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.

Literary Response to a Quote or Excerpt.

O happy living things! No tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

The selfsame moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea. 

This excerpt is from one of my favorite poems, entitled "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The poem is about a man, an old and experienced mariner who is asked to lead a crew of men across the sea. He is cocky and sure of himself and his talents, and views this as an easy run, even though it is known to be dangerous. He is also self centered and views the sea and the life within as despicable and disposable. While on the sea there appears an albatross in the sky, and all the crew members and happy at this, as the albatross was seen as a good omen for sailors. However, the crew comes upon hard times when a thick fog appears and they can no longer see there way. The mariner decides to take matters into his own hands and shoots down the albatross with an arrow. The fog immediately lifts and the whole crew applauds the mariners actions. Unfortunately the mariner and the crew become lost and sea, and run out of food and water. As a result the crew turns on the mariner and blame him for there situation and hang the dead albatross around his neck as punishment and reminder. Eventually every single crew member, with the exception of the mariner, dies a slow death. The mariner is forced to suffer, unable to live, unable to die, and unable to pray for salvation, alone on the sea until death decides to take him.

The excerpt that I chose is the point at which the mariner is finally released from his torment. It is the point where he finally realizes that the sea and the nature around him is not just full of disgusting creatures that are disposable. He seas the beauty in the world and loves and appreciates the same creatures of the sea that he had previously found disgusting. As a result, he is released from his torment, the dead albatross falls from his neck, and the mariner is rescued by another boat.

I chose this excerpt, not only because it is one of my favorite poems, but because it expresses a love and passion for the environment. The author himself viewed the environment as very inspiring and important, as do I. I  feel very strongly about this poem because it expresses how I feel about nature as well, that it can release you from stress and bring you closer to God.

Story Telling of an Experience in Nature.

Growing up, I was always very close to nature. The house that I grew up in, and the house that my parents still live in today, is very well removed from town. We (my sisters and I) didn't grow up hearing the noises of the city out our window. Our nighttime lullaby didn't consist of traffic sounds and sirens. Instead we fell asleep to the chirping of the crickets and the croaking of frogs in the pond next to our house. Looking back I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm pretty sure my whole family feels the same way as well. I prefer the melody of birds in the trees to the voices of nosy neighbors. And instead of neighbor dogs roaming their way into our backyard, we had deer. They still make their way to the apple trees in the backyard in the early hours of the morning. It was a peaceful childhood, and we were always learning about the nature around us.

One of the places that I grew to appreciate nature, aside from our backyard, was at my family's hunting cabin. We used to spend our weekends out there, in any season. Winter was probably my favorite season to be at the cabin. The weather could be raging in any way you could think of, but our sturdy cabin wouldn't budge an inch. It was incredibly peaceful sitting in that little building, watching wildlife walking just outside the windows, with nothing but the wood stove to keep us warm.

My dad used to take my sisters and I on nature walks while we were at the cabin. We would leave out the front door and walk straight into the woods, in any season. While on the walks my dad would point out different things that we saw, and teach us about them. I learned to determine which animals had crossed through by the size of their trails (as animals frequently use the same trails to travel through the woods) and by the scat that they left behind. He point out the different trees, and how to tell them apart. I learned the difference between aspen and birch, oak and maple, as well as a variety of different conifers. He would even show us what the ground looked like where a deer had slept the night before. The best part of every nature walk with my dad was when it was done. Not because I disliked them, on the contrary they were one of my favorite childhood memories. The end was my favorite because my dad would lead us to the nearest road, and let us lead the way back to the cabin, without retracing our steps. It was a test of whether or not we had payed attention to the direction we were going. I am proud to say that we always made it back to the cabin.

Scientific Observation

I went for a walk with a friend the other day, in Schmeekle forest, and noticed a few interesting things. I am not sure if this counts as scientific observation, but I certainly found it worth noting. 

Anyway, we were walking along one of the trails that everybody uses, and came to an area where a bunch of trees had fallen. It was about four trees, maybe as many as six. There were no large storms that I remembered during the summer, or before that, at least not something violent enough to take down that many trees, especially since one of them was about three feet in diameter. Which by the way is a pretty large tree for that particular forest. I went off the trail, since that is how I prefer to go for walks in the woods, and went over by the area with the fallen trees. I noticed that they were near a dried up stream. I could tell because it was an area that had nothing growing and the rocks were washed clean of any dirt and had no moss growing on it. Also the dirt in the dried stream was a reddish color, like clay. I found this interesting, that the same area that had fallen trees, also had a recently dried clay stream. 

Another thing to note is that the summer was kind of a weird one. We had a really dry period, with no rain at all, then a week or two where it rained everyday, then it went back to dry.

I went home and looked up some of the reasons that trees collapse or fall, especially since I didn't think it was from a storm. Nothing really came up. I then looked up the effects of drought on trees, since it had been a particularly dry summer. What I found was pretty interesting. On this page (http://txforestservice.tamu.edu/main/popup.aspx?id=1283) I found some information about areas that have soil with a lot of clay in it. On the page it said "Soils with a high clay content will hold water much better than sandy soils. Trees growing in clay soils tend to be shallow rooted and may be more severely impacted by prolonged drought than trees growing on loamy or sandy soils where roots will grow deeper. Most of a tree's feeder roots that absorb moisture and nutrients are located in the upper 12-14 inches of the soil. When a clay soil dries out, the impact on the tree can be great since the tree is not "accustomed" to sending roots deep into the soil for moisture and nutrients."

I found this to be very interesting, and developed a theory of what caused the trees to fall (although I am not sure that I am right.) What I think happened is that the trees, since they were growing in clay, had very shallow roots. They suffered quite a bit during the dry period in early summer, because there roots did not go down far enough to pull out moisture. Then when the rainy period came, the soil and clay surrounding their roots might have partially washed away and caused the trees to become unstable and fall. Finally the weather returned to dry and the stream dried up. 

Again, I am not sure if this is what happened, but the facts seem to fit.

I think that this would be something that I could teach to students as well. Seeing the fallen trees made me think more about how much the weather effects what grows around us, and how plants adapt to their surroundings. Talking about the fallen trees could be a good lesson to teach to students.

Self Assessment for Teaching Environmental Education

Prompt?: Write a self-assessment of your content knowledge, confidence, and abilities to teach the EE standards for the grade that you plan to teach.

In the future I will be teaching special education. I am fairly confident in my ability, and am sure that I will succeed in this field. Regarding this specific topic, however, I am less confident about. While I have always had a passion for nature and a concern for environmental issues, I don't feel that I currently have the knowledge to teach it successfully at this point in time. That being said, I am also confident that I will learn the necessary  information relatively easily. I am also unsure of how I will teach the information appropriately. In my field, I will be working with a variety of students, with and even larger variety of abilities and disabilities, so I will have to differentiate quite a bit. Furthermore, there will be other students that I have contact with that I will not be the primary teacher of, so there environmental education will be the responsibility of someone else. This is mainly what I am worried about. How will I convey my passion and knowledge  to my students in a way that they will understand. Also, what do I do if I encounter students that really do not care about the environment, and no matter what I say or do, will never care? Of course, these concerns of mine will probably go away as I learn more in not only my specific field, but the field of environmental education.

Another specific concern that I have is more directly related to the class itself, and the information we will learn in the class. It is not that I fear that it will be too difficult, but more that I do not know what is coming. Environmental Education seems rather vague to me, and I am also not sure how to transfer my knowledge to a way that is easy for students to understand.

Oh well. So far the class is going well, and I have done well in all of my classes so far, so this is probably another one of my un-warranted stress-freakout episodes. All will be fine.

So I guess this is a "Nature Journal"

Here goes my first entry into my nature journal. Well sort of my first entry, the first being one that we had to turn into class. And also considering that I am transferring my original nature journal, which I had in a tattered notebook that used to house some long-forgotten notes from an English class, into blog form. So with some re-wording, here goes the first entry in my transference of notebook to blog. After a while it will all pan out.

Anyway, it is currently raining, so there won't be much observation today.

And this is more of an introduction than an entry.