OK, here is my new and perhaps more interesting pondering that came out of my original ponderings on environmental education:
Minority students, specifically Latino and Black, make up only 10% of the kids who are attending outdoor kindergartens so far (Wait. In Washington? Where did I read that? Maybe it was in the latest REI catalog, or maybe not.) IF this is, in fact, a trend, then why? And if it becomes one, then how can we reverse it? Because, the latino student population is BY FAR, (about 80% in my experience teaching in Northern California), the biggest student population in the upcoming ranks of students. We need to direct our educational efforts at Latino students, here, AND internationally, students abroad. They will be the majority of future leaders who will work on environmental education, awareness, and action. SO, how do we design internationally available, digital, “2.0” 5G? outdoor curriculum to fit with their languages, social contexts, environments, and cultural values? Of course, I’m also thinking about how to get parents involved in this. (They own the cell phones in the family.) The other question is: How many of these apps designed to get kids in touch with/out into nature are already multilingual? I imagine iNaturalist is, since it is used internationally. Is iNaturalist doing this on crowd source based platforms like Wikipedia? Are other countries doing similar projects? Time to ask Google. (I bet this has already been thought about and worked on a hundred times but I enjoy thinking about it nevertheless.)
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AuthorJeremy Smith teaches third grade at Calistoga Elementary School. Archives
July 2020
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