Another new week.

We started our day in the Barrington headwaters. A great day for me. My engine runs better when it has an outdoor warm up period. Our vernal pools had water, something we didn't expect after a sunny weekend. All in all it was a good day. Our group works well together. While we have quite a bit on our plate, I am pleased with our orginization and our progress.

I have really been appreciating our time outside. Moving and working outside of a classroom is definitely the best avenue to stimulate my mind. Last night I spent several hours trying to compose my Personal Environmental Education Philosophy and my brain stalled. I could not articulate my thoughts, and had a really hard time pulling more from my brain besides what I have already put on the outline. I was frustrated to no end. Ultimately it became about the deadline and I am very displeased with what I wrote.

Tonight I will try again.

LaVern and Shirley Day 2

Soooooo Cool!
We refined our plan and headed out...
Whirlygigs, water striders, giant water bug, green frogs (very significant), wood frogs, back swimmers, lots more moose tracks. Today was really full.

I really enjoyed being outside and doingn, despite the awful mosquitoes which stink but are have substatially less impact on me than the positive experience of being out there. I am really enjoying and hope my motivation and enthusiam holds up. We (as evidenced above) began cataloging species today and we found a bunch. That being said after about an hour we really didn't see much more today than yesterday. I hope my powers of observation grow because I know the pool is teaming with life.

We also named the pools. I really enjoy attaching personal sentiment to natural things, however I think it is not always a good thing. Particually with animals. I worked at a nature center once and while all the rescue animals there had names, we didn't share them with the public. We didn't want to encourage the personification for wild animals because we felt it was important to respect there wildness. I think there is some overlap here. If I become chums with something I loose a bit of reverence for it. Just some thoughts I had that were interesting.

More tomorrow,
Bug Lover

A Lot to Process

Today was very exciting. Group Vernal made our first trek in the wild and we discovered a few things. First our pool was still a pool (just barely), second it was a vernal pool. YEAH! It also seems huge to me and I am a bit overwhelmed, but excited just the same. We saw a ton of stuff, but I am still processing a lot of it. I will share a few below.

Lot of moose tracks
Lots of moose scat
Some really cool pitch pines
Some pines and hemlocks possibly experience crisis cone production (lots and lots of cones)
Deer tracks and scat
frogs in several stages of development
Many insects including a toe-bitter- cool and yuck at the same time
Rick saw a water snake
More blueberries (high bush and low bush) than you could shake a stick at.
too many things to count

I was really excited and very overwhelmed. I am looking forward to actually collecting and compiling data as well as feeling like I actually know some stuff about these habitats. Really cool stuff.

More soon,
Bug Lover

A New Week

Today was long but very productive. With three reading facilitations, group project proposals, and pedagogy brainstorming under my belt I am tired and reeling.

I am working on my I believe statements and I am running into the same thing over and over again. I began with all things are connected. I moved onto all things/people have something to offer. I then went on to all life has value. The next step is figuring out what that value is. How do I define value. I need to mull this one over and I am sure it will take some time.

I am excited about our group projects. I am in the vernal group and we are going to essentially bio blitz the vernal pond at the Barrington Headwaters. The goal is to examine the productivity of the pond now in contrast to what we can show has been researched regarding vernal pools in early spring.

Research begins tomorrow and I can't wait to get out there.

Tomorrow I will facilitate Wessels chapter 3.

I will write more tomorrow,

Bug Lover

Progress

Well we finished the first week and boy was it full. From Wessels to wetland management I feel like we have come a long way in a short time. We finished our week with some interactions with some outside resources. We met with Dan who took us tracking at the Barrington Headwaters, and David who introduced us to some soil at the Beaver Pond. We also met Steve who gave us a great lesson with a mapping overlay program that I am very eager to use.

In addition to this we as a group have had some really cool conversations and are really beginning to gel. I enjoy watching and being a part of group dynamics as they develop. Our class is really beginning to share ideas and genuine personalities and it is very much a group I am enjoying being a part of.

We have started spinning out ideas for projects and generally speaking, I am so excited to get started that I am not particularly concerned about what my project is. I am mostly just excited to get started.

More soon,
Bug Lover

Twitterpated

Welcome to my first entry in my first ever blog. I began the Intensive Summer Institute for UNH's masters program in Environmental Education just two days ago, and I will be making daily entries to journal my progress and experiences. Twitterpated is a word we use in my family to describe when something or someone is very very excited. That is how I am feeling. I feel like I have been bombarded with exciting new information. In addition to that I have met exciting new people and been exposed to a whole world of possibilities. The first day here we were already outside, a crucial element in any program for me. I was initially intimidated by the vegetation plot studies that we did, but it really wasn't bad. Actually I kind of liked it.

Yesterday we spent the majority of the day in the woods doing a scavenger hunt of sorts. We explored the Barrington Head Waters and examined (carefully) five different sites. Together we postulated and pondered the histories and stories that might have made the landscape what it is. To follow that we read the first chapter in Tom Wessels "Reading the Forested Landscape." as an assignment for homework.

Today we spent more time at Tamposi and visited a local farmer and listened while he told us the history of the place. Place is something we have spent a lot of time discussing. I think intrinsically I understand and know the importance and value of knowing a sense of place, but I am still working on labeling the value of it. While I hate labels I understand their importance and in thinking about engaging kids it would help me to define a hook.

I was comforted with some words in Wessels' introduction. He wrote about how learning about the forces that helped to shaped a place was empowering. This brought my mind to seeing the natural places we visit as not just scenes. Instead it allowed me to think of them as stories. The trees and other things there are characters but the forces are verbs and adjectives. Stories are a lot easier to relate to. There is a good hook there.

In addition to these musings, we had two facilitated activities to help us debrief our readings. Our classmates did a fantastic job.


More tomorrow, Bug Lover-