Blog Prompt: Describe your personal ethic as you develop as a nature interpreter. What beliefs do you bring? What responsibilities do you have? What approaches are most suitable for you as an individual?
Well, this has been the hardest blogpost to write. I have tried writing it multiple times and it never feels right because I cannot find a way to capture all the reasons why this topic matters to me. So the below is a selection of ideas which, I hope, at least flow well together.
Through nature interpretation, I hope to expose others to new perspectives both of the world around them and how they themselves fit into the world around them. My personal ethos is that we absorb learning and are able to develop new perspectives when we are active in the learning process.
We often think about nature interpretation starting with the natural world, whether that is by going directly into a natural habitat and observing what we see; or by presenting information about the natural world within a classroom type context. I want to start the journey in the world in which my participants live. I want to start with common direct experiences; consider the immediate results of these; and then how species and habitats are impacted by these consequences.
For example, many people purchase a coffee each morning in a disposable cup; we can consider the garden soil, explore one of the key ingredients, peat, in terms of where it comes from; and then learn about species impacted by it being removed. I am interested in this approach because I think that by tying what is happing in other habitats to our daily actions we are more likely to develop a sense of personal connection to those habitats and the species in them.
To deliver this format of nature interpretation, I need a couple of foci in my delivery. One is to actively engage participants through questioning. What do you see? What do you think is happening here? What do you like about this? What do you dislike? How do you think this impacts your daily life? How do you feel about this situation?
Responding to a question demands that we consider what we have been told; what we have observed; our existing knowledge and beliefs; or all of these things together.
Second, and foundational to the first, is through promoting and enabling a ‘safe’ environment for learning. To do this, I need to put the responsibility on myself. I do and will continue to need to educate myself on communication skills and learning methods; as well as be open to feedback; and awareness of my non-verbal messaging through tone and body language. I do not believe that I can create a safe space for others to be vulnerable – ask questions and share ideas – unless I can do the same in a way that is still professional.
I would like to deliver nature interpretation personally to an individual or small group as well as through a focused website with related social media.
This plan will demand practicing many learnings from this course. The one that scares me the most, “Don’t be Boring” a lesson for social media interpretation from our textbook on p.169. I think this is where I will feel the most overwhelmed because I don’t use social media in my personal life.
The part which I am really looking forward to is writing material for verbal delivery whether I decide to do it as a podcast (😉), youtube video or presentation. I have particularly liked working on our podcase project because it has been great practise for what I am working toward. We discuss a living species, bumblebees, which is presented in even highly urbanised settings. We include discussion of our observations of bumblebees in our daily lives; we introduce science to increase understanding of bumblebees and how we know about them; and we share what people can do to support bumblebee populations which conversely can also communicate some of our detrimental impacts on them.
I love how this brings science and environmental studies together. I will return to the article by Wels.
I also love the feeling of empowerment that we can receive through learning. I do not want to focus on disposable coffee cups or astroterfing gardens to guilt anyone. Our climate crisis is real and scary. Our convenience culture is ingrained in us to the point of being an assumption of what we want rather than a considered choice.
I hope that by delivering nature interpretation in an engaging way helps participants to develop observational skills, critical thinking skills, knowledge and a sense of connection to the world around them. I believe that a lack of empowerment on this topic is detrimental to our mental health, confidence, self-worth, and thus can leave us paralysed. I want to be a part of a cultural change where we move to defining ourselves by our thoughts, values and experiences rather than by what we own or our aesthetics.
To this end, I really appreciate the quote by Mike Watson in the textbook, “interpretation is management” (Beck, 2018, p. 459). From my work experience, I agree with the greater concept – through successes and many failures – that planning, objective setting and openness to new and creative ideas is essentially to meeting delivery goals (Beck, 2018, p. 459). If I am to deliver what I hope both in regards to content, experience and take-aways, then I need to do all this work so that my participants can benefit from it rather than try to figure out what I am trying to do.
I have not done well on the blogpost element of this course. I would like to confirm that this is not due to a lack of interest in the course, it has been an unfortunate result of personal priorities. I am not writing this for extra credit, I am writing it to give recognition where it is due and highlight the most important thing I need to bring to this endeavour. The feedback and willingness to share and support that our instructors have shown is evidence that they genuinely want us to learn from this course. They want us to leave with more skills and understanding than we came to them with. In addition to the obvious learning from our projects and readings, I have learned through their modelling. I want to continue learning and developing past this course and I hope that participants I may have, leave my programming with the same interest. My intent is genuine and any success I have with others, relies on that.
Thank you instructors and fellow developing nature interpreters 😊