Alison B. Kennedy
The landscape in which we grow up can be as influential on us as we are on it. While my students have had very limited experiences they definitely have a sense of the place they call home. And while this is somewhere they already know a great deal about, they are as of yet, fairly untainted by outsiders opinions of this place. In the book Language of Landscape, Anne Whiston Spirn writes that the word landscape actually is a place and the people that inhabit that place. The two are interconnected and both necessary when talking about landscape. As human beings, the more we are aware of the landscape in which we are a part, the more we are empowered to preserve or change it.
Spirn writes "We are imprinted with the landscape of our early childhood" (1).
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My students will always have some evidence of growing up in their particular neighborhood in their being. It is an important part of who they are, and because they are so young their awareness of their environment is still developing. Early Childhood students are impressionable. I hope to cultivate their ability to look at their neighborhood and express their feelings about the landscape they are a part of. My hope is to exploit their impressionability as little as possible by not trying to influence how they feel about where they are, but simply to help them develop an awareness of it.
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This unit is meant not only to familiarize my students with their neighborhood, but also to allow them to realize that they are an integral part of it. I want them to realize that they are members of a community, and they have the ability to be an active and positive force within that community regardless of their age. I hope to begin to cultivate their ability to express how they feel about it through writing so that later in life, when necessary, they can make their voices heard.
