Who Am I as an Interpreter?
Hey everyone, welcome to my last blog post of this course! It has been a pleasure reading all the different ways people relate to nature and interpret it to others, and I can’t wait to see how everyone describes their beliefs, responsibilities, and unique approaches for this week’s blog.
I have multiple core beliefs that guide how I approach nature interpretation. One belief I have is that we are all a part of nature. We like to categorize ourselves and our inventions as separate from nature, but we are direct products of nature, and operate by all the same rules as any other species. We influence the environment around us and we as a species can have large impacts on nature, but we are also influenced by the environment and can be equally impacted in turn.
Another belief I have is that nature is not necessarily our “responsibility”, but we should still protect and improve it for our own benefits. There are many services provided to us by our ecosystems and we could not survive on earth without the abundance of nature around us. I think that we get our fundamental needs met by the environment, and that our mental or non-physical growth can be significantly improved by our integration with and appreciation for nature. I also think it is important for everyone to develop their own connections to nature and their own sense of appreciation for the world around them.
I view nature interpretation as a way to share knowledge or spread a certain message. We can provide narratives to a collection of facts, which lets us influence other people’s perspectives and understanding. I think that everyone has unique experiences and perspectives that they can contribute to how we interpret nature, and each person should work on fostering and spreading whatever messages they resonate with.
I think that nature interpreters have a few main responsibilities. The most obvious one to me is to provide accurate information. The point of nature interpretation is to interpret nature, so providing false or misleading information is not a great way to fulfill those responsibilities. In addition to providing accurate information, I think it is also the role of a responsible interpreter to integrate multiple viewpoints into their interpretation to avoid biases and include more diverse sources of knowledge. Providing this variety can provide a more complete picture of nature, while also providing representation for a more diverse audience (Hooykaas, 2024). Another important responsibility is to ensure accessibility. Providing interpretive activities to people with disabilities is both a legal and moral responsibility of nature interpreters and should be a significant consideration of planning and executing any activity (Beck et al., 2018). Finally, to ensure that people have positive experiences, nature interpreters are responsible for the health and safety of their activities. Planning for nature interpretation should always include assessing the risks of a given activity and avoiding or reducing any possible safety risks before beginning the interpretation (Hooykaas, 2024).
As an individual, I think I can cater to a variety of learning styles, since I utilize them myself to varying degrees. I have an auditory learning style, which includes learning by listening to things like lectures, discussions, podcasts (Hooykaas, 2024). I enjoy listening to educational content in my spare time or while I do work, and I listen to tons of different online lectures, educational podcasts, and discussions/debates about politics, philosophy, and science. I also sometimes have a visual learning style, which includes using visual aids such as diagrams or graphs (Hooykaas, 2024). Whenever I learn something new or try to work through a problem, especially with difficult concepts, I try to visualize what I can in my head to help my understanding or I will physically sketch it out to give myself a visual aid. For example, whenever I write a paper, I make sure to write out all my main points as bullets so that I can move everything around afterwards and organize my work in a way that makes sense to me while I can see all my points laid out on my screen. However, my most effective learning style is as a tactile learner, which is learning by experience (Hooykaas, 2024). My favorite and most effective way to learn anything new is to have a specific goal and then to immerse myself in an activity and figure out what I’m doing through physical experiences. For example, I will spend a lot of time learning new scales or theories for music by watching videos, listening to recorded lectures, or reading articles on the subject, but I never fully grasp the concepts until I pick up an instrument and start trying to put those theories into practice. I find that I can build a surface-level understanding and retain information, but until I work through something on my own, I can’t fully integrate the new knowledge into my understanding of the subject. Since I use a diverse set of learning styles, I can make the content I interpret reflect those styles and ensure the activities are digestible and engaging for wider varieties of people (Hooykaas, 2024).
Another approach to nature interpretation where I think I could excel is with cultural or religious approaches, especially pertaining to Judaism. I grew up as a modern-orthodox Jew, and my whole family is Jewish and quite religious, so I have a strong understanding of how Judaism can shape people’s worldviews and environmental ethics.
Here I am at my Shul in 2014 taking pictures for my Bar Mitzvah.
Since I grew up immersed in the Jewish community, I can relate to other Jewish people from both a cultural and religious standpoint and can interpret nature to others through this shared lens of Jewish perspectives. Places of worship can potentially be excellent at motivating communities to organize politically and take environmental actions, but environmentalism is not currently a significant objective for religious communities in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) (Caldwell et al., 2022). However, Jewish places of worship in the Greater Toronto Area are some of the most environmentally active places of worship and are most likely to directly frame their actions as environmentally oriented compared to other faith groups (Caldwell et al., 2022). This encourages the idea that connecting to Jewish groups can potentially be a promising avenue for interpreting nature and environmentalism.
Beck, L., Cable, T. T., & Knudson, D. M. (2018). Chapter 7: Serving diverse audiences. Interpreting cultural and natural heritage: For a better world (pp. 127-159). Sagamore Venture.
Caldwell, C., Probstein, N., & Yoreh, T. (2022). Shades of green: environmental action in places of worship. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 12(3), 430-452.
Hooykaas, A. (2024) Unit 02: Teaching learners, ENVS*3000. University of Guelph.
Hooykaas, A. (2024) Unit 03: Risk versus reward in interpretation, ENVS*3000. University of Guelph.