Hillel Academy third-grader Chana Begoun said her favorite part of the field trip that she and fellow students took to Riveredge Nature Center on Tuesday was the bugs.
Together with her classmates, Begoun found stinkbugs, maybugs, a centipede and two monarchs that they placed in boxes to magnify and observe.
According to Naomi Cobb, it is almost always the “bugs” that attract the most interest among students who visit the Riveredge Nature Center, where Cobb is an environmental educator.
A self-described nature-lover, Cobb has organized the “Tikkun Olam” program. This connects local Jewish day school students with nature and the environment, through a combination of two visits to the center and an in-class curriculum that individual teachers from each school prepare for students before the trip.
“Rolling over rotten logs, finding slugs, worms, centipedes and spiders is a huge hit” in the program, Cobb said. Once students get over their anxieties with the outdoors, “you can hardly get them to stop,” she said.
Cobb began volunteering and then teaching at the center about two years ago, she said. As she “listened to the values of sustainability and appreciation” of nature that were being taught at the center, she realized “this is so Jewish. It really overlaps so much with the values we teach our children,” she said.
And as an educator at the center, “I got to see children’s eyes light up over and over again” as they experienced and learned about nature in an observatory setting, she said.
“For me, as a Jewish parent,” said Cobb, “I knew I could provide this for my own child and I wanted her friends to be like that, too.”
So Cobb contacted the Helen Bader Foundation. It provided a grant for a pilot program for students from all three of Milwaukee’s Jewish day schools — Hillel Academy, Yeshiva Elementary School and the Milwaukee Jewish Day School — to take two trips per school year while at the same time learning from a specially developed Jewish ecology curriculum in the classroom.
Cobb said the program is integral in creating connections for children that will result in “sustainability as a lifestyle” because research has shown that adults who grow up to recycle and engage in other ecological friendly practices will do so because of experiences they have in their childhood.
“This is the new kind of kosher,” Cobb said. “Not only looking at what you eat but your patterns of consumption.”
Specialized programs
Cobb said she knew before she began the program that “each school would have a different philosophy” about how creation works. Therefore, each school’s program is “tailored to be respectful to their religious beliefs” and “there is no attempt to make the program uniform” between schools.
Different schools and grade levels may receive “slightly more scientific” programs, or programs that are “observation oriented” that focus on measuring, looking and the wonderment of nature.
Cobb has worked with Riveredge staff members to ensure that the different needs of each school are met. She also meets with representatives of each school in order to pick a theme for students’ visits. These can range from “trees, nature, Lag B’Omer — whatever most closely fits with what they study,” Cobb said.
Rivkie Robbins, a fifth-grader at Hillel Academy, first visited the center with her class in February, when there was still snow on the ground. She said she enjoyed snow-shoeing around the grounds.
But when her class goes back to the center on June 6, she said is looking forward to experiencing the grounds in a different way, and she hopes to see more, including some animals.
Cobb said that having two visits per class was important to the program rather than having a single trip, because the students “make connections between the seasons and environment.”
Susan Rosengarten, a Hebrew and Judaica teacher from MJDS, whose kindergarten students visited the center in May, said two visits are necessary because “there is a lot to cover.”
Also, at such young ages, “six months is a big change. There is such a difference in their ability to comprehend” from the beginning of the year to the end, Rosengarten said.
Rosengarten prepared her students in a number of ways, from reviewing the story of creation with them, to mentioning recycling, and singing songs about mitzvot, she said.
Jean Akhter, a third-grade teacher at Yeshiva Elementary School, said her students were able “to explore science in a hands-on way” during their visit.
“The classroom is more abstract,” she said. The Tikkun Olam program has allowed her students to “be able to examine” nature and provided opportunities “you cannot provide in the classroom.”
Moreover, said YES assistant principal Susan Fitzsimons, the program “provided an opportunity for us to connect the general studies content with the Judaic content” as well as “really enrich our science program.”
“Outdoor education is incredibly important and valuable for kids of all ages,” said Rabbi Philip Nadel, MJDS co-director and Jewish studies principal.
“Besides just learning about the environment, it’s another thing to step out into the world and develop appreciation and understanding that way.”
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