4 Developing understanding of environmental issues through texts
Shakespeare and the environment
There is a substantial section in the background paper [link to background paper] about teaching Macbeth using an ecocritical approach which you could use as the basis for planning a unit of work with student teachers, particularly those training for secondary teaching, to explore how Shakespeare relates the human and natural world. The paper contains suggestions for school-based activities.
Poetry and the natural world
Poetry has long been associated with the natural world and with a poet’s view of its value. You might begin by asking the student teachers in small groups to compile a list of poetry they are familiar with which shows a relationship between people and nature.
After compiling their list, student teachers can be asked:
What do these poems tell us about the natural world?
One group came up with the following list of remembered poems:
‘The Highwayman’ Alfred Noyes (opening section)
‘Thought Fox’ Ted Hughes
‘Daffodils’ William Wordsworth
‘The Listeners’ Walter de la Mare
‘Dover Beach’ Matthew Arnold
‘Beauty’ Grace Nichols
‘The Lady of Shallot’ Alfred, Lord Tennyson
They then debated the different ways that the poets see the environment:
- Night - associated with danger and romance in ‘The Highwayman’ and as a space for reflection for Hughes and Arnold.
- ‘Thought Fox’ – a metaphor for the poet’s creativity.
- Grace Nichols merges the human and nature.
- Tennyson and de la Mare use the environment as an evocative backdrop to the mood of the poem’s narrative.
An activity like this can be the starting point for a collection of poetry or extracts from fiction to be used in the classroom to consider relationships between people and nature. Equally, a collection of poetry or extracts about machinery (Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Secret of the Machines’ and Stephen Spender’s ‘Pylons’, for example) can be the basis for discussing issues of technology and its impact.
Once the student teachers have compiled their lists of relevant poetry, ask them to categorise them, justifying their decision about how the categories should be generated. Debate might focus on the underlying environmental themes, for example. It might be useful to refer back to discussions about definitions of sustainable development as a basis for categorising.
An interdisciplinary approach
In her article ‘But what about the fish? Teaching Ted Hughes’ Pike with environmental bite’ Sasha Matthewman (2007) draws attention to some of the ‘conflicts of human and non-human interests’ (p.69) which can often be raised by poetry. She argues that an ecocritical approach allows a wider approach to poetry analysis than a more narrow concentration on form and language allows. In taking an ecocritical approach, she argues that:
Ecocriticism might attract the creative English teacher in its embrace of interdisciplinarity, and its validation of the experience of the natural world. Perhaps there is also an attraction in its polemical bite. This is not to advocate a didactic environmental pedagogy but to open up questions for critical debate – something which English teachers have traditionally been rather good at.
(Matthewman, 2007:73)
Anna Claire Cunningham, working with a class of year 4 children at the Ashbeach school in Cambridgeshire, took an interdisciplinary, cross-curricular approach when she decided to use her geography teaching as a focus for poetry:
Our topic was rivers. The class had already written explanation texts about the flora and fauna of a river and we then embarked on a module for poetry writing related to the same topic. We read a book for children about the life of a Brown Trout published by the Salmon and Trout Association, illustrated with paintings of the river and sea. We looked at video clips of trout and alevins swimming, feeding and breeding.
The children had general experience of poems so I wanted them to have more experience of poems of specific types – rhyming and free verse, funny and serious. After reading a range of poems I asked the children to choose the style of poem they wished to write. Having chosen the type of poem, the children then made word lists, created writing frames, drafted lines, experimented with different choices and finally redrafted after editing.
Courtney (aged 8) shows how factual information can feed into creative expression:
Brown and silver is their colour
Running rivers where they lie
On the bottom trout swim around
Will eggs laid in a stony redd
New life is born into the river.
(Cunningham in Bearne and Wolstencroft, 2007: 131)
See Sue Dymoke’s (2007) Lesson on ‘Pike’ by Ted Hughes. Gone Fishing
Environmental creative writing
In his article ‘Environmental creative writing’ (2002) Terry Gifford, who until recently was Reader in Literature and the Environment at the University of Leeds, gives an example of ecocritical pedagogy as he describes work with young writers on a weekend residential programme. The poetry and prose written by the young people is striking, but equally powerful is the argument Gifford advances about using creative writing to ‘raise environmental awareness through a polemical engagement with a specific local environmental issue’ (p. 37). As part of the weekend’s work, the young writers are invited to debate the potential flooding of the valley:
On Saturday I set up the weekend’s project with a conversation which starts with the summer hosepipe ban in Wigan and its reasons, which takes us towards mention of concepts they’ve learned at school like the ozone layer and global warming. ‘Many of the lakes of the Lake District’, I point out, ‘are actually reservoirs supplying Manchester and Wigan with drinking water. Soon there will inevitably be a proposal to flood the upper Duddon Valley. If we look outside the window we can see how suitable it would be, with a dam across Wallabarrow Gorge where we walked last night’. We brainstorm the advantages for and against, for locals and visitors, that will come with the widening of the road and the consequent possible tourist developments. To children water sports are very appealing, and better access for everyone, in coaches, to this wonderful place seems like a good idea. (p.40)
He goes on to divide the group into four, asking two groups to develop arguments in favour of the flooding of the valley and two to find the arguments against. On Sunday morning they will present their ideas to the group, using any writing they have done over the weekend as well as readings from an anthology he has prepared for them or from reference books in the residential centre library. A series of planned activities and experiences give the young writers opportunities to think – and argue – through the issues in readiness for their presentations.
Gifford concludes:
Rather than encourage a vague notion of the equality of our species with the rest of the organic world, this project has observed differences between all living things, recognising their individual features and qualities. This is essential to learning to live with, rather than in, our environment. (p.45)
He stresses, too, that it is not necessary to provide young writers and thinkers with a beautiful mountain environment. Discussions and debates like these could equally take place in an urban environment. (See Section Six for School based activities about urban environments).
Poetry about people’s relationship with the environment - and animal life - abounds and can be a powerful starting point for critical engagement when read alongside other kinds of texts. Ask the student teachers to collect information texts, including leaflets and internet sites, which link with selected poems about nature or animals to plan a series of lessons to bring to open up discussions about the relative merits of different points of view about an environmental issue. You may want to assign ‘for’ and ‘against’ positions to different groups of student teachers as Gifford did, in order to develop ideas as fully as possible.
Using their own collected materials and discussions, student teachers will be in a good position to plan a sequence of sessions exploring an environmental theme based on a range of texts, including poetry. The plans should include speaking and listening opportunities as well as critical reading and creative writing.
Images as backdrops to poems
Student teachers might also consider the effects of associating visual images with poems. Show them the different backdrops to Masefield’s ‘Sea Fever’ and ask them to comment on how the images alter the possible reading of the poet’s urge to return to the sea.
 Figure 4.1: ‘Sea Fever’ – the sea
Figure 4.2: ‘Sea Fever’ – the city
In pairs or small groups, they might import images taken from the internet or their own photographic excursions as backdrops to chosen poems to explore how the use of images of nature, technology or human development can alter the reading of a poem.
This can be equally well used in the classroom as a way of developing understanding of environmental issues through texts as well as opening up issues of interpretation of texts.
References
Bearne. E. and Wolstencroft, H. (2007) Visual Approaches to Teaching Writing: Multimodal literacy 5-11. London SAGE/UKLA
Gifford, T. (2002) Environmental creative writing’ English in Education 36:3 pp 37-46
Matthewman, S. (2007) ‘But what about the fish? Teaching Ted Hughes’ Pike with environmental bite’ in English in Education 41:3 pp 67-77.
See also:
Terry Gifford, (2003) ‘Teaching Environmental Values through Creative Writing with School Children’ in Hal Crimmel (ed.) Teaching in the Field: Working with Students in the Outdoor Classroom. pp. 137-151. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press
 
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