We live in a society at a point in time where we have to be constantly competing for our children's attention against new media and technologies. Our students live and grow in a culture where multitasking has become the norm and the exception to the rule is to concentrate on a task at a time. As teachers and adults we need to be aware that the way our students process information and interact with others and their environment is widely different. However, we also need to recognize that these same students need to discern what is important from what is not and help them in making choices and in learning to "see the world" around them. This unit attempts to focus the students' attention into other ways of "seeing" and "perceiving" their environment and those structures that surround their environment.
Weismann describes three different kinds of seeing: operational, associational, and pure (Weismann, p.18). In the "operational" way of seeing there are no remembered feelings, ideas concerning the object, and leave the object unexplored. An example of this type of seeing is crossing the street looking at the cars going by where your eye sees but does not perceive any characteristics related to the object. In the "associational" type of seeing, a chain of reactions is unleashed when the viewer associates the object with a word. To follow the example of the cars going by, the object is related to the word "car" and the viewer in his or her mind might think how once was nearly hit by one and how he heard the breaks screech and later tried calming down by sitting on the curve. In the "pure" mode of seeing we are interested in the "how" the object is; in the specific qualities of the object. This mode of viewing is a learning discovery process through the study of the qualities, characteristics, and attributes of the object. It is this type of seeing, that I want my students to begin to do when they look at a building or a structure.
In order to have students begin to see in this "pure" way, students need to be taught step-by-step the "how". This unit represents a primer on how to begin helping the student to pay closer attention to the environment surrounding them. It is through the exploration of the five senses that we begin that journey, followed by a series of activities that focus the students' eye to take a closer look at specific elements of different structures around their community.
