Joyful Places

 Some rights reserved by GlobalPartnership for Education

I've been thinking a lot about places and how to get people connected to places.  Recently I was asked if Singapore was a "joyful place", it really got me thinking. 

What is a joyful place, how do places become joyful, can we make this happen?  I've explored this a bit in my thesis, but it's something I often revisit.  I didn't know how to explain this.  The first thought was no, it's not joyful, but I do find joy.  Mostly because of how I interact with my place.  I'm outside a couple nights a week playing some sort of sport.  We go to the gardens and by the water.  We take the dogs for a walk twice a day.  I find joy in all those moments.  

But when I'm walking around I see many unhappy people, working late, angry in their cars, overheated and I think it's not the space that's joyful. 

It's how you live in a place.  We can only fully become comfortable in our place if we spend time in it, and once we spend that time we can start working on the relationships, and then the positive relationship in our place. 

I do think it would greatly increase work place satisfaction if we spent more time outside and interacting with our community. 

Place Based Education

 Some rights reserved by _paVan_

Connecting people to a place has been an ongoing concern of mine. I have just started reading this book. 

Link to Amazon

One of the things I worry most about is that the focus of place based learning all seems to be on certain countries.  While many of the issues are global and easily transferable not everything makes sense in my tropical world. 

Most of what we need to do is have teachers understand their place.  Many of the international teachers are transient, we move from place to place.  This results in us not knowing so much about the place we are teaching.  We need to know more about where we live in order to help students understand the systems in place. 

Walking through the jungle with Han the other week was a totally eye-opening experience. 

Bukit Timah Nature Reserver

Working with an expert in my new country, I learned a lot about what things were living in Singapore, where our water source was, and how to find my way around the bush without too much equipment. 

I feel much more tied to my habitat and as a result I think I can teach more effectively when I'm bringing the students outside. 

Place based learning in an unknown place

 Some rights reserved by feeinternational

I have been thinking about this a lot and it played a role in my thesis work a couple of years ago.  I wonder how as international we can teach about a place without fully knowing it.  This year we've been working hard with our outdoor discovery centre trying to connect teachers to where we live.  By looking at local plants, and seeing the wildlife that lives around our area we are hoping that people are more connected. 

Sadly though this last week we had a plant catastrophe for some of the kindergarten students.  The teachers had some plants they had been growing with the students inside, and they transplanted a week or so after they sprouted.  We had the weekend off and when we came back the plants were gone.  The teachers were worried that something had eaten them, but I don't think that was the case.  Not really sure what happened but we need to make sure that everyone in the community has the same goals.  But we need to look closely in order to figure things out.