U-M EIC Trip

Getting a student to think outside the box, to be able to experience something first hand, makes the student’s learning process much more memorable. Being able to tap into multiple intelligences in learning can allow the student to add further dimensions to their educational process.

The display and ideas that I think was most memorable from the experience at the EIC was the at-home connection of the Rouge River Watershed and how much it effects the local areas and what we do everyday. Looking at the multiple ways the staff at the EIC was able to relate this information to us we can see how we can infuse the 5 E’s to outdoor education.

Starting with just letting us explore the EIC, many of us happened upon the giant map of the Rouge Watershed on the wall. Sparking my interest, I looked further at it, reading the information and thinking about how this relates to what we may be learning today.

As we started, the interpreter from the EIC led us into a mini IMAX-style theater, where we watched two films. One, documenting the importance of the Rouge Watershed and how it effects us and we effect it, and second, another film showing the “re-birth” of the Rouge River from the deplorable conditions that it once was. These films, sparked my interest further, leaving me wondering what else we would come upon today at the EIC.

Many students today lose interest in the life sciences and outdoor education because they cannot see an at-home connection. With the displays and the films, this connection was starting to be made. To further link this connection into our mind, kinesthetic activities were made available, allowing students to not only, see, but touch and feel how the Rouge River utilizes erosion and deposition on the banks compared to strait channeling.

Finally, to help make further connections, the interpreter at the EIC took us on the “Trip of the Drip”, a guided walk through the outdoors, tracing the path of water from the grounds of the EIC to the Rouge River itself. Starting at the entry of the EIC, we saw and experienced ways to see how water can penetrate the ground using soil cores (once again a kinesthetic learning experience), and continued on into the forest to see where this water may end up.

Throughout the walk, our interpreter made frequent stops, linking wildlife to once-more, at home-connections. Examples of Velcro to describe the Cleaver plant would allow a student to take an idea that is foreign to them, and produce a link in commonality. Describing and holding clay from the soil cores, once again, gave students a way to physically see and do, what normal classrooms cannot produce.

My experiences at the EIC offered worthwhile ideas and lessons to give links to the outdoors and our environment. With these ideas, my students can hopefully realize that the water they use in their house, the rain that falls from the sky, or the oil that is poured in the drain, all have an impact on where they live because of the watershed. A common-link to our environment is sometimes all a student needs to begin to care. When information is just presented from a text, without tapping into another dimension of learning, something is lost. Something that needs to be found outdoors; not locked in a classroom, or on the couch, or driving through a busy city.

Connections must mean something to the student; for without meaning, it’s all just words.