by Larry Servin
Thesaurus words for wonder: admiration, amazement, awe, astonishment, surprise.
Thesaurus words for spontaneous: unplanned, unstructured, spur-of-the-moment.
The author’s wife helps a child and his father make pinecone bird feeders.
In a review of Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods published in The Wall Street Journal, Mark Yost says that Mr. Louv wrote that “kids are aware of the global threats to the environment—but their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, is fading.” Mr. Yost’s review further states that our ultimate goal is to help children find “their spontaneous connection to the natural world—and thus the very reason that anyone comes to care for nature in the first place.”
The underlying assumption seems to be that spontaneous contacts in the wild (i.e., woods) are the only way to connect children with nature. Through making spontaneous physical connections with the natural world, children will automatically understand why they should care about nature.
As I considered the implication of these statements, my mind recalled the following vignettes.
Scene One
“Leave my mommy alone!” the young girl screamed. The hungry deer didn’t understand this command. After all, visitors to Deer Park bought the alfalfa crackers to feed the deer and the deer understood this relationship. The problem here was one measly cracker just wasn’t enough for this one deer. Stalking the woman who had offered the tasty morsel, this animal sought more. The child panicked as the creature pursued its presumed benefactor—the girl’s mother.
Scene Two
“They won’t come to me!” the girl cried in dismay. Baby chicks veered left and right around her hand in their pen.
“They’re scared,” I advised in a low voice. “All they see is a giant object (your hand) chasing them and they’re following their natural instinct to flee a predator. Put your hand out in front of you palm down. Now lower your hand to the cage bottom and keep it still.” The girl did this and the chicks approached. One chick hopped on the back of her hand. “Now slowly raise your hand and bring it toward you,” I said in a low voice. The girl’s eyes and smile broadened as she brought the chick closer to her. She turned and stretched out her hand so her mother could see the chick.
So What Is Interpretation, Anyway?
Interpretation is formally defined by the National Association for Interpretation as “a mission-based communication process that forges emotional and intellectual connections between the interests of the audience and the meanings inherent in the resource.” This definition is useful for professional interpreters in formal programs. The vignettes, however, seem to better fit one of Heidi Bailey’s insights regarding interpretation: “Visitors and guests are interpreters, too…. Our role is thus to help our guests unlock their own interpretive potential.” (See “Is Interpretation the Right Word for What We Do,” The Interpreter, November/December 2008.) This insight seems to connect with Mr. Yost’s review statements as well. Children become informal interpreters as they tell others about what happened during their spontaneous connections with nature.
Making the Connections
Sticking children in the middle of nature, however, will not automatically cause them to correctly interpret spontaneous connections. If they do not have the contextual understanding that interpreters can provide, children could inaccurately interpret what happened when telling other people about their experience. I submit that children’s connections with nature need to be both spontaneous and guided.
The two young ladies in the previous scenes interpreted their spontaneous connections based on existing feelings and knowledge. The girl in the first scene interpreted the animal’s behavior as threatening and her anxiety level increased in proportion. Unfortunately, park personnel weren’t there to put the animal’s actions into context. My wife Donna (also an interpreter) and I weren’t in position to provide her with an explanation, reassurance, and encouragement (spontaneous but not guided). I sometimes wonder how this girl viewed and discussed animals and nature as she grew up. How did she interpret her experience to others?
The girl in the second scene also expressed frustration due to not understanding animal behavior. This time, however, I was able to explain the chick’s behavior. I was also able to give the girl reassurance and encouragement to try again (spontaneous but guided). She made a second attempt and found the wonder that can occur from developing her own connection to the natural world. How did she interpret her experience to others?
As nature center volunteers, Donna and I envision ourselves as learning facilitators. We help children connect with nature by guiding them in making the connections. While they made pinecone bird feeders with their parents, we told the children which birds prefer the suet and the different kinds of seeds being used (guided). Donna told them about the results we got from hanging a similar feeder on our balcony. We encouraged the children to watch their feeders and discover if they would get the same results (spontaneous). How did these children interpret their experience to others?
At our site, we have parents help their children make animal masks and paper bag animals. The parents sometimes look bemused or befuddled by what their children conceive—pink raccoons and animals that look remarkably like dinosaurs (spontaneous). Yet, as they work together constructing the animals, children discover how their parents regard nature (guided). This bonding experience could be a catalyst in bringing the whole family to participate in our nature camps and formal interpretive programs. At times, even grandparents get involved in the process as well. How do these children interpret their experience to others?
These children and the girl in the second scene will share what they learned and felt with friends and family. They will discover and express reasons why anyone comes to care for nature. Their informal interpretation has the potential to create a new audience for our formal interpretive programs. I believe, if we can guide that sense of spontaneous wonder, interpreters can help young people enjoy time with nature—in or out of the woods.
Lawrence K. Servin is an NAI Certified Interpretive Guide in Streamwood, Illinois.
His hands were gnarled and bent, twisted by time, hard work, and arthritis. But the old man proceeded with the slow precision of a surgeon out of habit, memory, and deep unspoken emotions. His name was Giuseppe Lanza, an aging master craftsman. He was a small man, slightly hunched over, walking with a cane and growing frailer with each passing day. Some would have considered him minimally educated, but he was packed with the wisdom of ages. He seemed to know so much about so many things. I was in awe of the old man I saw; he had for sure earned a degree in living. For hours at a time at ages 13 and 14, I simply sat there and watched him carve, sand, and string as he deftly recreated models of ships he had worked on as a young shipwright back in Naples, Italy. I would carefully examine each of the ships he had already built that now sat on shelves on the walls until I found some part or some design feature whose purpose or function I didn’t understand. In looking back, I must have pestered him with a thousand questions, but he always stopped what he was doing to explain it in his accented English. When I asked a question twice, he would simply try a different way to answer it until I understood what he was doing. He never scolded me for misunderstanding.
Leave No Parent Behind
When I was growing up, the comedian Red Skelton had a variety show on television. I don’t remember what night or what time it came on. I don’t even recall watching it all that often, but my memory of Red remained for several reasons. First of all, my dad liked him. Skelton’s antics made him laugh quite a bit—not with belly laughs, mind you, but with a kind of wheezing snicker usually reserved for small humor. Personally I didn’t quite get it; although I noted to myself many times that this TV guy must be really funny to elicit such a reaction from an otherwise stoic guy.
Dad often used the term “past master” when referring to him. In my mind, this meant that the fellow was past his prime and no longer a master of anything—which might explain why I didn’t think he was all that funny. His seagull routine stuck with me, though. (“Tell me Gertie, what’s a polygon?” asked Heathcliff in one example. “A polygon is a dead parrot,” answered Gertrude.)
It took many years, but I finally “got” Red Skelton long after his time was over. I eventually learned that “past master” meant the best of the best. I was able to appreciate him for the comedian he was and remove his humor from the time period that spawned them. I also have incorporated some of his humor techniques into my present-day interpretive efforts. I did this solely because my dad unknowingly pointed the way.
I will admit my example is obtuse (although a gull routine could be considered natural history related), but my point here is simple. Our childhood ideas are largely formed by the adults, parental and otherwise, in our lives. It has always been the role of adults to guide us into our likes and dislikes long before we are able to form these opinions ourselves. Some argue that we begin our lives as tabulae rasa—or empty slates (blank computer screens, in contemporary terms) and that everything is learned. This would include the basics of language, attitude, etc. Others claim that some behavioral things are innate or even instinctive, but either way our adults are responsible for writing large passages on our internal slate boards. Many of these phrases, if you want to call them that, are placed there long before we have the ability to read them.
So, we may not know everything we need to by the time we are in kindergarten, but a good portion of our nature and history attitudes are starting to gel by then—about the time we are able to “read” those parental writings. The child’s thought eventually becomes an adult’s thought and on ad infinitum. We as interpreters strive to write a few lines about natural and historical appreciation on these childhood slates in the hope that they will become responsible adult thoughts some day. In this effort, however, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that our educational efforts need to embrace both kids and “their adults.” We need to double team the next generation by keeping the present one in the loop.
“Leave No Child Inside” and “Nature-Deficit Disorder” are two catch phrases that dominate the current interpretive scene. These concepts are valid even if their mantra-like repetition is getting a bit long in the tooth—to use a phrase from Red Skelton’s era. The idea that it’s “all about the kids” is often taken to mean that their parents are somehow beyond redemption. Yes, the kids are crucial, but they are part of and not the world. This is basically an adult world and we need to keep that in mind. Many of the parents who accompany our visiting children are still wet behind the ears themselves. In other words, their slates aren’t exactly filled either. With this in mind, please allow me to throw out yet another entry into the catch phrase market and see if it sticks on the wall—let’s say, “Leave no parent behind.”
Well, what do you think? I am directing this idea to the bulk of interpreters who work primarily with visiting groups such as families, classrooms with chaperones, and the like. We are not classroom teachers and this means we have a broader audience and a broader challenge. I am referring to the guiding adults as “parents” for the sake of not having to repeat “parent, guardian, or mentor” over and over.
Another perhaps obvious but certainly crucial fact that bolsters my claim is that kids don’t drive. While I’m thankful this is the case, this impacts our mission to a great degree. If a parent has no appreciation of natural or cultural things, they won’t have the language or desire to inscribe appropriate messages on their children’s minds. This also means that they may not have the desire to drive their kids to your center unless their parental instincts override their personal ones. We therefore need to appeal to their personal “inner child,” which says “how about me?”
As a parent with grown children, I can testify that this little voice is always there. This is why I’ve always brought my kids to museums, nature centers, and re-enactments, as opposed to Monster Truck events and WWE Smackdowns. We raise our kids selfishly, but no one should apologize for that. Perhaps if Hulk Hogan had engaged me at some point in an interpretive program, I would have been turned on to big-time wrestling and dragged my family along to these events. In fact, I probably would have felt uncomfortable not doing what the Hulk asked me to do for fear of bodily harm!
I am not advocating the wearing of tights or jumping off rope barriers, but instead suggesting that it’s alright to go over the little heads in front of you on occasion to reach for the taller ones in the back in order to fully deliver your message. For those of you who watch or have watched Sesame Street all these years, you can see what I am talking about. The Muppet routines always throw in references and humor that is directed at adults. They do this to keep the adults engaged. The parents can watch the show without getting lost in the low-calorie fare and will probably turn on the show even before the young ’uns ask. Sesame Street is employing an effective marketing strategy that our profession can learn from.
Kids, of course, can also influence their adults in some pretty significant ways—especially when it comes to nature education. The parent/child educational relationship can work both ways. This can be a case where the child is literally “leaving no parent behind” by dragging that parent into the mix. How many times have you seen a hesitant parent reluctantly touch a snake or a frog after realizing that all the tiny hands in the room have already done so?
How can you put this new bumper sticker phrase to work? First of all, analyze your program age structure and see how significant your adult component is. There may be six or seven chaperones in a class or a nearly one-to-one ratio with a preschool or family group. Then, try out a few “over the head” comments during one of your “kid” programs and see what happens. For instance, when showing an opossum mount, it is a habit of mine to say something like, “They say the chicken crossed the road in order to prove to the possum that it could be done.” Then, after a pause, I continue, “This is one of those unsuccessful possums.” Nary a word of those two sentences is intended for the short ones in the front. Through an eye glance and a gesture, the comment will be directed to the big people as a way to say, “You are part of this program too.”
Hey, at the very least, you might find out that those disinterested folks sitting in the back will actually turn off their cell phones, or stop chatting to each other, and actually pay attention along with the rest of your audience. The price you pay is that they might start asking questions during the program and you’ll have to remind them to wait until the end! The immediate reward is that the parents will come up to you after and say, often in a giggling or twittering tone, “You know, I learned something today—I didn’t expect that.” Bingo!
Gerald Wykes is the curator/supervising interpreter at the Lake Erie Marshlands Museum and Nature Center in Brownstown, Michigan. He can be contacted at 734-242-8149 or wykes@juno.com.
This article is dedicated to the memory of Glenn Dent, one of those past master interpreters who helped form this adult interpreter when still wet behind the ears.
Posted in Commentaries, Connecting Children to Nature