Teacher Blogs

Welcome to the Teacher Blogs!

This is a space for Windsor Central Supervisory Union teachers to share stories about their place-based learning adventures. The National Park is partnering with local teachers in a program called Park Research that allows teachers and students to go deeper in strengthening their connection with their public lands and community through curriculum based learning. Check back here for photos, stories, curriculum, and more!

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K. Robbins

Student writing in tree

Frost, Dickinson, and WUHS students in Dialogue on the Trail

What would Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and a 10th grade student from Woodstock Union High School talk about if they came together in conversation? Come to this year's Trek to Taste event on June 2 and find out!

Martha Perkins' American Lit students have been studying the poetry of Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson with a goal of learning to trust in his or her own mind to play with the imagery, diction, syntax and punctuation a poet presents in order to make meaning or sense of the truth a poet conveys via his/her poem. In addition to learning about the poets individually, students have been thinking about how these poets might converse with each other.

As a means of putting these poets in dialogue, students visited the park to explore how place can influence conversations and reveal understandings about an individual's interior, spiritual, or private aspects of being. They roamed the trails to pick out places that inspired them or somehow connected to the poetry they'd been studying. In these spots, students wrote, reflected, and photographed.

The next stage in the process will involve students creating their own 're-vision', or 20th century version of the Frost and Dickinson poems they have chosen to work with and juxtaposing the three in a chosen location at the National Park. Finally, students will create a tour of the poems that they will be on hand to guide visitors through during Trek to Taste.

Ultimately, through this project, we hope the students begin to understand how on one level, stewardship and sustainability are about an individual's ability to be in some kind of "dialogue" with the Natural World.

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K Robbins

Students dig into the topic of sustainability

Sustainability is about making choices

Solar kiln, compost pile, Garn wood boiler, Norway Spruce plantation. These are just a few of the spots that seventh graders from Woodstock Union High School toured at the National Park earlier this month. They are embarking on a unit of study that focuses on defining 'sustainability' and identifying how that theme or goal plays out in the state of Vermont. At the park, students engaged in conversations about choice, resources, decision making, and limits. They eagerly explored different systems that the park has installed with an eye toward becoming more self-reliant and reducing fossil fuel use. At each stop, students took photographs that helped them define what made the system sustainable, or not. Finally, some reflected on decisions that they make in their own lives and what factors influence these choices. It's just the tip of the iceberg, but students will continue to ask questions about what 'sustainability' really means, for themselves, society, and corporations.

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