Karyn Parsons discusses how she works the natural world into the curriculum.
MW: How do you try and work the natural world into the curriculum?
KP: My room is full of science books, you know, so a lot of nonfiction. I have birdfeeders outside of my window that my kids love. I have live turtles in my classroom. I’ve always had classroom pets, you know, anything to kind of get them involved with that. And I’m very picky. I won’t let them kill anything and, you know, we take everything outside and kind of train them. This week we had a blue-tailed skink and it came into the classroom [laughs]. And they’re like, “There’s a lizard outside right underneath the Smartboard!” And I was like, “Ok!” So we took that out and it was a little dehydrated. So I try to use whatever I can.
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Threats to nature around the world:
KP: I’ve done a lot of service work in third world countries. And what really concerns me about that is like, we were in the Dominican this last summer and they just throw trash out the door, and it’s just plastic and Styrofoam. And that’s an island [laughs], you know. And you’re thinking, “This is all going in the ocean,” you know. So and they don’t care. But it’s because all of these things have been brought into their country and I always think in the United States that we have the responsibility to clean our act up and not pass it on to the third world countries because when you go anywhere it’s, it’s a wreck. I mean it’s just a mess. And I think it’s just something we need to be more responsible with.
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