Field Work Report

As I've been outside with my students, I've been thinking about my own experience with writing.  We didn't go outside to observe nature, and my college campus would have been perfect for that.  My English 101 class was more like a literature class; we did a deep exploration of three short stories.  I never wrote the kind of papers I'm trying to avoid having my Spartanburg Methodist College students write:  the umpteenth billion "why pot should be legalized" kind of paper.

Until seminary, I didn't have classes that used creative writing approaches to help me learn to write or to see another perspective.  I'm thinking of the class I took 2 years ago, where we spent an hour in the courtyard with a sketchbook, a pencil, and our eyes (for more, see this blog post).  During my walk yesterday, I thought about a similar experiment with my students, but I decided to wait for a bit to plan.

I had picked up a variety of beautiful leaves, which I still wanted to use:

I picked them up because I didn't want students wandering campus yanking leaves off of the trees.  I thought we would sketch when I was picking them up.

I had them describe the leaves in words, and today, I'll try it again with the two afternoon classes.  In a few weeks, I'll pick up leaves again and have them sketch.  Still to be determined:  sketch with colored pencils or plain?

Some small part of me wonders if it's fair of me to force my students to have this closer experience with nature--just because I think it's important, why should I foist that on my students?  But the larger part of me knows that it's an important experience, and they're not likely to get it in their other classes.  I am astonished as I walk on campus; I am often the only one walking who is not staring at a phone.  I get to class, and everyone is looking at their phones.

Yesterday my students were outside doing a close observation of a tree, and while some of them were doing their best not to look at a tree, many of them were nose to bark with the trunk or staring up into the canopy of leaves.  Some of them are writing blissful accounts of how happy they are to have a favorite tree, and I do realize that some of them may be writing that way figuring it's what I want them to say.  Most, however, seem sincere.

I gave them a worksheet to fill out as they observed the tree, and some of them used factual language, while others had a more poetic approach.  Maybe they would have had a poetic approach even without the work we did in class.  But it's been fun to watch them experiment with language, even if they didn't realize they were experimenting with language.

I know that I am lucky to have this kind of latitude in planning my courses.  I know that I am lucky to be at a campus that is beautiful and safe.  I know that I am lucky to have escaped (mostly) the enchantments of the smart phone.  I know that I am lucky.