Place-based Education

From NASA astronomer Dale Cruikshank.

The day before I started working here, there was an annular eclipse of the sun.  'Annular' meaning that the tiny moon was not quite aligned to block out all of the  sun's bright light, but instead left a searing halo in the sky, a fiery ring that made all watchers think about heat, flame, the size of heavenly bodies, and the scope of their lives.

Naturally, the park had a big to-do at the Visitor's Center, inviting astronomers to share their telescopes and selling out of flimsy plastic sun-viewing glasses for the general public.  Wanting, of course, to celebrate this celestial happening with everyone else, I trooped excitedly over to the VC... only to find zero parking spots.  And large SUVs anchored on top of the lovingly replanted native vegetation.  Nuts to all that.  Plan B was going back to the apartment and then--?  But luckily, other folks had Plans B, too.  Including a NASA astronomer who had set up his telescope and camera right outside my apartment building.  My neighbors and I stood in the parking lot, sharing beers and commenting on how bizarre the shadows looked.  We chatted with this professional gentleman (who wasn't too professional to refuse a beer himself), all of us basking in the off-light of a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of hunks of rock and gas.  That somehow seemed important, special.  Wonderful.

It was a surreal introduction to the uniqueness of being in this place; one I wouldn't trade for anything.  An annular eclipse like that won't be seen again from US soil until 2023.  My timing's pretty damn good.

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Informal education I have done in the past often focuses on the educational aspect: the facts and structure of an idea -- be it geology, physics, astronomy or the like.  Here I have the opportunity to shape my interactions with people on a larger scale, and truly help make meaning of this place.

This feels like rather a lot of pressure, but it's as much for me as it is for anyone else.  What does it mean for you, the visitor*, to be here?  What does it mean for me to be here, as a staff-person and a resident?  Here I have to take my cue from the environment.  You're here to the see the Canyon.  I'm here to make sense.  Hopefully.

Recently I went running, not as I have before, along the roads and the paved paths out to the Rim where all of humanity congregates and comments on how it's quite a nice a hole in the ground, har har.  This time I ran in the opposite direction, through the rugged tracts and service roads out into the woods.  The sun was setting, and as I rounded the corner from the sunlit housing area into the dim of the trees, I nearly ran into a female elk, who bounded off in the other direction.  Rude of me, I know.   But it was a good reminder for me to slow down a bit.  Take my cues from this place, and not assume I know what I'm talking about yet.  Maybe ever.  I have so much to learn here, and I think the more I can just live in this place, the more it will deign to teach me.

Last week at about this time, I was witness to yet more astronomical fanfare -- the Transit of Venus.  Called "the noblest sight astronomy affords," by Edmond Halley, this time I actually secured a parking spot at the Visitor's Center and joined the queues sharing the wealth of sights from amateur astronomers' telescopes.  That moderate clump of people, waiting to check out that bright ball in the sky that's there all the time, but waiting to look at it with new eyes - felt like community.  A group of people in the same space being awed by the same amazing thing.  That's what I want to create, as often as possible in my job and in my life.

I'm thankful to have the opportunity to do so.  I hope I can do it well, at least some of the time.

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*Please visit me!