As an outdoor educator, I am beholden to the long-standing (or sitting) tradition of gathering our students in a circle. This tradition is unquestioned largely, but I have put in a surprisingly large amount of time thinking about circles and not just the circles we gather to talk to our students. Humans as a species have gathered in circles since time immemorial, long before recorded history. In fact, there are circles we cannot see but feel and know are there intuitively – such as social groups. So, with that, I pose a prompt for educators. What happens when you start to open your mind to the circles around and in you? I believe this may help both educators and students to facilitate development in systems thinking.
It is a well-studied phenomenon that humans are naturally drawn to circles. Our brain’s amygdala has been shown to react to sharp shapes, indicating a fear response. Curvilinear shapes, however, create a sense of safety and peace that we are drawn to for both aesthetic and psychological reasons. If given no directions and left to our own devices, studies have shown that people will walk in circles when feeling lost, rather than in a straight line. Back to the example mentioned previously, gathering socially in a circle allows all faces to be seen and all voices to be heard, making it an excellent environment for creating a sense of community.
The community we naturally connect with is that of the people around us, but as environmental educators, we can expand on this circle to represent the ecosystem, wherein all things are connected. I have created a thought exercise to help anyone (especially your students) reflect through systems thinking in circle-terms:
Have your students gather outdoors in a circle and link hands. Ask them to close their eyes and now picture what circles – cycles even – are happening within them. Let’s expand that now to the community of people they are standing hand in hand with. Note the circle is bigger – what does each person bring to the circle, what do YOU bring to the circle? If you are standing outside, you will notice you are encircling a small part of the ecosystem. What living and non-living beings exist in that space? What are the things they are doing every day? What cycles are they a part of? (Cue “Circle of Life” here perhaps). The circle can get bigger! Think of a giant hula-hoop plopping down on your group that also encompasses their homes and families, the communities they exist in outside of this moment. What are more circles? Maybe social circles? Friends? What would you call the ecosystem that covers more of this area? Is there a watershed or two? Now let’s zoom out on Earth! It’s also a circle – how did it come to be? And we can zoom out on our galaxy. Stars are being born and dying, new galaxies are forming… and we, this little group playing and learning in the woods, the desert, our playgrounds, maybe the beach, are all a part of it.
I envision this exercise as a way to close off and reflect on the time spent together, but the possibilities are endless. I have practiced this exercise sitting on the beaches of Catalina Island, hands and feet in the sand, learning about astronomy – there are more stars than particles of sand on our planet. I have been a practitioner of systems-thinking since well before I entered my undergraduate career.
Early childhood development and into adolescence centers on defining a sense of self. Practicing visualizing circles during this period helps with that, but also makes steps to seeing oneself as a part of something larger a little bit easier. I remember learning about food chains before getting into food webs growing up. Changing the food chains into a food circle early on – so including decomposers- would make the transition into the food web and greater biogeochemical cycles less rocky. Humans love circles, our brains don’t like abrupt changes in direction or stops – so why not practice following our natural intuition?
As an outdoor educator, I am beholden to the long-standing (or sitting) tradition of gathering our students in a circle. This tradition is unquestioned largely, but I have put in a surprisingly large amount of time thinking about circles and not just the circles we gather to talk to our students. Humans as a species have gathered in circles since time immemorial, long before recorded history. In fact, there are circles we cannot see but feel and know are there intuitively – such as social groups. So, with that, I pose a prompt for educators. What happens when you start to open your mind to the circles around and in you? I believe this may help both educators and students to facilitate development in systems thinking.
It is a well-studied phenomenon that humans are naturally drawn to circles. Our brain’s amygdala has been shown to react to sharp shapes, indicating a fear response. Curvilinear shapes, however, create a sense of safety and peace that we are drawn to for both aesthetic and psychological reasons. If given no directions and left to our own devices, studies have shown that people will walk in circles when feeling lost, rather than in a straight line. Back to the example mentioned previously, gathering socially in a circle allows all faces to be seen and all voices to be heard, making it an excellent environment for creating a sense of community.
The community we naturally connect with is that of the people around us, but as environmental educators, we can expand on this circle to represent the ecosystem, wherein all things are connected. I have created a thought exercise to help anyone (especially your students) reflect through systems thinking in circle-terms:
Have your students gather outdoors in a circle and link hands. Ask them to close their eyes and now picture what circles – cycles even – are happening within them. Let’s expand that now to the community of people they are standing hand in hand with. Note the circle is bigger – what does each person bring to the circle, what do YOU bring to the circle? If you are standing outside, you will notice you are encircling a small part of the ecosystem. What living and non-living beings exist in that space? What are the things they are doing every day? What cycles are they a part of? (Cue “Circle of Life” here perhaps). The circle can get bigger! Think of a giant hula-hoop plopping down on your group that also encompasses their homes and families, the communities they exist in outside of this moment. What are more circles? Maybe social circles? Friends? What would you call the ecosystem that covers more of this area? Is there a watershed or two? Now let’s zoom out on Earth! It’s also a circle – how did it come to be? And we can zoom out on our galaxy. Stars are being born and dying, new galaxies are forming… and we, this little group playing and learning in the woods, the desert, our playgrounds, maybe the beach, are all a part of it.
I envision this exercise as a way to close off and reflect on the time spent together, but the possibilities are endless. I have practiced this exercise sitting on the beaches of Catalina Island, hands and feet in the sand, learning about astronomy – there are more stars than particles of sand on our planet. I have been a practitioner of systems-thinking since well before I entered my undergraduate career.
Early childhood development and into adolescence centers on defining a sense of self. Practicing visualizing circles during this period helps with that, but also makes steps to seeing oneself as a part of something larger a little bit easier. I remember learning about food chains before getting into food webs growing up. Changing the food chains into a food circle early on – so including decomposers- would make the transition into the food web and greater biogeochemical cycles less rocky. Humans love circles, our brains don’t like abrupt changes in direction or stops – so why not practice following our natural intuition?
