Raven Reconnaissance: A Student Blog
The life of a student in APU’s Masters Degree Program in Outdoor & Environmental Education is a busy one. There are books and articles to be read, papers to write, projects to complete, curricula to be designed, students to be taught and, of course, stopping to eat or sleep every so often also helps one keep going. With all of those demands it seems, strangely enough, that one thing that might often get neglected is just getting out into the natural world to enjoy the many benefits that come from time outdoors. That might be time to recreate and get some physical exercise or just time to unwind and for rejuvenation. Time to look, listen and learn from the natural world. To do that very thing we focus so much of our attention on learning how to more effectively teach our students and program participants or even the general public how to do themselves.
Students in the MSOEE program this semester who are enrolled in the Power of Place in Education course that takes place in Palmer on APU’s Kellogg Campus are being “required” to slow down even just a little. As part of that class each student has been tasked with finding some ravens to spend time with each week. The goal: to observe, listen, think about and learn from that experience. A secondary goal: to reflect on that interaction and to integrate material covered in the course with the experience in 500 words to create a teaching narrative. Each week the class will decide which one they wish to share with the rest of the APU community and it will be shared for others to hopefully learn a little bit about ravens and a little bit about the students in the MSOEE program. The first of these natural history notes- Raven Reconnaissance follows here.
