Farm Life

Published as "The New Iowan," The Chronicle, July 17, 2010

This morning I found a hurt and hungry bird sitting under a tree. Not seeing a nest in sight, I was faced with a conundrum: help, ignore, or dispose of the little guy? As I prepared a plastic Blue Bunny container with some pine bedding, water, and bird seed, I noticed my dog sheepishly pacing about with little bird feet extending from her mouth. Nature wins again.

The mixed feelings of disappointment and relief made me realize I am not quite as country-fied as I thought. What would a native Iowan have done? Of course we had the occasional hurt animal even in urban southern California, but I did not grow up immersed in such frequent and common lessons about the cycle of life that I believe children do here.

That is not to say kids in my home county lack instruction in the life cycle. I have worked with some of the best teachers (as well as classroom parent volunteers) who strive to bring authentic learning into the classroom. Some schools have student gardens or terrariums. Many teachers bring caterpillars to the classroom and release butterflies a few weeks later. And the occasional brave sole will even incubate and hatch chicken eggs.

Here in rural Iowa, these lessons do not require such careful teacher planning or creativity. Watching the cycle of planting and harvest year after year makes things more clear than simply planting a few flower seeds in a plastic cup in time for Mothers Day. Watching livestock grow and understanding they are raised for a variety of purposes sure beats feeding a goldfish for a few weeks until it floats belly-up and Dad explains the flushing process.

There are many lessons that may be more difficult to learn here than where I was raised. How do you explain the beauty and grandeur of a mountain or the ocean to a child who has never seen either? What can the words drought or pollution mean to a child who has never lived them? The Iowan teacher who uses Skype to bring a foreign country into her classroom deserves as much applause as her Californian counterpart who finds a way to simulate the change of seasons for children growing up in a desert.

I suppose education is a life-long process that balances experience with instruction. After my experience with the little birdy this morning I channeled my efforts into reading online instruction about how to correctly prune lilac bushes. It is clear that the things I have yet to learn far outweigh what I already know.

Copyright Rachel Burns 2010