Hotel Bruce

I received an email from a friend: Contact Hotel Bruce. The focus of their current issue is in Glenville, and one theme is ecological awareness in the community. Here I am studying urban ecology in graduate school and working on environmental outreach projects for the Dike 14 Environmental Education Collaborative as a representative of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMNH). The Hotel Bruce folks were already in the process of planning a day with some fifth and sixth graders at Charles H. Lake Elementary School. This was a great opportunity for me to introduce the students in Glenville to the wildlife in their neighborhood.

Slowly but surely, city dwellers are losing touch with nature and the interconnectedness we share with plants and wildlife of the urban area. In his 1993 book The Thunder Tree, author Robert Michael Pyle defines this phenomenon as the extinction of experience. He writes, “The extinction of experience is not just about losing the personal benefits of nature. It implies a cycle of disaffectation that can have disastrous consequences…apathy toward environmental concerns and, inevitably further degradation of the common habitat.“

For Hotel Bruce, the outreach to Charles H. Lake was a multimedia endeavor with the following objectives:

--> Increase environmental awareness for a small group of Glenville's school kids
--> Improve our knowledge of how kids respond to nature
--> Showcase the results of a dialogue with the students focused on their environment so that others in the community can respond to it

In order to create a connection to the natural world within the classroom, I used specimens of skulls, skins, animal mounts, insects and plants from the CMNH teaching collection. This met all of our goals: Visually appealing as a showcase for Hotel Bruce and an unforgettable experience for the students to learn about the nature that abounds in the Glenville neighborhood, including the urban oasis of Dike 14. A naturalized area, The Dike 14 Nature Preserve looks like a natural peninsula of land jutting into Lake Erie north of Gordon State Park, but it is really a manmade land structure built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Curious to see the reaction to the word “environment”, we asked the students to brainstorm about their environment through art and words on paper. Their pictures either identified a natural landscape or a cityscape (a couple of pictures included both). Working by themselves or in groups, the students highlighted trees, plants and animals such as birds and butterflies. However certain students included specific buildings such as a hospital and even McDonald’s. One group identified the basketball courts, baseball diamonds and playgrounds. Another group wrote down that it was everything that surrounds them. We were moving toward the next step— identifying with which plants or animals they shared their environment.
As they brainstormed and designed, the children began to open up and explain what they included in their posters. One group of chuckling boys identified the usual suspects of urban wildlife: Pigeons, dogs, cats, and rats. Should they add that in to their picture, they asked? It was up to them, I reminded them. Eventually we came to see that, yes, a variety of wildlife and manmade structures surround them.

Afterwards, I ran an activity called “Habitat Habits”. I gave them a specimen—a skull, an insect egg case, or even an (taxidermy) animal common to Glenville. Then I gave them some extra clues—the animal skins, the same bird in another plumage, or the adult insect. The students were asked to identify the connections to their environment based on descriptions of shelter, food, moisture, light and temperature. Only one group identified their animal as finding shelter in the city. Yet as we shared the information about all the animals, other kids would speak up about how they have seen that snake in their yard, that bird at a bird feeder, or that insect in the playground.

The animals and plants used for this activity are all highlighted in the soon to be published Field Guide to the Dike 14 Nature Preserve. I asked the students to fill out a questionnaire at the beginning and when the “Habitat Habits” activity was complete to determine if they were aware of natural or naturalized areas so close to their school. We asked if they knew of environmental conservation efforts in the city of Cleveland? We wrapped up by asking what new information did you learn from this workshop? Here are a few of their comments:

--> “I learned about lots of animals that live here in Cleveland.”
--> “I learned a lot of things like some butterflies are poison”
--> “I learned about animals and their environments”
--> “That natural and naturalized areas can be located near you.”

The city is more than just bricks and mortar, market economies and industry; it is also a habitat for a wide variety of ecosystems. The Dike 14 Nature Preserve is located 4.5 miles east of the Cuyahoga River and less than a 1/2 mile from Charles H. Lake Elementary School, enhancing the importance of the site’s educational significance to the community in Glenville and the city at large. This site will soon be opened to the public as one of Cleveland’s newest parks where urban families can experience and appreciate the natural world.

Pyle, Robert Michael (1993) The Thunder Tree: Lessons From An Urban
Wildland The Lyons Press, New York, New York pp.145-147