A Change of Scenery

This week, we looked at Transcendentalism in Humanities class.  This comes as part of our broader examination of how worldview shifts over time, and impacts the decisions people make (and the art people produce, and the poems people write, and...).

The students watched a short lecture video that I made containing background information on the Transcendental movement in preparation for a discussion of an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, "Nature" during class on Wednesday.

Then, on Thursday, we read a couple of poems by Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman.  The weather forecast for that day was sunny, and if not warm, then at least not terribly cold.

So, I told the students to get their coats from their lockers and we headed down to the plaza, where the students read and discussed the poems in small groups.  The discussions were thoughtful and fun to listen to, and there was something so refreshing about enjoying poetry about the outdoors, outdoors.

Sometimes, it's nice to have a change of scenery!

Photo credit, Ushio Sawada