Review of Week 1 Journal Entry

Prompt?: Review your journal entry from week 1 and describe how your content knowledge, confidence, and abilities to teach EE have changed since the beginning of the semester as a result of this course, other courses, and placement in instructional settings.

In my first journal entry when I assessed myself on how I viewed my ability to teach Environmental Education (EE), I had a few main concerns. These concerns were my limited knowledge of EE, differentiating the content with my students (as I will be a special ed teacher), and conveying my passion for the environment when I am teaching.

As of late I feel much more comfortable with these areas that had originally given me concerns. Regarding my concern about my limited content knowledge I feel that I have learned a lot of valuable information about EE that will help me in the future. Through this course I have learned more about sustainability and some easy ways that it can be implemented. Sustainability is something that I think is very important to teach students and a topic that they will probably be interested in. Another topic that I have learned more about are the different forms of harnessing energy. Some of them are more environmentally conscience than others and this could be a discussion that I could engage my students in. Having my students build small models of the different energy harnessing options could get them working with their hands to better understand these methods. Finally I am glad that we have the Project Wild, Aquatic Wild, and Project Learning Tree books, as there are so many fun and useful activities in there that will be very enjoyable to my future students.

My second concern was about differentiating between the large variety of students that I will have. I am now less concerned about this after attending this class. After doing the practicum at CWES I learned that getting students into nature is one of the most effective teaching tools. This applies to all students, even students with some difficult-to-manage students that I may have. I also learned that some concepts such as reusing and recycling do not need to be differentiated, and can be understood by all students. Furthermore putting different concepts into practice is a good way to teach students. For example if I am talking to my students about reusing and recycling then I should recycle in my classroom and encourage my students to find ways to reuse materials.

The final concern that I had was how I would express my passion for the environment to my students. While I still am not sure how I will do this, I am pretty sure that I will be able to express it. If I make the practices that I find important an integral part of my students' day, then that may be a good way to convey to them how I feel about the topic.

Overall I feel that I will be successful when I am teaching Environmental Education to my students, and I hope that I can inspire them to love the environment as much as I do.

Tracking or Wandering

So I think I like the title of this journal option. "Tracking or Wandering". There was another word in that title originally, but it was probably something related to tracking and wandering. I like the idea that I can get credit for "wandering". 

However, I didn't do the "wandering" part so much as the "tracking". Luckily I was at my parents house this weekend and not at my apartment, so the animal tracks were in far greater abundance. With the fresh snow that had recently fallen it wasn't very hard to see the tracks of all the animals that manage to remain hidden during the day hours. 

While exploring outside in my backyard, the backyard that I have been exploring my whole life, I found the tracks of a few animals. Well four to be exact, and I am proud to say that I was able to identify all of them on my own and without the assistance of anyone else, or anything else (computer). The four types of tracks that I found were: deer, rabbit, squirrel, and dog. I was hoping to find something a little more exotic (not exactly sure what I was expecting) but I was pretty happy with what I found. 

Anyway, I suppose I should show what the different tracks look like, and tell a little bit about what the animals that they belong to were doing in our backyard.

1. Deer. We always have deer hanging around in our backyard, mainly because we have two apple trees in the backyard that probably supply the deer with most of their food. Even during the winter months they still manage to find things to eat in the backyard, and this particular day was no exception. They mainly hand around the base of the trees, and occasionally make their way to the front yard. On this particular day I found the start of their tracks at the pine trees that border our yard, they walked around a bit near the trees, and exited the yard through the use of the same trail they came in. This was not surprising as most animals consistently use the same trails through the woods, and some species use the same trails. Anyway, here is what deer tracks look like:

This is essentially what they always look like, and are pretty easy to spot, even when it isn't snowy/rainy/muddy. They don't have very large feet compared to their body, so they sink down pretty far in the ground when the walk or run. Farther than a human even.

The next set of tracks that I found were squirrel tracks. I was kind of surprised to find squirrel tracks as I thought my father had gotten rid of most of them after he found out they were tearing off our roof shingles for sport. Anyway, they were mostly located at the base of our cedar tree, really close to the cedar tree. They seem to like hanging out in the cedar tree most, probably because it is the closest one to the house. But here are what squirrel tracks look like.

They are kind of cute and they have tiny little hands. Tiny little hands that cause a lot of trouble, but cute regardless. 

Then I found rabbit tracks. I was definitely expecting this as we have several rabbits that live around our house and torment our dog. Interesting fact about rabbits is that they almost never travel more than 400 feet from where they were born. That and the reason they reproduce so quickly is because the females' ovulation is triggered by mating. So they can pretty much get pregnant whenever the hell they feel like it. Here are what their tracks look like.

They have very large back feet, which end up in front of their front feet on their tracks because of the way they hop. As a child I thought their tracks were facing the other way and tried to follow them in the completely opposite direction. Which is just as well because its not like I was actually going to catch a rabbit. The rabbit tracks were mainly focused around the side of our garage and going in and out of the tall grass surrounding one side of our yard, which is what rabbits prefer to live in.

The last set of tracks I found were dog tracks. Again, not surprising because we have a dog, and since our dog as full run of the yard her tracks were found pretty much everywhere. Especially where the other animal tracks were because she likes to pretend to chase things away so she looks like she's being useful. Anyway this is what typical dog footprints look like.

They are often mistaken with cat footprints (except for obvious size differences). The way you can tell them apart it by the claws. Dogs will almost always have little claw marks in their prints as they cannot retract their claws. Cats can however, and they do not walk around with their claws out, ever. So they do not show up on their foot prints.

Anyway this is what the dog that makes the dog foot prints looks like.

Her name is Taco and she is very sweet.

So that essentially wraps up my backyard adventure of looking for animals tracks. I had quite a nice time recording the different animal tracks that I had seen, and hypothesizing why they were they there.

Other Type of Journal Guide

So since writing this "nature journal" for my natural resources class, I have been re-reminded that I am terrible at keeping a journal. My journal schedule is inconsistent, I am never sure of what I should write, or if I should put down my deep dark secrets, and I ALWAYS forget that I am trying to keep a journal. I have tried several times since childhood to keep a journal and have failed horribly each time, every time, and probably will always fail at it.

Unless it is required and I am getting a grade. Such as now.

Anyway, I was looking up different journaling options, types, and advice in general, and found some that might work for me.

They are located here: http://www.journalingsaves.com/lazy-daily-journaling/

Its called "The Lazy Guide to Journaling", but I'll pretend that its the "Forgetful" or "Don't Have Enough Time" guide to journaling.

One of the ones I liked the most was called "List Making". Now I really like making lists, and it reminded me a bit of when my mother used to watch David Letterman's top ten list late at night. So I kept reading about it. It consists of just making a list of things that remind you of the day you're having, such as: Top 10 Reasons I am 100% Done Costumer Service Reps, 6 Reasons That I Would Make a Terrible Kindergarten Teacher, and, Three Ways that Chocolate is My Best Friend.

So I made up a couple of lists that I thought tied in nicely with this class.

6 Little Ways That I Can Change the World
1. Recycle. I do this already, but there are some things that can be recycled that I don't know about yet.
2. Unplug everything. Devices use power even when they are not turned on, so unplug it.
3. Teach my children/students about conservation. If children develop a love for nature when they are young, they can make an even bigger difference than me.
4. Wash dishes by hand. Dishwashers use up a lot of unnecessary water, washing by hand can help that.
5. Reuse. Several things that we throw away can have another purpose. I can donate my old clothes instead of throwing them away. I can cut up clothes too tattered to be donated and use them as dish rags. And I can rinse and dry out used sandwich and bread bags for other purposes.
6. Grow things. If I can plant my own garden and raise some of my own food then it doesn't have to be packaged, and that packaging doesn't have to be thrown away. Plus I can use old food waste as compost to fertilize the garden and start the cycle over again.

Here is another list I thought applied to this class:

5 Things I Didn't Know Before this Class.
1. Freaking Fracking. I mean really. That causes earthquakes.
2. Plastic does not decompose. It just gets smaller and smaller.
3. There is also a lot of plastic in the ocean. Which is really really really terrible and can never be reversed.
4. There are also pesticides in everything, so good luck with that.
5. Children are more susceptible to pollution because they require more nutrients compared to body mass and have developing brains.

I think I really do like the list making option. It allows me to remember what I have learned, and it is compact. I can also add in a little humor as well if I want, which I like.

Environmental Issue or Class Content.

During class I've recently learned about a lot of things that I never even knew existed. Hydraulic fracturing is one of those methods of producing energy that I had never before heard of, and quite frankly I am surprised that it is legal.

While initially I didn't think much of it, and it sounded pretty harmless to me, I have since learned more about it. At first all I heard about hydraulic fracturing (fracking) was that liquid is pumped deep into the earth and into the shale in order to fracture it and collect the gas that is trapped in the rock. Which made sense to me, I mean how harmful can pumping liquid and breaking up rocks be?

Until I learned more.

Like just how much water is necessary to do this. 1-8 million gallons of water roughly. Which is water that could be put to much better use in a countless number of more deserving situations.

And what kind of chemicals are added to the water. The cancer causing kinds. Like formaldehyde, lead, mercury, and uranium. These are only some of the chemicals used. And the chemicals often end up the the water nearby these fracking wells.

Not only does it release dangerous chemicals into the ground water, water that could be the source of living for people living nearby, but as we learned in class it can actually cause earthquakes. Which is something that I really can't wrap my head around.

Fracking causes earthquakes. Something that is considered a natural disaster. Fracking unnaturally causes natural disasters. 

But enough with the soapbox talk because I should probably relate this somehow with how I could teach my future students. Like I could teach them about what NOT to do when looking for viable energy options. Lets NOT create earthquakes.

In a classroom setting I could probably use this as an opportunity to talk about energy sources that are good for the environment and use aspects of the environment without actually harming the environment. For example I could talk to them about wind and water power. Water power especially since fracking requires so much water, so I could ask my students to think of ways that that water could have been put to better use. This could lead to discussion about using waves and tides for power, as well as rivers. By teaching my students about the harmful ways to get power I could show them there are non-harmful ways as well. While all sources of power have their shortcomings some of them have less terrible shortcomings. Like earthquakes.

Overall I am glad that I learned about this power source so I can further my passions towards clean energy.

Sit Spot

For this particular journal entry I chose a place to sit in Schmeekle Reserve. I found this spot when going for a walk with friends, and decided that I wanted to return. This was the same area that had all of the fallen trees that I wrote about in my Scientific Observation journal entry. During this particular visit my motives were more geared towards enjoying the day rather than hypothesizing on how the trees met their fate.

It was a rather windy day, but not too cold that I wasn't able to sit comfortably outside. The place that I chose to sit was on top of a large fallen tree near a small bridge. This tree rested across a dried up stream that I could look down into.

For a while I sat on the tree, near where the base had been. I found it amazing to see all of the small details about this spot that I had not earlier observed. In front of me there were small plants growing out of the bark, creating what looked to me to be a small forest on the back of the tree. A tiny little oasis in the middle of this large forest. It was completely undisturbed, even myself as I clumsily clambered up the side of it had not destroyed any of these little plants. There was moss covering the back of the tree as well, making a little green carpet under the tiny forest. As I looked further around me I noticed that everywhere there was new life and new plants growing where the old ones had fallen. A perfect little ecosystem of life and death. It made me appreciate that the fallen trees had not been cleared away as they would have been in so many other situations. Decomposing dead trees give way to new ones so the forest can stay alive. Seeing this was a refreshing change from some of the cookie cutter neighborhoods whose only goal is pure aesthetics. The goal here was life, and finally seeing it made me realize how important it is to not disturb nature and the environment. Our environment will take care of itself just fine if we do our part to not make it worse, which is something I am going to be more conscious of from now on.

Mapping

Yesterday afternoon I went for a lovely walk with one of my friends through Schmeekle Reserve. I kept track of the trails that I took and wrote them down as we were going.

We started out at the corner of Minnesota Ave. and Maria Dr. Then we took a left and followed the Lake Loop until we branched off and made our way to the Trail of Reflections. For a while we just sat and enjoyed the beautiful day. After leaving the Trail of Reflections we followed the Green trail until we reached the Green Circle trailhead, and were able to see a full map of the Green Trail. I was surprised to find that it surrounds almost all of Stevens Point. The friend I went with said it would be fun to bike the whole green trail and make a day of it. I must admit I found this idea to be a little intimidating at first, but I'm liking the idea more and more. We ended our walk by following Business 51, getting back onto Maria Dr, and then heading home. Overall, I had a very nice walk.

Art-Based Entry

Over the weekend I visited some friends in Superior. We went to Pattison State park, which is one of my favorite places to visit.

My favorite part is getting as close to the water as I can, climbing over rocks and walking through the woods.