Collaborative teaching and ecological literacy.

Abstract

After examining Walt Whitman's "This Compost" in the context of the whole of Leaves of Grass, we see how this poem is an example of nature as teacher for the American nation recovering from the carnage of the Civil War. In order to understand the literal idea of the symbolic compost, we describe the scientific process and interpretation as the students explore it in a series of brief laboratory exercises devoted to the actual process of leaf litter decomposition and application of decomposition products to growing wild rye plants. Combining both science and literature enriches an understanding of the actual ecological process of organic decay. The beneficial aspect of compost to plant growth is synonymous with Whitman's renewal for the individual, the local environment, and for the entire American nation after the Civil War.

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In the subdued light of a symbolic "Roll Your Own Blackout," the Fourth Biennial Association of Literature about the Environment (ASLE) conference convened in Flagstaff, Arizona in June 2001. On the Summer Solstice, Scott Slovic introduced the plenary speaker, Gary Paul Nabhan, and went on to reinforce the interdisciplinary nature of environmental education where science and literature should "cross pollinate." Nabhan began his remarks by describing the necessity of marriage between the literary arts and science for strengthening environmental education and awareness.

But how do we work together and merge interdisciplinary perspectives? What are the risks and disadvantages? What are the benefits that are incurred with collaboration? These are familiar questions for us; I teach literature and writing while Stephen teaches ecology and environmental science. Many people ask us how we started working together. They are often curious as to why we would want to collaborate after spending years in graduate school developing a specialty. Our collaboration began in the spring of 1998. As a teacher who instructs students in describing the natural environment, I have always been curious about nature and why authors use particular images or metaphors to describe nature. I was eager to learn more of the facts of the natural world and the local color and regionalism in literature. As someone who wrote a dissertation on Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, I did not understand the literal of the metaphor implicit in "This Compost." I asked Stephen, a colleague in Biology, if he could explain how composting worked in nature. As an ecologist, Steve was invaluable.

"This Compost" shows the Whitman persona looking to nature for guidance. The speaker in the poem is first "startle[d]" and repulsed by nature. He resolves to "withdraw from the still woods I loved" and wonders how "the ground itself does not sicken" with the "sour dead" and the "distemper'd corpses" placed within the soil. His fear eventually turns to awe as he realizes the miracle of natural rebirth: "Behold this compost! Behold it well" expressed in the litany of examples of the marvelous "chemistry" of the earth: "The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden ... the resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves...." Read in context of the cluster of post-Civil war poems within all of Leaves of Grass, we see the American nation creating new life from the carnage of the War of Secession. Anthony Marriage underscores the compost image: "Metaphorically, compost represents the essential energy, inherent in its corruption of life; energy that contains the seasons within its all encompassing decomposition and transformation" (148).

In order to understand the literal facts of the metaphor, Steve and I discussed some ways of approaching the composting process. Our project produced quantitative data of Whitman's metaphor of "compost" that we could explore in a unit for both of our classes that met at different times and days. Steve attended my literature class and I went to his ecology class and the laboratory sessions.

Steve's ecology students provided quantitative data about the composting process gained from a series of brief laboratory exercises devoted to exploring the actual process of leaf litter decomposition and application of decomposition products to growing wild rye plants. The students collected the leaf litter and distributed the matter into plastic grid bags, labeled and weighed each bag, watered and monitored its decomposition, and followed the products of decomposition (free nitrate, ammonium, and other minerals) held in leaf organic matter collected in the water. The collected water from the compost bags was used on a set of six Canadian Wild Rye plants compared to six Canadian Wild Rye plants given only tap water. One student wrote, "It always amazes me the kind of work that humans have to go through to achieve the same sort of things that nature can do on its own."

My students in the Nature Writing and Environmental Literature class discussed Whitman's idea of new life arising from death. We also noted Whitman's metaphor of language and dictionaries as giant compost piles. In "Slang in America," Whitman wrote "View'd freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all ... a sort of universal absorber, combiner ... (Prose Works 572). As we set the poem in the context of the whole of Leaves of Grass, we began to see how Whitman introduces nature as teacher.

Steve and I presented background on the historical context of Whitman and the Civil War for both the science and the literature classes. Through written responses and class discussions, the science students expressed delight not only in the poem, but also in the process they once viewed as a quantitative "scientific experiment." In turn, the literature students in their journals and class discussion realized that understanding the ecological process of organic decay enriches this poem from the humanities perspective. The importance of organic decay to living plants helps explain Whitman's idea of renewal for the individual, for the local environment, and for the entire American nation after the carnage of the Civil War. The metaphor of compost also explains Whitman's writing process and the way words and images rise out of the compost of earlier poems and editions of Leaves of Grass. Both of us read the journal descriptions for students in each class. Steve could clarify specific details about ecological accuracy that I missed when reading the responses. For instance, he could clarify to the student who wrote that "Just a drop of rain causes the fungal puffball, to release an explosion of hypae into the air ..." that she wanted "spores" rather than "hyphae."

To conclude the unit, we returned to Whitman's "This Compost"--but this time with a companion piece. Steve created a poetic response to Whitman's "This Compost" in "O Compost, My Compost" from the perspective of the compost community where "To us, the myriad fungi, slime molds, millipedes and ants,/we find in it nothing insurmountable nor unexpected." In fact, "The Civil War was a boon to blow flies." One student in Environmental Literature wrote, "Dr. Johnson's poem was able even to have me find beauty in the description of the decay because it is the source of life." Another expressed, "This idea fits in well with Dr. Johnson's statement that in the forest, life and non-life exist together, the borders indistinguishable among the litter."

All 36 students wrote about the interrelationship of science and literature and how the merger revealed both worlds more distinctly. A student enrolled in both our classes wrote, "What an experience this has been for me being a part in all of this; looking at the composting project from both the scientific and literary views, they make sense of one another.... This project solidifies the concept of understanding through cooperative observation and learning." We also found that our collaboration integrates with what David On" calls "ecological literacy." As John Elder states: "Rather than assuming that science and the humanities must remain forever discrete, environmental education needs more boldly to inhabit the 'ecotone' where they join and commingle, where something new may evolve" (Elder 8).

Steve and I have explored the "ecotone" with other audiences besides college students. For instance, while teaching Pella third graders about ecological issues, we observed the elementary classroom teacher's focus on such "ecotones"; the third grade teacher, Linda Hinkie, naturally linked literature, art, history and science to study tropical rainforests. Steve and I helped with a similar interdisciplinary context to tall grass prairie---the heritage and "roots" of Pena, Iowa, once called Strawtown because of the sod houses. Students then clamored for specific details of plants and animals from either tropical rainforests or tall grass prairie before creating their own illustrated stories; they wanted to "get it right." Teaching with Linda in her third grade classroom inspired us to continue exploring these interrelationships in the learning process for students of all ages.

Using ecology as a base and incorporating supporting historical vignette and literary elucidation, we attempt, as David Ehrenfeld suggests in Arrogance of Humanism, to mesh reason with emotion. We have researched topics such as the ecology of sperm whales with Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, the ecology of invasive species with H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, the ecological subtext of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm and prairie ecology linking the poetry and prose of William Cullen Bryant and Willa Cather with images of prairie flora and fauna from field research Steve conducted on the Konza Prairie LTER (Long term ecological research) site. This synthetic approach helps to stimulate humanities students towards greater ecological insight and provides a pathway for dissemination of information to students who may otherwise avoid science classes. We have seen students inspired by this approach enroll in ecology classes and science majors take more literature courses. These interdisciplinary explorations also encourage student teachers to carry ecological information to their elementary and high school classes.

One of the main benefits for us is the delight we find in the mergers of disciplines and perspectives. We are both learning from and enjoying the exchange of ideas and methodologies. Sometimes the risk for me as a literature teacher is admitting I am wrong or that I only partially understand an abstract metaphor. For instance, observing the actual process of the decomposition metaphor reinforced the metaphorical exhortation in "This Compost" and punctuated Whitman's line of "What Chemistry!" We could see the effects of nitrogen on the wild rye plants. Whitman relied on the audiences' understanding of the natural process of decomposition as a way of encouraging and unifying readers after the horrific Civil War. I lacked the first-hand observation of nature that many nineteenth century authors and readers may have made. Working with someone who observes nature brought the metaphor to life for me.

For an ecologist, one risk in interdisciplinary collaborations may entail not being taken seriously by members of the scientific community who might not see this type of work as contributing to scientific advancement. But such implications should be modified by the rewards of the sciences of bringing humanities students, and later citizens, into a wider understanding and deeper appreciation of the science. There is also the joy of being introduced to Whitman's poetry and seeing the delight the persona expresses about the natural world; the way he inspires readers through the natural image of the earth's ability to recycle and give "divine materials ... at last."

Actually, scientists may also be eager to collaborate for stewardship of the environment. For example, the 2000 meeting of the Ecological Society of America held in Snowbird, Utah was organized around the theme of "Communicating and Advancing Ecology" and in 2001 in Madison, Wisconsin, its theme was "Keeping all the Parts: Preserving, Restoring and Sustaining Complex Ecosystems." Literature is one part of the interrelated focus on the environment. The environment is the number one priority for the 21st century according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Love 79). If we want people to care about the environment, literature can be a means of convincing, motivating, and even inspiring many nonscientists into supporting ecology.

We are also keen to link the material to contemporary perspectives of environmental awareness and vigilance. For instance, would the Whitman persona today be able to "lean and loafe ... observing a spear of summer grass" (Song of Myself) and not "catch any disease/ Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease" ("This Compost")? Students often wonder if the earth is still able to process and recycle. In terms of environmental awareness, the earth cannot break down and recycle DDT, Dioxins, or PCBs, some of the contemporary "leavings" of modern America.

The "cross-pollination" of new life and growth mentioned on the Summer Solstice by Scot Slovic may come in the form of ecocritical literary theory and science in Interdisciplinary Studies about Literature and the Environment (ISLE) (6.1;7.1;8.1) as well as from the plethora of other approaches presented at ASLE and ecology conferences. During his remarks at the ASLE conference, Gary Nabhan expressed a hope for a combined conference between literature and science and the necessity to work together for the enhancement of the environment. In the meantime, we are enjoying composting both literature and ecology.

"O Compost, My Compost" (A response to Walt Whitman's "O Captain,
My Captain" and "This Compost") Stephen R. Johnson

   Fear not this substance of recycling death you call compost
   It is a litter of all things organic
   Be it leaf, rat, bird, vole, and yes, human.
   To us, the myriad fungi, slime molds, millipedes and ants,
   We find in it nothing insurmountable nor unexpected.
   The civil war was a boon to blowflies
   With all your copious dead,
   But no strain of disease or corruption could or can slow our
   progress.
   Do you think that a human disease can stop the ants
   Who chew up all that lies in their path?
   Does blood spilt on the ground impede the bloodroot's progress?
   The fallen dead cause fright and malaise in you,
   But to us this dead is our sustenance,
   The cause to eat,
   And from ant, to fungus, to bacteria, the nasty disease is slain
   And from it, as from all that is organic,
   And falls within our grasp,
   Comes a compost of minerals.
   Such a simplified feast
   Is what drives nature's renewal.

References

Elder, John. Stories in the Land. Great Barrington, MA: Orion Society, 1998.

Love, Glen. "Science, Anti-Science, and Ecocriticsim." ISLE. 6.1(1999)65-79.

Marriage, Anthony. "Whitman's 'This Compost,' Baudelaire's 'A Carrion': Out of Decay Comes an Awful Beauty." Walt Whitman Review. 27:4 (December 1981), 143-149.

Orr, David. Ecological Literacy. Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World. Albany: State University of New York, 1992.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York: Norton, 1973.

--. Prose Works 2 Volumes. 1892. ed. Floyd Stovall. New York: New York University Press, 1964.

Stephen Johnson, William Penn University, IA

Mary Stark, Central College, IA

Dr. Johnson holds a degree in Plant Ecology from Kansas State University. He teaches a variety of biology courses. Dr. Stark holds a Ph.D. in English from The University of Iowa. She teaches Nature Writing and Environmental Literature.