The big picture

Monday morning came fast and the day filled with lots of big-picture conversations. And I mean the big stuff, the all important question of what are we trying to accomplish as environmental educators and why is it important? This searching, thinking, questioning, mapping, articulating, arguing, questioning, searching and thinking, thinking, thinking and thinking some more is all in an honorable effort to define our pedagogy. What do we value as an educator and, more importantly, how does our teaching reflect those values?

At some point in the middle of the day, weary after a full weekend and needing an afternoon nap in the sun that we so craved last week, I found myself thinking what I really know for sure is that I need to spend some time reading up on Oprah-isms.... all of this questioning is something she has made a fortune advocating, and for good reason. Stopping to consider one's values, and then considering how one honors those values in practice--is an obvious step in the right direction. How often we get trapped in the business and busyness of daily goings-on that we tend not to pause and consider whether the road we are traveling is right for us for the larger reasons beyond basic needs. It's that higher level of self satisfaction. What is important to us, and why, and is what we are doing honoring what we value? We are unearthing those guiding principles that often lay hidden under the surface and inform choices we make, sometimes without realizing them. Lots more thinking to do on this one. I have a lot of ideas, but boiling them down to one big idea is a good and welcome, but very tricky, challenge.

Late afternoon we shifted gears and began brainstorming our group projects. Rachel and I are going to pick up where an earlier group left off and explore the story of John Tibbetts and his family, many of whom are buried in the hidden family plot on the Barrington Headwaters land. I am really excited about this because my most memorable, lightening striking moment last week was spying the small headstone in the cellar hole of the assumed Tibbetts family homestead. I instantly wanted to know more about baby Alice, and her family. Rachel and I believe that their story will be representative of the larger New England story of mid 19th century families who once worked the land but then got caught up in the Civil war and westward expansion, and the industrial age. The Tibbetts family seem to be forgotten in this neck of the woods, but for the next two weeks, we will be thinking about them a lot, and hopefully will be able to honor them by telling their story.