Teaching Literature and Educating for Sustainability
At 7:55 on a gray April morning I found myself facing the 15 members of my English class as I stood on the edge of what appeared to be an abandoned lot. Behind me aggressive vines and untamed undergrowth seethed. Broken glass and plastic bottles decorated the curb side, and a stack of abandoned tires loomed over my left shoulder. My students were probably wondering how we ended up in this neglected corner of their city. Meanwhile, I nursed the hope that they would enjoy restoring the woods and working to reverse the urban decay that surrounded us.
This morning class marked the culmination of a semester-long literature course entitled Literature of the American West. Although the course has always featured environmental themes, after my experience with the Japan-U.S. Teacher Exchange I refocused the course on the themes of “a sense of place” and stewardship of the local environment. The inspiration for this re-design came from my appreciation of the two lectures Greg Smith, PhD delivered during the orientation of the 2012 Japan-U.S. Teacher Exchange Program for ESD. My course initially explores how the myth of the open frontier and the spirit of rugged individualism continue to permeate US culture today. Students gradually discover how cowboy dreams of yesterday conflict with the contemporary ideas about sustainability. By reading Norman Maclean’s A River Runs through It, Annie Proulx’s Broke-Back Mountain and Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, students experience the power, beauty and uniqueness of the West’s wide open landscapes; ideally, they begin to uncover the connections between identity and one’s sense of place. Emphasizing this theme helps me indirectly introduce a principle Greg Smith emphasized: the importance of making students aware of issues affecting their community and local environment. Half-way through the course, students complete a nonfiction piece describing a special place:
For this short creative writing assignment you will write a description of a place that tells a “submerged story.” By describing a setting that is significant to you with carefully chosen words and artfully crafted descriptions, you will communicate the “story” of that place. That is, your description should suggest to the reader a deeper meaning. Your description of the place you choose will reveal a slice of who you are, of your past.
This assignment helps me transition to the ESD portion of the course, a three-week environmental project devised by the students and involving acquisition of knowledge and skills that lie outside the boundaries of the traditional English classroom.
Making Sustainability Matter
To ensure that the project reflects students’ interests, class members fill out environmental interest surveys that asks them to rate their concern about topics pertinent to educating for sustainability. At this stage, I get help from a colleague, a high school science teacher who is also the Sustainability Coordinator at Roland Park Country School. We go over the surveys together and plan how she will lead a discussion in which students begin to formulate a feasible and meaningful three-week project. While leading this conversation in 2014, Martha asked the students to think about small ways they could work to improve the health of their local environment. First, she pointed out ways to overcome the gloom surrounding many contemporary discussions of environmental issues; then, she encouraged them to suggest small ways we could make a lasting difference. To introduce the ESD principle of environmental stewardship, she asked, “Can you think of a place that you care about, a place that you would want to protect because you feel it belongs to you?” Her question links academic learning to real world problem solving and it appeals to students’ idealism.
Martha’s discussion triggers the design portion of the project. During this phase, I sometimes bring in consultants from non-profit organizations and use their expertise to help the class brainstorm ideas for the group project. In 2013, a representative of Baltimore Parks and People discussed ways to “green” vacant lots owned by the city, a conversation that resulted in our rehabilitation of a neglected lot in a low-income neighborhood. The students in the class of 2014 focused on greenhouse gas emissions, and I decided to partner with Baltimore Green Space, a local non-profit that seeks to preserve and enhance the tree canopy in the city. The project the students and I designed involved participating in the preservation of a local “forest patch”—an overgrown wooded patch in the city that citizens had been ignoring or using as a convenient dumping ground for household trash and worse.
From Computers to Garden Rakes
After permission slips had been signed and tools gathered, the class met for the first time at the forest patch, which was a 10-minute drive from school. The weekend before this first work session, I spent two hours at the site removing dangerous trash and offensive refuse so that students would feel inspired and safe while we began our work. On Monday, after students disembarked from their cars, I led them past the ragged forest border of the area along a path created by Baltimore Green Space. Some of the boys tried swinging on the invasive vines that dangled from the tree canopy and everyone joked nervously while crossing a rickety bridge over a small stream. Next, I listed the different jobs they could choose and told them that they would decide during the first couple of sessions how to work efficiently so that their group work would yield lasting results. After 40 minutes of work, we stood in a circle and briefly shared our initial reactions to the project:
“I was scared at first and wondered what people in this neighborhood would think of all of us driving up in our nice cars.”
“I am feeling overwhelmed; there is so much work that needs to be done here.”
“I can’t believe the city doesn’t cut back the branches and vines that have taken over the sidewalk.”
“I felt happy when some neighbors thanked us for cleaning up the area.”
“I was surprised that people just dump their trash on the sidewalk next to these woods.”
By honestly sharing their first impressions of the forest patch, my students began the first step of real life problem solving, a central part of becoming environmental stewards.
During the subsequent class periods, students worked to save mature trees that were being suffocated by invasive vines. They removed garbage, cleared the overgrown sidewalk, cutting back the invasive species and pruning low-hanging tree limbs. As a group we improved the parts of the forest closest to the street, but much work still remains to be done. On our last day, I ask students to complete a written reflection on the project. The honesty and range of their responses surprised me:
“I was taken aback by all the trash and sewage waste initially, but I became more comfortable with getting dirty and immersing myself in the project. I initially thought all of the neighbors would hate us because of our backgrounds and think we were pretentious for coming into their neighborhood uninvited, but I soon realized that they were very accepting and friendly.”
“Killing the invasive species that were harming the trees does not seem very interesting from the beginning, but when I realized how much of a difference it make in the health of the forest, I became really proactive about the task. I was frustrated that I did not personally have the botanic expertise to offer in trying to sustain the health of the forest patch.”
“I realized how little… the government cares about places such as this seemingly low income area. The residents did not even realize there was a sidewalk on that side of the street until we cleaned the invasive species off of it, and the [city] government had been called multiple timed to help clean the area with no positive response.”
“[The work] allows me to separate from my daily worries and struggles. The pure lack of relation and impact on my life is actually what has made the project so relaxing.”
“I learned that it is very hard to clean up a site like this when it was been neglected for so long, but after seeing how people respond to it being improved I see the importance in helping. I also learned that Baltimore City can easily change from a clean wealthy neighborhood to mistreated poorer neighborhoods.”
“I learned that in general the area of Baltimore City that were we working in needs a lot of help. People treat the forests like their personal dumpsters, dumping anything from old mattresses to bikes and plastic bottles. In order to create a better living space for everyone, I believe that people need to become aware of what’s going on in their community, to try and lessen the amount of waste that goes into public areas such as these.”
Reading the students’ words underscores the links between environmental challenges and questions of social justice. The 15 students who worked with me left positive footprints behind. I look forward to seeing where they lead.
APPENDIX 1: Link to a student-made Youtube video of the project {Thanks to Matthew Slodzinski, Gilman class of 2014}.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxnsE0qcHXk
APPENDIX 2: Link to a student-made PowerPoint of the 2013 project
http://sp.rpcs.org/faculty/RogersM/web%20pages/Man,%20Monsters%20and%20Machines.aspx?PageView=Shared
Click on the July 28 box to view the PowerPoint.