Tag Archives: Environmental Literature Institute

Adventures in the Environmental Humanities

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In June we gathered for the Second Annual Environmental Literature Institute (ELI) at Phillips Exeter Academy. In the fall one of my collaborators, Stephen Siperstein, Choate Rosemary Hall Academy, summarized the week in a piece for ASLE News.

ELI 2.0 brought together secondary school teachers from around the country to Exeter Academy, New Hampshire for a week of professional development in the Environmental Humanities. Continuing to build on the goal of the 2014 ASLE strategic plan to improve public discourse about the environment through community-based, K-12, and undergraduate programs, provided a space for educators of all experience levels to develop courses and curricula for a variety of secondary school settings, to explore how environmental approaches could inform and enliven their teaching, and to build community in the Environmental Humanities.

Our days were filled with discussion, small group work, and time for individual reflection. We read and analyzed works of environmental literature, such as passages from Thoreau’s journal and Mary Oliver’s poetry. We shared resources and helped each other imagine and design ways to incorporate field-based learning and community projects into our environmental humanities classrooms, all while contextualizing such work within wider currents in the field and our own institutions. Among other topics, we also discussed teaching climate change, addressing questions of racial justice in the environmental literature classroom, and learning how to build environmentally-focused communities in our classrooms and institutions. In the words of one participant: “As we explored how to create a classroom of kids with compassion for each other and compassion for the environment, we were sitting around campfires together, we were swimming in a creek, we were taking walks in the woods, we were swinging from ropes in trees. We were becoming the kind of community we talked about.”

Renowned author and plant biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer joined us for a keynote address on the grammar of animacy and the honorable harvest, and led an exuberant field session that highlighted how to put her ideas into practice in the classroom (and how the forest is itself a vibrant environmental humanities classroom). With both her words and her presence, Kimmerer helped us envision the entire enterprise of environmental humanities education as one of reciprocity—between teachers and students, between institutions and communities, and perhaps most importantly between the human and the nonhuman (all of us being, according to Kimmerer, kin). It is gratitude, Kimmerer emphasized in her talk, that pulls us into relations, and it was gratitude that defined the week.

Later in the week we were joined by master teachers Rochelle Johnson and Clare Walker Leslie. Rochelle led sessions on place-based pedagogy and teaching Thoreau in our current political and social moment, while Clare guided a field session in the art of seeing through drawing. Education journalist Michael Brosnan, UNH Professor Diane Freedman, and prominent climate activist and storyteller Devi Lockwood also contributed to the community, adding their perspectives and expertise.

The week concluded with a forward-looking session and time for synthesis: How will we build on the ideas, connection, and energy of this emerging community? How can ASLE welcome even more secondary school educators into its fold? What kinds of Environmental Humanities communities can exist in our classrooms, and beyond them? Between the known and the unknown, the participants at ELI staked out common ground together, and left energized and grateful, ready to return to their own classrooms and institutions this fall and do the difficult (and rewarding) work of building this field from the ground up, student by student.

Environmental Humanities at Exeter

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A primary need of students and teachers alike

It began with a conversation. Jason wanted to talk over a new environmental literature course at Phillips Exeter Academy, and Mark, at the time the president of ASLE, was hoping to create new opportunities for secondary educators in our association. Two years later, twenty-five elementary and secondary school faculty gathered for the inaugural Environmental Literature Institute (ELI) at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. Participants from Hawaii, California, New Mexico, Georgia, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Toronto, Canada, spent a week in New Hampshire developing new courses and revising curriculum for a range of secondary school settings.

We welcomed as keynote speaker and workshop leader Scott Russell Sanders, who spent a year at Phillips Exeter in 1974-75 as a Bennett Fellow. And throughout the week we were guided by the generous spirit of the late Exeter Instructor Peter Greer—whose course Literature and the Land was among the earliest environmental literature courses to be taught at the secondary school level.

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Scott Russell Sanders meets with ELI participants

Each day began with morning physical and reflective activities, including walking and running, yoga, and mountain biking. Participants then circled at the Harkness table to discuss writing by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gary Paul Nabhan, Richard Wright, Robert Frost, and Marc Bekoff; participated in daily field sessions with the workshop leaders; and took advantage of time set aside for course and curriculum building.

The week included a series of special events as well. Scott Russell Sanders’ presented “Taking Care of Home: Sustainability on a Small Planet.” We discussed Climate change pedagogy via Skype with Stephen Siperstein, who will be joining the faculty of Choate Rosemary Hall next year. We enjoyed an evening with John Elder reading, playing music, and discussing his newest book, Picking up the Flute, at the Water Street Bookstore. And Jennifer Pharr Davis, author and 2012 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, shared some of her experiences walking over 12,000 miles on six different continents.

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ELI gathered at the big Harkness table on the top floor of Phillips Hall

Participants considered a range of interdisciplinary and field-based pedagogies. Master teachers Scott and John shared their experiences and provided mentoring—both in the classroom and in a writing and poetry discussion at a local biodynamic farm. Clare Walker Leslie guided participants in the art of seeing nature through drawing—in the classroom, out of doors on the campus, and in the open fields of the Colby Farm. And Patrick Thomas from Milkweed Editions offered an insider’s view of the interplay between writing and publishing. ELI concluded with the participants sharing their work in progress: revised units for existing courses, new course ideas, and aspirations for interdisciplinary collaborations.

Sketching in the field at Colby Farm with the inimitable Claire Walker Leslie

Sketching in the field at Colby Farm with the inimitable Claire Walker Leslie

ELI is committed to developing a teacher collaborative committed to developing environmental humanities at the secondary level. Our vision is to share the resources of ASLE with secondary school colleagues as well as to share the wisdom, resources, and pedagogical methods of our secondary school teachers with the members of ASLE who teach in post-secondary schools.

Jason Bremiller (Phillips Exeter), John Elder (Middlebury College), and Soctt Russell Sanders (Indiana University)

Jason Bremiller (Phillips Exeter), John Elder (Middlebury College), and Soctt Russell Sanders (Indiana University)

Among the goals of the 2014 ASLE strategic plan is to improve public discourse about the environment through community-based, K-12, and undergraduate programs. To this end, members of ELI received two-year memberships to ASLE, a collection of resources from Milkweed Editions, and a subscription to Orion magazine. We have also set up in the ASLE Member Community a Chatter forum designed to share resources and materials among secondary educators working in the environmental humanities. We are considering a workshop at ASLE 2017 featuring ELI alumni. And we are talking about a mentoring network for secondary school teachers as we plan for ELI 2017.