Pastoral interlude

Saturday morning my birding mentor Judith from down the street asked me to join her as she lead a group of students from Leo Politi Elementary School on a bird walk around MacArthur Park.   The principal at Politi is also a birder.  At about 9 am about 20 students ranging from kindergarten to sixth grade and some parents arrived at the park with the principal.  Judith had prepared lists of birds found in the park, and she appointed students to search at ground level and up in the trees. 

We began our walk.  Right away we saw a bushtit in a tree.  Then we studied the birds in the lake--ducks, geese, gulls, a few cormorants--and then...a juvenile black-crowned night heron!  Later a bunch of crows, a black phoebe, a wounded gull, some feral parakeets.    The principal seized every opportunity to expand their language usage in Spanish and English and to draw information and opinion from the students.  After circling the park we gathered for pictures and reviewed what we had seen.  The kids had a great time, as did we all.  And dear old Leo Politi, whose ageless children's books celebrated the rich diversity of a child's Los Angeles, would have been thrilled.

MacArthur Park is a heavily used urban park, but it is still home to a wide assortment of birds, some permanent and some just passing through.  The boat house is closed due to budget cuts, but the fall migration south is still beginning.  Right there in the heart of Los Angeles these students got a taste of life in the air, life that might go from Canada to Argentina in a month’s time.  What did they learn?  They learned to look closely around them and up in the treetops, to search for the details in the world, and to wonder about everything. 

Most formal schooling takes place in classrooms, but it’s very important to remember how much learning can happen out in the world.  Good schools and good teachers can help that process along.   This bird walk was a reminder that we should support learning wherever it happens.