Returning to Our Senses
(Entering grades 5-8)
Virtual classrooms, masks, social distancing, and a lot of time at home have all made us more resilient to change. We also see resilience in nature like wildfires and hurricanes, and when the seasons change. In this weeklong workshop, we will use short poems to take notes about the resiliency we see in nature. This week will challenge you to experiment with describing outdoor experiences using only your senses and words. We will create sound maps to take in the world around us using our ears as a guide, as well as create riddle poetry about items we only explored with our hands (no peeking!). We will look at the world through the eyes of a tree and maybe taste a few of its needles or bark to better understand our towering friends. And we won’t be shy about pressing our noses up against flowers, rocks, and dirt. When we have completed our week of sensory writing you will have created your very own collection of three-lined poems called haikus – a poem representing each sense. There will be a lot of opportunities to move, explore, shake, breath, rattle, and roll throughout the week. We will be working both inside and outside, however, this workshop is adaptive to writers of all physical abilities.
Whitney Chandler is an outdoor educator and 5th-grade teacher in rural NE Oregon. She holds an MS in Natural Resources with certificates in Science Communication and Outdoor Education and a MA in Teaching. She is currently recovering from her first-year of classroom teaching, as well as working on publishing her work of paint strip poems entitled Painting the Landscape in Poetry. Before becoming a teacher, Whitney worked as a contract writer and has published work all over the internet including for outdoor brands such as NRS and OARS. She is a Colorado native and avid outdoorswoman often rightfully accused of having her head in the clouds. When not encouraging her students to daydream about the mysteries of nature, she spends her time chasing her dogs through the Eagle Cap Wilderness.