The water under my feet moving fast to the street
flowing fast to the Anacostia, with all the trash,
sheds and puddles all in bubbles through the sewer
into the river, fast, fast, all the trash flowing right past
with all that I see and all that I saw I knew cleaning
the river would be a bore, we got together as a team
and started to clean, I looked around and
thought it was a dream
I never thought the river would get this clean,
fast to the street water sheds under your feet.

Ann Shackelford, Grade 8
Stuart Hobson Middle School
Washington, DC
(1998 ROW Winner)

Ann Shackelford has a good understanding about how her urban, polluted watershed works. She, along with thousands of other schoolchildren, has been exploring watersheds and their importance to our lives through art and poetry, science and history, field trips and river clean-ups.

Most children aren’t as aware of their place in the watershed as is Ann. A recent survey showed that while U.S. children could identify over a thousand corporate logos, few could recognize or name more than a handful of the plants that grew in their own neighborhoods. In many modern societies like the U.S., people have lost their fundamental understanding of the natural world, their sense of connection and belonging to a particular place.

To help counter this disturbing trend, the River of Words (ROW) Project was developed by poets, educators, artists and environmental activists. The program includes an innovative curriculum model that combines environmental and arts education, and an annual poetry contest, open to children ages 5-19.

ROW blends science, cultural and natural history and the arts. It helps children discover their “ecological address” by exploring and interpreting their watersheds. River of Words’ curriculum suggests that the self-sustaining strategies found in our own ecosystems offer a useful model for reclaiming our lost landscapes and our places in them. Good environmental education teaches not only about the relationship between people and nature, but about people’s relationship to each other — about community.

ROW’s primary community is that of teachers and students. The strength and success of River of Words in its first three years rests in the creative and innovative ways the project has been implemented by educators in 42 states and 10 countries (so far!). In most cases, River of Words is a school-based program, usually initiated by one or two teachers who enlist others in planning.

In California, Terri Glass, a poet and biologist who works with the state-wide California Poets in the Schools program, has brought local poets and naturalists into elementary and middle schools to bring the ROW curriculum to life. “River of Words has changed the emphasis and style of my teaching,” she says. “I focus on the local environment now, with the children using hands-on experience to collect metaphor, imagery and sound. The contest excites kids, and ROW has been a driving force in the schools for truly interdisciplinary work.”

In Georgia, an inventive environmental educator with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Petey Giroux, has administered a state River of Words program for the last two years. Teachers throughout the state are provided with the 50-page ROW Teacher’s Guide, to which Ms. Giroux has added watershed-specific maps, locally oriented reading lists and other information. State prizes are awarded and publicized, and a travelling exhibit of ROW poetry and art is on constant display at schools, libraries, fairs and conferences throughout the south.

Describing how Georgia teachers are integrating River of Words into their teaching, Giroux adds, “Most teachers use nature journals to record what they learn as they walk with students on campus or out by a river. They look and see how water moves across their school campus and note erosion and runoff. They are learning about nearby creeks and streams and where their water goes after it leaves the school. They are learning to do visual assessments and pick up litter to protect the water. Some groups are adopting a stream to protect and monitor. They write in their journals and create poetry or draw pictures.”

Ms. Giroux brought River of Words to Georgia on her own initiative, and immediately involved the state Parent Teachers Association and local environmental and arts organizations in the planning and outreach. “River of Words works because it involves the senses, which helps students remember what they learn. It is very personal and allows students to learn to appreciate the water in their backyards and school yards.”

Sharing Knowledge

Community support is another important component of River of Words. Not only does the project leverage existing resources in support of education, it gives students’ creativity and concerns recognition, and engages the broader community in schools and learning. When River of Words art and poetry is displayed in libraries, at local events or businesses, it educates the entire community about watershed issues, and spreads the passion, inspiration and heartfelt concerns of the student creators.

Every city, town or village has a wealth of often underutilized expertise and energy - an elder who can identify animal tracks, a farmer who dowses for water, bird watchers, experts in the local ecology, a local history buff - who might welcome the chance to work with local schools or park districts and share their knowledge and experience. In ROW’s first three years, hundreds of people have become involved in enriching the educational experience of the young people in their communities.

In Utah, for example, creative writing teacher Pat Russell (ROW’s 1997 Teacher of the Year) has made the natural world her classroom for the past two years by holding a series of River of Words workshops for high school students in the foothills surrounding Salt Lake City. Local writers, bird watchers, artists, photographers and poets recruited from the community lead students in small workshops that blend ecology and art. Some of the outdoor classes offered included Writing Your Way Into & Out of the Woods, Reading the Landscape, Signatures on the Land: Animal Behavior and Tracking, and The Outdoors as a Backdrop for Human Drama.

Students spent two days on snowshoes exploring the desolate magic of winter. They were encouraged to open their senses - to note the wind direction, the texture of the snow, the sound of rustling branches. The poetry and art generated by this creative and extensive implementation of River of Words has been consistently extraordinary, clearly demonstrating the power of the arts and nature for inspiring students’ best work.

Student response to the Salt Lake City workshops was so enthusiastic that the school district is expanding the program. One student, in evaluating the experience, wrote, “Drawing nature made me look closely at its real beauty. In order to sketch a tree of the water I had to look carefully at it and its surroundings in order to understand it. Trying to draw the tree I had to notice the bird tracks on the snow below and the bent branch covering the nest. By having me draw, my teacher helped me see.” Another student wrote: “The most interesting thing I learned was how important it is to choose a place to call home and then write from that place·Hopefully, someday I will get an invitation to attend River of Words again — this time as an instructor.”

The Best of All Worlds

Environmental education is, by nature (pun intended!), interdisciplinary. While there is much lip service paid these days to the educational value of interdisciplinary teaching, in practice it is often difficult to implement because of administrative constraints, compartmentalized attitudes and teaching methods, and all the other pitfalls that any collaborative effort must face. River of Words attempts to break down these barriers by providing avenues of cooperation that engage the entire community. By bringing together science, humanities, language arts and social science teachers with community resource people to help children explore and interpret their watershed, the curriculum promotes local participation, cooperation and awareness.

The melding of art and science is not only a powerful combination, but a logical one: both disciplines are based on observation and experimentation. Indeed, some skills taught only in the arts are as important to science as they are to art. The careful articulation of the natural world that River of Words’ curriculum encourages, and the metaphors children create from meticulous observation, all serve to clarify scientific phenomena and to connect students to their surroundings in very profound ways. By studying their particular watershed and the art and literature it has inspired, students can learn about their geographical history, weather patterns, flora and fauna, indigenous cultural traditions, the history of local migration and commerce — in short, their ecological address.

The arts teach us to fine-tune our senses, draw us into relationships with the earth and with each other, and evoke our deepest emotions. In this way will watersheds and home grounds be celebrated, revered, intimately understood, and ultimately preserved.

Understanding the pattern of relationships between land, water, vegetation, wildlife and human settlement is the basic core from which all learning flows. This subtle and deeply resonant wisdom of place is what River of Words is trying to teach our children and ourselves. We invite you to join us.