January 26, 2010 6:59 AM by Maggie O'Keefe
Position: Professor of Biology
Link: http://www.chrisuhl.net/
What do you teach?
Good question! I could list off some course titles but what does that say, really? I like to think that we are all teachers — the way we live our life is our day-to-day teaching. My favorite education writer, Parker Palmer, captured it when he wrote “We teach who we are.” So my best answer to your question, and I hope you will not find this flippant or arrogant, is that “I teach me,” for better or worse. Holding this in mind, I endeavor to be as real, forthright, and genuine with students as I am able.
How did you come to Penn State?
It was 1981 and I had just completed a post doc at the University of Georgia. A job opened up in PSU’s Biology Department. I had an affection for Pennsylvania having grown up outside of Philadelphia. I applied, was offered the job, and accepted with glee.
How did you come to care about the Earth and its environment?
Ever since I can remember I have felt most at home outside. As an eight-year-old I recall how I used to grab my pup tent and some food and head off to a lovely forested stream where I would camp out. The truth is: It has always felt just plain right and good to be outside. Indeed, I think that anyone who spends a good chunk of their childhood outside will come to care for Earth. After all, anatomically speaking, we are really designed to be in relationship with Earth — i.e., designed to hear, smell, taste, see, and touch the living world that envelops us.
In what way do you teach your passion for environmental sustainability?
Maybe the best way I teach it is by adopting sustainable practices in my daily life. For me this means taking steps to reduce my ecological footprint by reducing my energy use at home, growing a chunk of my own food in both front and backyard vegetable gardens, raising chickens, collecting rain in water barrels, composting, biking to work and so forth. I do these things for the pure joy of it — because I love to do them — not out of guilt or obligation.
Name one profound lesson you learned while studying the Amazonian rainforest.
In answering this question, my first impulse was to review all the field studies and publications I worked on during the 20-year span I worked in Amazonia, but, instead, I recalled a time when I watched the film, “Pretty Woman” in an Amazon movie house.
I decided to watch the movie, not as a lonesome American, but instead imagining I was a native of Amazonia. Hence, what I saw depicted the glorification of a whole way of life based on materialism, speed, and shallow relationships.
Suddenly, the United States wasn't a country but a "brand" that was being marketed to the world. This realization led me to shift my attention from promoting sustainability in the distant and exotic Amazon ecosystems to the seemingly ordinary ecosystem right in front of my nose — namely: Penn State University.
Although I didn’t foresee it at the time, my work would attract other PSU faculty members as well as students and lead to a sea change in PSU’s awareness of and commitment to sustainability.
Why did you write the book, Developing Ecological Consciousness: Path to a Sustainable World?
Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, this book was gestating in me for more than two decades. The gestation process began in 1982, when I began teaching at Penn State.
My first teaching assignment was an environmental science course specifically targeted for non-science majors. At the outset, my dismay with the deteriorating condition of Earth infused every aspect of my teaching —lectures, assignments, readings, assessments. With time my own darkness began to lead me toward depression. It is always separation that lies at the root of depression. In my case, I was at odds with myself as manifest in my addiction to work; I was divorced from nature as evidenced in my constant rushing.
Years passed and I eventually stopped to reflect on what had brought me to ecology and environmental science in the first place. It was then that I recalled my awe, curiosity, longing, affection and exhilaration when wandering the wild. So began a concerted effort to bring different questions to my teaching, to invite myself and my students into a different way of being. I have come to call this different way of thinking-seeing-feeling-knowing relational consciousness.
Sadly, most school settings do little to help young people understand and experience their relationship to the Earth and Cosmos. What is really needed is an approach to education that encourages young people to develop a relationship — a deep bond — with Earth marked by a sense of profound belonging. These realizations provided the impetus for writing Developing Ecological Consciousness.
What one message do you hope your book conveys most to its readers?
More than anything, I hope this book engenders a measure of care in those who read it.
For many years of my professional life as an ecologist and environmental science teacher, I simply couldn’t figure out why the human response to the environmental crisis was so tepid. I now see that information alone is not enough. The missing ingredient is care.
When we care, our whole being is engaged, not just our minds. When we allow ourselves to feel Earth’s pain, we feel pain. This pain has the power to motivate us to respond as compassionate healers.
What has been your biggest accomplishment as a professor of biology?
I don’t think I will know the answer to this question with any clarity until after I am well into retirement.
There is a story told by Rachel Naomi Remen about a special dinner she attended when she was still a medical student to honor a famous man (a Nobel Laureate) on the medical faculty. The man, at age 80, was approaching the end of his life.
After his speech describing all the astounding medical advances that marked his 50-year career he remained at the podium for a long moment, casting his eyes around the room. Then he addressed Remen and the other doctors-to-be in the audience, saying: “I have been a physician for 50 years and I don’t know anything more about life now than I did at the beginning. I am no wiser. It slipped through my fingers.”
As I near my own retirement I see the relevance of this man’s story to my own life, knowing that my accomplishments, such as they are, have little to do with my scores of publications, grants, and awards.
How do your students teach you?
Rather than speak in abstractions, allow me another story: I teach a Freshman Seminar each year. On the first day of class I explain that the purpose of our seminar is to come together to reflect on and discuss a collection of provocative essays. I make it clear that the quality of our intellectual exchanges will be crippled should any one of us arrive unprepared.
Fast forward. It is the third week of the semester and after everybody is settled I say, “Raise your hand if you have carefully done the reading for today.” Only six of the 20 students raise their hand. I am “seeing red.”
Then, I remember to breathe. I look up and take some time to really see these young people who have gathered with me. My irritation drains away as I behold each person. Etched in their faces I perceive apprehension, exhaustion, fear, sadness, as well as expectancy, enthusiasm, curiosity and openness.
For the first time in the semester, I begin to see who has been in the room. Especially, I become aware of each person’s fundamental need to be seen, appreciated, understood, cherished. I realize, to my surprise, that I don’t need these students to get anything from my seminar. What I need is for
me to grow in my capacity to see each of them — really see them — in all their grandness and goodness amidst the shroud of suffering, ignorance and possibility that is the human condition. On this day, this is their teaching to me!
What is one quote that is most significant to you? Why?
There are so many but here is one that is above my desk and offers me gracious guidance. It is from Thich Nhat Hanh:
Breathing in I calm my body
Breathing out I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment (in breath)
I know this is a wonderful moment (out breath)
I love the simplicity of this. In moments of upset, I recall it and I remember to return to the present moment where everything is just as it is, and never “wrong.”
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário