Schools on Reserves – guest blog by Learning Officer Chris Ford
What a year 2016 was, for all sorts of reasons, some good, some not so, but for us here at Minsmere one of our highlights was the number of children that came to the reserve with their schools. It was a record year for the number of school and college students visiting us. That means more children experiencing inspiring days out of the classroom engaging in the natural world and forming memories that could last a lifetime.
I’m not sure about you but the most profound memories that I have from my school days are not the lessons, they are the things that happened outside of the normal classroom routine. In one of the early years at primary school I remember vividly our class teacher letting us watch a spotted flycatcher doing it’s thing right outside the classroom window, this was probably a 2 minute interlude in an otherwise busy day 30 years ago but I can still remember the flash of the bird streaking through a patch of sunlight then returning to its perch with a juicy fly in its beak, I can also remember that my friends and I decided to collect as many spiders and bugs as possible that lunchtime to try and throw for the flycatcher (it didn’t work!). At the end of primary school we had a trip out to a local field centre and we got to do some pond dipping and found out about the weird and wonderful invertebrates that live under the surface; I can remember it like it was yesterday. At secondary school we had a geography trip that involved measuring the change in shape of a beach, I can tell you all about the techniques we used, the issues this highlighted and the fun we had, I can tell you all of this in vivid detail, I can’t tell you much about any of the stuff we learnt class. I can also tell you that my class mates also remember this; we talked about it over the Christmas break, they also reminded me that I was wearing horrible sandals and I got hideously sunburnt on the tops of my feet and spent the rest of the week having to wear socks and sandals, not cool... memorable but not cool.
The natural world is the most amazing place to learn; not just about flycatchers, bugs in ponds and the importance of sun cream but to learn about how to be inquisitive, how to be observant and to learn how to learn.
My point in all of this is that if we want to create a future richer in nature we need tomorrow’s grown-ups to want this too. It is why I love my job; it is why I do my job. We need them to have a desire to want to improve the world around them and the knowledge to make this possible. Where does this come from? From profound memories of great experiences that tell us about the amazing place that is the world all around them. Last year we had more children and students making those profound memories right here at Minsmere. We had early-years children spotting flycatchers in the woods, we also saw and heard all sorts of other stuff and learnt about the sounds birds make, why they live where they do, how they interact with their environment. We had so many Key Stage 2 children at the pond marvelling at the amazingness of a jet-propelled dragonfly nymph, the hecticness of a whirligig beetle, and the perfect camouflage of a caddis larva, the variety of life echoing the complexity of our habitats and how we can try and understand how this all fits together. We also had students finding out about our dramatic and dynamic coastline; the change across our sand-dunes or the movement of sediment along the coast and the action of the sea, thankfully without horrible sandals and sunburn!
So... let’s get our school children out making those memories. School grounds, local park, the beach, the woods, or right here at Minsmere.
Wherever you go they will remember...ask them in 30 years time!
The RSPB has a wealth of ways to help you make those memories from Big Schools Birdwatch resourses to our Schools on Reserves programmes, to find out more please get in touch.
Chris
Learning Officer
Christopher.ford@rspb.org.uk
www.rspb.org/kids-and-schools