I went to
Rutgers University, a university much under-appreciated in its home state of New Jersey, but which I maintain has so much to offer curious minds and which does in fact offer rigorous academic challenges to those who seek them out. As far as affordable education goes, it is a *good* deal!
One of the things I appreciate most about Rutgers is that is a diverse model-- in the campus literature photo-op sense (yes, there really are yellow & brown people on campus, and not just in the graduate math & science programs) or in the financial sense, but also in the sense of its academic ecology. For today's purpose, take the idea of "ecology" literally, please: Rutgers is made up of 7 campuses-- College Ave, Busch, Livingston, Cook, Douglass, Newark & Camden, each emerging from differently vibrant NJ habitats-- inner city/urban, various levels of semi-urban, suburban, and downright rural. It's a beautiful thing.
This comes to my mind today, because it occurs to me that in 1995-9 I was hanging out & eventually living in a house with people whose programs nested in and across a plurality of these campuses, lending a richness to our daily conversations and experiences with each other. It was in this house that I had my first conversation with an apprentice beekeeper, a student at the Cook College of Agriculture (one of new brunswick's campuses, with greenhouses, a dairy, a museum of agriculture, ranging sheep meadows-- small by some other schools' standards, perhaps, but this is central new jersey, and the college of agriculture's campus is sandwiched between routes 1, 130 & the NJ Turnpike... the rurality of this small package of land is amazing given its larger geography). I knew the agricultural students in the house less well, and I shyly limited myself to a role of listener more than participant in the conversation, but I learned so much about the work of bees, and the love for bees that grew out of working with them, that day. That conversation has had a long-reaching influence on the way I see the value of organic eating, buying and farming, this in turn has had an influence on what I share with my students to this day.
I mention all this only because it's the end of another school year, and I have been reflecting an awful lot about why I think and feel the way I do, in particular about ecology and the teaching of it.
As the saying goes, you teach what you know, you know? And you know what you know because you once had your senses and mind open in fertile places.
Rutgers may get a bum rap in its home state, but don't believe a word of it. Good things happen in its classrooms, and good things happen, also, over the kitchen tables dotting its off-campus neighborhoods, too.
Thank you, again, to all the wonderful people who walked me to where I am today (ms. biache, where are you today?). I'm still learning, but thank you for what you have contributed to my own journey as a learner so far.
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