A Sense of Wonder, A Sense of Place

Growing Place Teachers and Children Inspired To Action

“If you clean up the earth it will get all shiny!”     

After visiting The Blueberry School Exhibit, Palm teachers shared some of the inspiring work done by students 

and teachers at Blueberry. Children at the school have been studying nature at Topanga State Park. Their 

deepening connections to nature were expressed through their poetry, painting and photography. Their work 

was then organized into an exhibit featured at the Natural History Museum. A poem one of the Blueberry 

children had written about trash he’d found while hiking, inspired our children in a lively discussion about our 

planet and how to take care of it. Below are snippets of our conversations. (Entire conversations are attached.) 

Clare: Maybe one rocket ship will take trash to space. 

Connor: No, the birds will eat it then. 

William: What if glass goes in the ocean? Turtles could eat it, cut their throats and die. 

Eli: There will be no more animals, they’ll die. 

Abraham: I see trash on the sidewalk and in the sand. 

Clare: It might be sharp. Someone might not see it and step on it. 

Michele: What about when we see it. 

Connor: We want to make the world clean. 

Children decide to collect all trash found on our nature walk and bring it back to meeting. After seeing how 

much trash we found, teachers asked the children how this trash made them feel? 

All: Sad! 

Eli: We should put it in the trash dumpster. 

Clare: Someone can still use some of it. Go to the store and say, I’m done with this. Can you use it? Then we 

can put signs all over, about not throwing trash. 

A sign committee is formed. Teachers wonder how far this plan will take us. Childrens’ growing connections to 

the natural world through our nature walks this year have helped to invest them in the details of the natural 

world around them. At this young age they are both citizens of and advocates for our planet.

New School West Responds to Exhibit

Expanding on "Trash Talking"

Previously, the children from NSW were walking back from a culmination practice at Beethoven Elementary School. They came across a street crew working to fix a broken water pipe that flooded the gutters. With the guidance of their teachers, they followed the water and discovered the drain. On the sidewalk above the drain was painted a “no dumping” sign indicating that trash that entered the drain, would harm the inhabitants of the ocean. At that very moment, trash floated toward the drain. An impromptu discussion erupted. The children decided they needed to tell people about this problem, and brought ideas back to the school.

Gathered in a reflection meeting back at the school, their teacher read them a poem that was written by another preschooler named M.J. at Blueberry Atelier preschool called “Trash Talking”. The children were moved to action by the poem and their discoveries that day. They discussed what could be done:

The children thought to create signs to communicate with all the people about the dangers of littering, but some children pointed out that paper signs could fall and become trash themselves and moved on to discussions of other possible materials. They resolved immediately to call people on the phone and tell them why they should not litter. Three delegates went to the school office and called three friends who were not at school that day. In passionate and unscripted messages that encompassed littering, composting, and recycling, the children called their friends to action, ending each call with “tell your friends!”.

Inspired by the children’s passion, and wanting to extend the reach of their message, I contacted the Mar Vista City Council (MVCC) and related the story. Albert Olson, a board member and former NSW parent, sent several suggestions our way. The first was an invitation to submit an article to the MVCC newsletter that reaches over 40,000 subscribers in our community. The second was a suggestion to bring the children’s signs to fruition and submit them to the council for application on city owned property through the making of stickers or posters. The third invitation was to participate in the Mar Vista Recreation Center’s Fall Festival on October 3rd this year, which will host a student art exhibit.

We, as a whole school, would like to move forward on all these suggestions and are looking to involve you in the process. I am currently gathering information for the Fall Festival and looking for a parent to write the article for the MVCC newsletter. The teachers are dialoguing with the children about suitable signs. By participating in these events, we hope to secure a ‘sense of place’ in the children by enabling them to see themselves reflected in the community. It is a personal goal to closely link the children and our preschool to the city, to facilitate a sense of worth in each child by offering the opportunity to take part in its reinvention and history.

Kristin Hansen

Co-Director

The New School-West

12731 Venice Blvd, LA CA 90066

310 313-4444