This is your first web journal for Fall 2008! Please take the time to respond fully to the following questions.
I have included the grading guidelines below:
Grading and Expectations: The standard 4, 3, 2, 1 grading scale outlined in the syllabus will apply to these required journal entries. I expect you to put at least 15-30 minutes of time thinking about the question, writing and editing your response, and posting your comment. Comments that contain 2 paragraphs of well articulated thoughts with no spelling or grammar errors will receive a grade of a 4. If your journal entry is only 1 or 2 sentences you have not spent the time, energy, and level of thought I am looking for and will receive a grade of a 2 or 1. Because this is a public forum, proofreading, spelling, and grammar are key!
Questions:
1. Welcome to the Community Adventure Program, Now that you have an overview of the class and have a basic understanding of what we will be doing this quarter, what are you looking forward to?
2. What is "the environment" to you?
SelieRhapsody
1.)
I am looking forward to many things — meeting new people (and hopefully making friends), learning about the environment and becoming a part of it. Survival skills are not something I know a lot about, and I hope to become more knowledgeable in that area of the environment.
Preserving the environment is very important to me; reading the blurb about CAP (Community Adventure Program)in the course selections inspired me to join for that very reason. Not only does CAP teach its students about surviving — and perhaps thriving — n the natural world, but it educates them about environmental issues. Then the teacher takes a step back and lets the students explore their options on how to make the world better… This truly makes me excited for CAP.
2.)
I need the environment like a grass needs sun, water, and soil. The earth, to me, is alive and courses through me with the vivacity of life. Life, I might add, that runs through every single being, plant or inanimate object (in my beliefs) on Earth — and indeed Earth itself. It is a web, and I am a part of that “web of life”.
I need the environment. I love the environment as much as life. Truly, Earth is life, so that statement is redundant. Even the aire that I breathe is a pattern, a rhythm flowing through the world. I exhales, a plant breathes in my useless breathe, and exhales, giving me new aire to breathe in. When I was small — a child — I staggered my breathes into bursts, because I thought that I used less oxygen that way and therefore saved trees some of their work. I cared for the Earth — in my own childish, deluded way — even when small. Perhaps what I mean by that is that the environment is something to be protected. And in realizing that at so young of age proves that this is what the environment has meant and will always mean to me (in part). This is, in all of my long-winded speech, what the environment/Earth means to me.
Ryan
In response to question 1:
I for one look forward to our action project, and to the two overnight trips. I really wanted to see a bear in this class, although I suppose that this won’t be happening. Although my mother signed me up for this class I still think it will be a fun learning experience.
In response to question 2:
What is the environment to me? What is the environment to me? Hmm, well the environment is whatever area we’re in as defined by what type of animals, people, buildings, plants there are. You have a different environment that you’re in at school, then the one you’re in at home. Anything can be the environment, be it cities a jungle or if there were colonies on the moon, the moon. Nature however (at least in my mind.) is the outdoors, surrounded by plants if there is an ample amount of wild (or animals often thought of as wild.) animals.
-Ryan.
Rosa
Answer to question 1:
I’m really looking forward to the camping trips. I’m really excited for them because I think until they start, everything we are going to be doing is leading up to them so it’ll be fun to use everything we learned and have a great time! I’m also looking forward to the action project. I’m excited to see what we pick and where the entire thing takes us. I think the main thing I’m excited about though, is the fact that I’m not going to know what we are going to do. Everyday will be a surprise.That is what makes this class different from others.
Answer to question 2:
This question is so hard for me, I hear this word almost every day and yet when I am asked to define it I have no idea where to start. The environment to me is everything that makes up my surroundings, the water, the air, the plants and the animals and so much more. I feel like most of the time when I hear this word it is used in a negative way. I rarely hear it in a positive conversation, a conversation about the good things on our planet. When people seem to talk about the environment today they refer to the overall condition of our planet, which, to be frank, is not so good. You rarely read articles today about the good things in our environment. Everything in our environment seems to be going downhill. Sad. Isn’t it?
Elena Wilkins
#1
I am really excited for the backpacking trip. I love to backpack with large groups. I think I will be able to learn more about the other students in the class. I’m also looking forward to having a great time.
#2
I think I couldn’t live without the enviorment. I think that it is clear that we need it to survive. We use it in our daily lives. It is where we live. I think that the enviorment is really important to everyone and that we shouldn’t take it for granted.
jordan
1. there are many things i am looking forward to in this class. i greatly enjoy building fires and shelters, and i look forward to making those. as well as creating various things out of the resources given, i like to read maps and over all survive in the woods. i hope that by the end of this trip i have expanded on what i already know and perhaps learn something completely new.
jordan
2. i don’t think i like this question, but i will try to answer it. the environment means many things to me at different times. i think that right now the best way to describe it is: the setting that we currently are in. that’s pretty vague but i think it works.
will
1. I am looking forward to camping and hopefully learning some survival skills as well as having a good time. i am also looking forward to our action project and i hope we can pick a meaningfull topic and choose a good way to do something about it. most of all, i wana have fun and be outside.
2. To me the environment is everything from the trees and the mountains to the buildings and roads. We all have to remember that this is our “habitat” now as much as ever and we changed it to be the way it is. So even if the concrete and asphault isn’t as pretty as the flowers and flatirons doesn’t mean we can forget to take care of all of mother earth.
will
1. I am looking forward to camping and hopefully learning some survival skills as well as having a good time. i am also looking forward to our action project and i hope we can pick a meaningfull topic and choose a good way to do something about it. most of all, i wana have fun and be outside.
2. To me the environment is everything from the trees and the mountains to the buildings and roads. We all have to remember that this is our “habitat” now as much as ever and we changed it to be the way it is. So even if the concrete and asphault isn’t as pretty as the flowers and flatirons doesn’t mean we can forget to take care of all of mother earth.
Hannah
1.
I am so psyched to be in this class! I was truly excited to kick back and relax and enjoy the great outdoors. This class has proven to have a bit more work than i expected, but that is ok because it has all had a purpose and it has not been “busy work”.
What i am really looking forward to is doing the action project. I – even though i pride myself in being environmentally aware – i am not “in touch” locally. It will be interesting to see what the class comes up with… it is such a diverse group!
But really I am so stoked all around for this class, from discussions to camping trips (which i am SO ready for, bytheway).
2.
The environment to me… a very broad question. I feel like the word “environment” is tossed around in a lot of ways – one word, many meanings.
There is “your” environment, like your room, house, where you spend your time, who you spend it with and doing what.
There is the outdoors, but used in terms as its a sporty thing to get out in the environment.
There is also the big environment that is… the environment everyone is talking about… the one that is taking a blow from global warming, and is having to deal with the over population. Basically, it is the world we live in. And the environment, is looked at as the climate… i am not sure how to define it, but it is a hot topic lately!
I guess i have been skirting around the question, “what is the ‘environment’ to you?”
To me the environment is a combination of all of those ideas i had above… but interlinked, like those Russian stackable dolls. My environment is what i come home to every night, my room, my security… it is MINE. Now, if looking at this with my little metaphorical Russian doll idea, my personal environment would be the baby doll, it fits inside the environment I enjoy so much… the great outdoors, all my lovely hikes, and all the trees that have let me chill in them on rough days. All of this all falls in this great big world we all live in, where the climate is rapidly changing, where the environment is going down the drain.
A summary, the environment is where we live, thrive, the world we are apart of.
WTM
Q.1: i hope this class doesn’t take too long to finish and for the kids to be chillen and have a good time.
Q.2: the environment to me is everything around us. its sometimes something we don’t get a chance to inherit but for the few that do it shows a much greater reason to save and preserve it.
~WTM(4life)
patrick hopewell
I hope to take many new tools away from this class. I would very much like to learn about the environment and how to survive on my own.
Everything is the environment to me. I love just getting lost in the vast wilderness of it all. Some of my most fondest memories have been in or involving the environment around me.