Evaluating my Ecological Imaginings

When we first began this experiment of Ecological Imaginings, I came in with the mindset of an Environmental Science student. For me this entitled having my head filled with ideas of doom and gloom in regards towards environmental collapse and the uphill struggle environmentalists had to fight  socially and politically if they wanted to enact change. I came into the classroom then seeing the issue of the ecology in a scientific and polices-based point of view.  Over the course of the semester though, I feel as though my viewpoint and this mindset began to change so that instead of obsessing about and analyzing the environmental issues , I started to place more emphasis in my learning in the class on trying to understand the concepts that I, as an environmentalist should be protecting. Namely, these concepts are nature itself, but also my general surroundings.

                This change in mindset I feel was due in large part to my personal interactions with what my classmates were bringing to the class, as well as from the readings. During our online conversations, I feel as though I did not really have many contributions to give other than the required posts. The online conversations did bring me in contact with links to various ecological related topics as well as posts expressing my classmates’ opinions and interpretations of the class material which were not coming from the an E.S. student’s mindset.  Gradually ideas about ecological from a literary analysis and feminism point of view started to influence my ideas regarding class topics, eventually sharing an equal amount of my thought process with my environmentalism thoughts. During our in-class discussions, I feel as though I managed to contribute by means of serving the role of a student who was there to remind the rest of the class that e had to be trying to connect the class topics back to relevant environmental issues.  Over time though, my contributions to class discussions started to open up a bit more so that they incorporated more of the approaches my classmates were using. By doing so, I was hoping to make class discussion more a discussion based on a variety of issues, rather than me trying to gear the conversation towards a particular subject. In terms of the readings, I personally found a fair amount of the readings to be challenging, as like the conversations, I was approaching them with the expectation that they would be examining environmental issues, instead of focusing on nature and our understanding of it. But as I began to open up to the idea of approaching ecology from different perspectives, I soon began to appreciate more and more of the readings.  As my appreciation grew I had a better inclination of understanding the possibilities of interacting with nature through activities like the Throeauvian  walk or learning new ways to express my feelings towards the natural environment via the rheomode style.

                The most important thing I feel that I got out of the readings though was from our Thomas Berry reading and his theories on environmental education reform. I was struck by his ideas of reconstructing the education system to be more environmentally minded as I was currently learning new ways of receiving an environmental education myself. In conjunction with the high number of outside the classroom experiences in the course (the trips to Harriton house and Ashbridge, as well as the weekly observations), the idea of how we teach others about understanding nature and the environment became a theme I kept addressing in my writings midway through the course. As opposed to my earlier posts which seemed to lack a linking theme, my writing now has a linkage between each piece.  I would also say that as the class progressed I put a lot more effort into both my postings and the web events, as I worked to ensure that brought up interesting or valid points in regards for class discussions or so that they could tie into my education theme (particularly the web events). The quality of my writing also improved as I spent more time proofreading them, as well as meeting with Anne more often to get a sense on how to proceed with my work. The only real weakness I would find with my writing would be that I kept writing my posts largely as standalone pieces, and as a result they failed to really add to the online conversation or generate comments from others.

                If I was to be honest, I would say in some areas I could have grown a little more as an eco lit student, mostly in terms of interacting with the class and contributing work that tried to be for the entire class’s understanding of the material and not just my own. In terms of growth though, I feel as though the class has made a slightly better writer and that I can think about the natural environment in broader academic terms than just environmental science. As the class is ending, I feel as though I am leaving it still in large part an environmentalist but also one that takes into account the issue of the environment in terms of linguistics, eco feminism, as well as bearing in mind the actual process of environmental educational , as such a system is what contributed to Ecological Imaginings changing my perspective of environmental issues