Yesterday morning, Colleen, Kate, Helen, and I decided to get started on our primary task: modifying the Mpala curriculum for American classrooms. Helen and Kate took a lesson called “A Day in the Life of an Animals,” while Colleen and I addressed “Insects.” Happily, Conservation Club lesson plans (like insects) lend themselves well to adaptation. They include a strong base of information—insect characteristics, classification, social structure, and life cycle—though we’ll need to do more research. I’m excited about that, because insects are really cool. The plans also have several ideas of how to make the lesson interactive, but a lot of freedom is given to the teacher. This is helpful both because it means the four of us have freedom in our adaptation, and because the teachers who will eventually be using the plans will have freedom in their implementation.
Freedom all around—or so it seemed. One activity called for keeping a caterpillar in a jar to watch it undergo metamorphosis (it then suggested freeing the butterfly). I vaguely remember maybe doing something like this in elementary school, but still, it rubbed me the wrong way. A brief Google search validated some of my concerns: monarch butterfly mass breeders, who regularly sell caterpillars to schools for this very purpose, have a higher instance of disease in their insects than would be found in the wild. Thus, when the butterfly is released, it can spread disease to the fragile wild populations.
And what about wild-caught caterpillars? I found that keeping them captive, with the change in diet and lifestyle that entails, can permanently alter their facial structure (though I don’t know whether this is harmful in itself). I also found that many caterpillar species engage in social behaviors; I’m no lepidopterist, but a confined, solitary creature might experience some level of stress from having its natural instincts thwarted. And even if it wouldn’t mind—after all, the jar would be food-filled and predator-free—I think it’s hard to teach respect for nature by kidnapping wildlife from its habitat and placing it in a small jar. It starts with caterpillars, and next thing you know you’ve got zoos and Sea World and factory farms and you’ve reinforced the exploitative outlook on nature that caused this whole ecological mess in the first place.
Or so goes my theory. The point is, after much hemming and hawing, I asked Colleen if we could maybe tweak that part of the lesson, and so we did.
The school I was originally going to, Mpala Academy, had cancelled, and Ol Jogi Primary School, the intended replacement, was out of town. So I hopped in with Kate, Helen, and Alex to the faraway Ewaso Primary School. We read The Lorax again (I voiced the eponymous entity, who I think would also oppose imprisoning caterpillars) and had a great conversation about trees, wildlife, and the balance of what humans need and what counts as greed. We asked students to write down what they learned, and while most talked (rightfully) about the importance of trees, one student wrote “to be unselfish and care about others.” I’d call it a successful lesson!
This was my last time at Ewaso, and—as I’ve been doing all week—I said goodbye to the students. I’d only seen them four times, including Community Conservation Day, but I’d started to get to know the personalities of some of them; I wish I could stay longer! But alas, we’ve got work to do in Princeton, so in a week we'll be going home.
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