This week we went on a very exciting and engaging field trip to a construction site in Saline. This was organized by Cruz’ dad, Chris Brown, whose company (Verdeterre Contracting Inc.) was contracted for the development. Chris and his team members introduced the students to their storm water management plan for the site, discussing how they had to learn the landscape and natural features beforehand in order to build a system that will work with rather than against nature. Students all received their own hard hats and protective gear and got to climb on huge mounds of dirt!
0 Comments
This week we visited the Veridian site (south of County Farm Park on Platt Road) to survey the current landscape. Again, we worked with Shawn Severance, a naturalist from County Farm Park, to create a natural features inventory of the land. As with our other hikes, the theme of this walk was to read how the landscape tells a story.
Before we began, we read the poem Hamatreya by Ralph Waldo Emerson. We paused at the line: “Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys, Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs.” Students shared their thinking on what they thought this meant--that the earth is shared by all living things, that humans think they own nature but do not, and that the earth has a language of its own; we just have to listen. What are the ways the land is speaking to us today, and how does the land show us (or tell us) what it wants? We looked at aerial images of the site from the 1940s, when it was rows of corn, the 1960s when the first building and driveway were built on the property, the 1970s, when parking lots were expanded and a juvenile detention center moved in, and currently, after the building was demolished. We walked the property in search of remnants from these periods and before. Students found tile pieces and bricks, fossils of coral, and leaves from 60 year old oak trees. We collected thorns from the honeysuckle (which used to protect against wooly mammoths!) , learned how to read winter twigs, and found blue/green algae (Gnostok) growing where the buildings once stood, healing the land. Students returned to school inspired by this walk and excited to look at and label all of our new artifacts. We spent time drawing detailed sketches of these items as well. As we reflected on the natural features of the landscape, we reflected on the question: how can we build our homes while allowing all of the life on this site to keep theirs? This week we continued our work with Shawn Severance, a naturalist from County Farm Park. One thing the students love about working with Shawn is her use of concrete artifacts and models she brings with her. We met Shawn at the perennial gardens of CFP, recapping the two time periods of her last visit (the Devonian and Glacial periods) while looking at wooly mammoth molars (in comparison to a deer’s jaw), actual pieces of wooly mammoth tusk, sabertooth tiger models, and more.
We then shifted to thinking about the next two major shifts in the history of this land: pre- and post-European settlement. The students viewed survey maps documenting the vegetation of the area in 1800. At this point, the area was dense with Oak-Hickory and Beech-Maple Forests. Though indigenous people were on the land, it remained vibrant with life. As Europeans began to dominate the land, much of these original forests were cut down for industry (such as logging) and agriculture. The farmer who once possessed the land that we now know as County Farm Park left only a small chunk of the original Oak forest (https://aadl.org/node/266573). Shawn laid the current trail map of CFP onto aerial photos of the property from 1949 and we hiked the trails, stopping to find memories/clues of what the land once was in the current landscape. As we made our way through County Farm Park, we took note of the different feelings and sights of the recovering farmland, now dense with invasive species like Buckthorn and Honeysuckle, and the ancient forest. We paused on various trails as Shawn spotted out huge tree stumps from the ancient forest, cut in half and dead. Shawn drew the students’ attention to the paradox of dying trees; they are the fertile ground for new life to grow. Students loved looking for signs of new life in the dead trees we found along the way. We also watched a documentary titled Intelligent Trees. This documentary focuses on the science behind the “language of trees”. More specifically, it looks at how trees use an underground network of mycelium to communicate with other trees. We went on another hike around County Farm looking for signs of this. Students loved thinking about how the trees were talking to each other just below our feet. This week students took a trip to Washtenaw County 400 million years ago, when it was completely submerged under water! When we begin to think about place, we ask: how did this space become what it is today? Naturalist Shawn Severance from County Farm Park visited with our 3/4s to introduce us to two major turning points in the history of Washtenaw County, and Michigan in general, that have provided us with the land we inhabit today.
The first was 400 million years ago in the Devonian period, when Michigan was completely submerged under water. The second was 14,000 years ago, when Michigan was covered in a mule high glacier! Shawn provided students with artifacts from these periods, such as trilobite and fern fossils, mammoth tusks, petoskey stones, and other items. We also looked at maps documenting glacial coverage of Washtenaw County to unpack how the border of the glaciers paved the way for many roads we use today. As we studied these items, we were continuously drawn back to Shawn’s original question: does land have a memory? How do these events, which happened so long ago, still show up in the landscape around us today? We took a hike around SK and County Farm Park to look for evidence from these two periods. We examined soil samples, collected seeds, and looked at the topography of the landscape, trying to tell a story of how this place has evolved over time. On Friday, Matt Grocoff from the Veridian Project visited with our students to introduce them to the project and its unique take on urban design. While the discussion was very rich, veering to many different trajectories according to students’ questions, some of the main questions explored were: How is a forest different than a neighborhood? How are buildings similar to flowers? Do the plans for the Veridian site differ from a traditional suburban design? Next week we will walk over to the site to begin imagining what the future of the landscape will look like, as well as how the site has changed over time. This week we visited the Kindergarten room to read with them! In these visits, our 3/4s form bonds with younger students at SK, fill the role of mentors, and improve their interpersonal skills, all while practicing reading aloud!
This week we began thinking about place-making and how this relates to elements of our environment that we interact with everyday. We found ourselves in a fairly lengthy philosophical discussion of location versus place. While many students could define Location--”it’s a specific spot on the earth”, “a coordinate”, “an address”--everyone had difficulty trying to define Place and how it differed from Location. WIth great hesitancy, students shared thoughts like “a place is...bigger than a location” and “a place is somewhere you go” and “a place can be anywhere, but a location doesn’t change”. At first, many students wanted to define Place as a building because they saw it as something you experience. Just as you walk into a building, a place can be inhabited, and that makes it different than location. In the end, we had the working definitions of Location as where something is and Place as what something is like.
With this working definition, we returned to the mental maps we made last week and compared them to a Google Maps perspective of Summers-Knoll. How were these similar and different? Did we forgot to include certain elements on our maps? Did we show items on our maps that were not seen in the satellite image? How did both reveal the location of our school? Using a traced version of the Google Maps satellite image, we set out on a walk to make a new map that focused on SK as a place. In other words, our intention in this new map was to represent what specific features of our landscape and built environment (on SK property) made this specific location meaningful and unique to us. As we walked the property, students chose to include a variety of elements on their map. Examples include the ditch that students love to run around after school, a tree by the basketball hoops that students love to climb, the wetland area behind the soccer field, and more. We will return to these maps next week as we continue to think about place-making. This photo (please, please, please excuse our very messy white board!) shows all of the solutions our math group found to the challenge Four Fours, where you make various equations using four 4s to find answers between 1-20. We began with only using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and when we were stuck, I introduced more options, such as 4 squared, square root of 4, and 4/4. These three options helped us to arrive at every number 1-20!
|
Archives
March 2020
Categories |