Connecting education and stewardship

Hey, my name is Camille Hartley! I am an environmental studies/agroecology major and education minor at UCSC, which means when I’m not teaching Bird School with Kevin, Darrow, and the BSP team, I am in class deconstructing education reformation and environmental issues. As with many college majors, my two studies each seem to be centered around one big question. For environmental studies, this question is: “How can we save the planet?” Well, arguably the first step is to educate people about the earth and what is going wrong. For education, at least in the US, the question might be, “What is the purpose of education and how do we reform our current struggling system to achieve this purpose?” Thus, on top of also being connected to my experience as an outdoor guide, my internship with the Bird School Project has offered the perfect connection between my two realms of study. If we, as a country, wish to redefine education in a way that reconnects students to the planet so as to best take care of it, two things must happen. First, an alternative form of education must be tested, and second, students must be taught outside of the traditional classroom (aka in the outdoors!). It’s pretty neat to realize that Bird School is doing both of these things, and collecting new insight and curriculum throughout it all.

Needless to say, my experience with BSP has been awesome so far. It has given me the opportunity to put all of these bigger academic thoughts into a real situation, while is also giving me the chance to see my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher. From the first lesson to now, part way into the second unit of lessons, my confidence and knowledge on teaching the BSP curriculum has grown in a huge way. Though I came into the internship with very little knowledge on bird identification, the teaching skills that Darrow and Kevin shared have given me everything I need to achieve student learning even if I don’t immediately know what bird we are looking at as a group. As it is endemic to American education that content knowledge is unevenly emphasized over pedagogical skill, this is a hugely important and refreshing aspect of BSP.

For example, one of our most successful lessons is a workshop where students get to look at feathers, hold bird wings in front of fans, and talk in groups about how various structural differences in birds can affect how they interact with nature. Had we decided to teach this lesson lecture-style, I am positive that the students would be falling asleep on their desks--it’s having the opportunity to actually hold bird wings, and see how a wing glances off of each one different, that makes the lesson exciting enough to remember. It is easy to see students retaining information and staying engaged for longer with our hands-on, outdoor lessons in comparison to the average lecture-style class. During this lesson, I saw many of the students who hadn’t participated much before open up and engage with the activity alongside their peers.

Although this lesson accomplishes much of what Darrow and Kevin want it to, we still took the time to discuss which pieces could have been made even stronger. The flexibility of the Bird School Project curriculum inspires me (as an education student), as teacher autonomy is the key to good teaching. Because of this, the Bird School Project curriculum will continue to change with every new pedagogical discovery that Darrow and Kevin can incorporate into their lessons. It has been very eye-opening and exciting to be part of such a relevant educational project, and I’m looking forward to seeing where BSP will go as it gains more momentum and support!