Creating a Wilderness Education Center

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ED406w: Creating a Wilderness Education Center

        Many educators dream of finding an old camp, lodge, or farm to outfit as an environmental education facility. The Dakubetede Wilderness Campus is all three, located at beautiful Trillium Farm, a historic homestead and former trout hatchery. Here we learn how to plan and perform the physical tasks and academic organization necessary to create a center for environmental education as an aid for our transition to a postmodern world.

        This experiential education course provides participants with a unique opportunity to work on creating a wilderness environmental education center. Participants will focus on three major components: the physical center, the educational and experiential opportunities, and the theory of education's role in the transition to a postmodern world. Many of the educational opportunities involve natural history studies on the Ecostery campus and surrounding wilderness. The theory of education's role in the transition to a postmodern world will weave itself through the other four courses included in the residential intensive. To quote from the course text:

"Education in the modern world was designed to further the conquest of nature and the industrialization of the planet. It tended to produce unbalanced, under-dimensioned people tailored to fit the modern economy. Postmodern education must have a different agenda, one designed to heal, connect, liberate, empower, create, and celebrate. Postmodern education must be life-centered."

        All participants will collaborate to include notes on experiential portions of this course in a journal chronicling the residential Ecostery intensive. This journal will focus on physical improvements and maintenance of the Ecostery building and grounds, educational opportunities, ideas and inspirations.

        You will each read and deliver three brief reports, two of which can be based on the articles listed in chapter seven: A Syllabus for Ecological Literacy (other resources may also be acceptable). The third report will detail ideas and suggestions for the future of our Dakubetede Wilderness Education Center. As with the Community Studies reports, these will be presented in a time-sensitive setting similar to professional presentations.

 

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