude. They saw it plainly as a partnership pursuant to stimulating and expanding the minds of their children and helping to give them an opportunity that none theretofore ever had.

[*Cabin designation--that is, assigning students to specific cabins--was done with due deliberation as I desired to encourage my students to use this opportunity to expand their sometimes restricted, sometimes hostile, social spheres. There was risk inherent in doing so but the observed amicability of the interactions and atmosphere and feedback from students shows that it was a sound strategy.]