Sylvie Anglin’s epiphany of how nature can integrate into both the curriculum and character of a classroom occurred the year she co-taught with Carol Brindley, a veteran teacher of first and second graders. Each student was given a flower bulb to plant in a pot indoors. “Every couple of days, the children would measure the growth, but they would also draw, they would look really, really closely at what was happening,” says Sylvie. “Ms. Brindley would push the children to draw exactly what was there, to take time to look carefully. It was a repeated connection in a relationship with nature—it wasn’t just a one-time thing. At the end, you could line up the drawings in a sequential order and watch how the bulb grew into a beautiful flower.” “The natural world provides children with unending questions.” – Sylvie Anglin is Principal of the Lower School at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Prior to that, she was a classroom teacher at the school for thirteen years.
Sylvie’s interest turned to action. Each year in various classrooms, she incorporated repeated trips to one particular natural area, and assigned students the task of making field guides of plants and animals observed. Sylvie found ways to integrate those lessons into other aspects of that grade’s curriculum—and vice versa. “When I think about what schools should be and how we inspire kids, it’s not having a whole bunch of subjects that are separate from each other. It’s looking for how things connect.”
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools has additional images and information about outdoor education and sustainability here. There’s a nice video of storytelling by the firepit.
If you’re interested in the program Sylvie mentioned where she borrowed specimens from a museum and brought them into her classroom, that’s the Harris Learning Collection at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Educators can check out taxidermied birds andmammals and other items, like from a library. Teachers use the loaned items at school for short periods of time, and then return them to the museum.
