Recently, the work of several Keene Middle School 7th graders was featured at the Horatio Colony Museum through a partnership with the Horatio Colony Nature Preserve and the Monadnock Area Place-Based Education committee. Students were led through the Nature Preserve by intern and AUNE Environmental Studies student, Meggie Donovan. Donovan encouraged the students to take a moment to reflect and write a few lines, which were put together into a group poem. Later, students read and reacted to a William Carlos Williams poem, “This is Just to Say,” and created their own poetry in the same style. Paul Bocko, teaching faculty in the Education Department, and manager of the Horatio Colony Nature Preserve, coordinated the exhibition of the students’ work at the museum, and an evening where the students performed their work.
The KMS students were led by their teacher, Betsy Stacey. Stacey is also coordinator of the Monadnock Area Place-Based Education Committee. AUNE’s Horatio Colony Nature Preserve and the Center for Place-Based Education are partnering with the Place-Based Education Committee to seek grants and expand place-based education in the Monadnock region. The Committee was a co-sponsor of the recent Inside Outside Conference, where Betsy Stacey led a workshop on Connecting Students to the Natural World through Writing, Reading, and Observation.
The Keene Sentinel recently ran a story on this collaboration.
