Head's corner
April is anything but the cruelest month: flowers blossom, daylight extends far into evening, and the air is comfortable on our bare skin. In April we honor the Earth by celebrating Earth Day, and we dedicate this edition of the Saklan Monthly to our lovely planet.
In the year after we installed at Saklan two very large, and very wonderful, and quite expensive, playstructures in the playgrounds, I would often tour the yards to observe the children’s playtime. In doing so, I would discover, to my horror, that actually our students spent far more time on their knees in the sandboxes, those inexpensive sandboxes, than they did our shiny new structures. But it was a powerful learning lesson for me: kids love to play in the earth.
Once upon a time, in our ancestry, we all did all of our learning and growing out-of-doors. Without wanting to be too Rousseuian in romanticizing the “noble savage,” I think we can recognize and realize that hunters and gatherers, nomads and natives, have an enormous “intelligence” that they learn and develop in their experience of their natural world. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a factory model of society emerged, and we all moved indoors to work and to learn. Kids now were instructed at desks, not in the dirt.
Exacerbating this, as recounted in Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods, were trends since the fifties that kept kids indoors or away from nature even after school, trends like television and video games; over-scheduling; and parent anxiety about safety. These trends, Louv argues, at a very minimum strongly correlate with the dramatic growth in recent decades of childhood depression, obesity, and learning differences such as attention deficit disorder. Correlation does not confirm causation, but there is good reason to think that if we can re-immerse our children in the sand, the dirt, the creek, the park, the trees, the rocks, the lake, the mountains, they not only become more true to their ancestral selves, they also will become more balanced, more confident, more independent in their learning in all aspects.
Saklan’s educational program has grown and strengthened in this direction dramatically over the past nine years. Examples abound: one of them is happening this very week, the 6th grade week-long Yosemite Institute Trip, on which I am again accompanying our students. Is there a better place on the planet to spend time in nature than Yosemite? Our students will crawl into caves, hike waterfall mist trails, study the meanderings of the Merced River and its impact on the granite.
Another important initiative this past year in developing our commitment to “Kids in Nature” has been our hiring of a wonderful and experienced environmental educator as our science specialist, Ms. Vickie Obenchain. In this issue of the Monthly, our “Student Scoop” section contains an article by “Ms. O.” articulating briefly her own philosophy of a natural education, and sharing with you some of her initiatives.
She also shares a fascinating finding in a 2003 study of adult environmental leaders that among them there is a striking pattern: “they all had opportunities in the non-human dominated environment with a role model
who taught them respect for nature.” By featuring teachers who are role models like Ms. Obenchain, and providing her so many opportunities to bring our students into “non-human dominated environments,” Saklan is itself helping to create future adult environmental leaders.
A regret of mine is that I have not realized a long-held intent to do more to learn about and connect our school to its namesake, the Saklan Indians. There is not a lot known about them, but we do know that they were peaceful stewards of their natural environment here in Contra Costa County, and I think, with our fast-developing education in environmental stewardship here at Saklan, we are doing more to connect with, and to honor, the people for whom we are named.
