BUILDING AN OCEAN LEGACY THROUGH OCEAN LITERACY
Friday Aug 2, 2013
Thirty years ago, I found myself in the northern sub-artic tundra in the middle of October. The
town of Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, is on a polar bear migration route so, in October, there are
big white bears everywhere. One day I was out near the town dump when I saw a mother and
three cubs lying motionless near a man with a gun. I drove over to see what he was doing. It
turned out that he was a biologist studying the bears. He shot tranquilizer darts into them and
then began to measure and examine them. He weighed the cubs but needed my help to weigh the
mother. Then he had to move them, to take them to a safe place until the tranquilizer wore off.
He asked me to help him lift the 312 pound mother into his truck. Then we each took a cub in our
arms and laid them next to her. Lifting a wild carnivore that weighs more than you do is sobering,
to say the least. It caused me to be very present, to be in the world in a way that I’m usually not. I
have tried many times since to convey what it is like to hold a wild young carnivore in my arms.
The exhilaration, the pure joy coupled with deep respect forged an intimacy I had never felt before
and never felt since.
Unfortunately as we strive to teach our children to be in nature, to celebrate and cherish it, the
natural world is changing dramatically. In thirty short years, the large white bears that I held in
my arms have become endangered. Our children may never have a chance to hold a small bear cub
and experience the magic of that simple act.
In Sylvia Earl’s book The World is Blue, she writes about speaking with astronaut, Joe Allen. The
subject came around to the astronaut’s space suits. She asked him a number of questions and he
told her how important the space suits were. The suits were the life support systems for the
astronauts in a cold, environment void of oxygen, water, and everything else needed for human
survival. He told her that if the suits failed then the astronaut would die.
It is a pretty simple equation. If the life support system fails, then life dies. They spoke some more
and she asked him what he had seen from space. He pointed to a picture and said. “Life Support.”
Image from NASA – Public Domain
The parallel is obvious. We need to learn everything we can about our life support system. Unlike
an astronaut’s space suit the earth is magnificently able to maintain itself, at least it was until
recently. Most of the current ecosystems on our planet are under tremendous stress from a single
species. That species has managed to magnify the normal extinction rate by more than a hundred
times. It has changed the temperature of the planet and the acidity of the ocean. It has created a
garbage patch in the Pacific Basin that is conservatively estimated at 700,000 square kilometers,
1
BUILDING AN OCEAN LEGACY THROUGH OCEAN LITERACY
Friday Aug 2, 2013
bigger than France. As an invasive species, humans have become incredibly destructive to every
environment they have lived in.
If you look at a picture of earth from space the most striking feature is that it is mostly blue, mostly
water. Three quarters of our planet is covered by one ocean which contains 97% of all life. It
influences the weather for the entire planet. It supplies one half of all the oxygen we breathe.
We know very little about the ocean. We have explored at best only 5% of the ocean while we have
killed 90% of all its large fish. Currently five of the seventeen major fisheries that feed much of the
earth’s population have collapsed. This includes the fisheries in the Stellwegen Banks off the New
England coast, where I live. The North Atlantic was one of the richest fisheries in the world. I have
seen its collapse first hand. Now there are days when our Gloucester fishermen return with
meager catches.
We must learn to live on the earth in a different way. Our children will need not only to
understand the natural world with their mind, their heart, and their spirit but will also need to act
in that world to stop the crushing damage we have caused and are still causing.
So what do we do?
I believe, that as Montessori educators we must do two things. First, we must engender wonder,
passion and curiosity about our ocean. People protect what they love. We know more about the
ocean than ever before but where is the wonder, the magic in our curriculum? We can teach about
the ocean but we must also help our children embrace the ocean. It is no longer enough to teach
about nature. We must engage with it in the deepest possible way.
Secondly, we must help the children understand our relationship to the ocean. Montessori Cosmic
Education starts big. It shows the children where we are in the universe, the world. We must also
show where we are with the ocean and how interdependent we are with it. The ocean is the life
support system of the earth. All life began in the ocean and our lives depend on its health. How can
we tell the story of the earth without the ocean at the very center?
We have an extraordinary agency in the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. NOAA has published seven principles for ocean education. They are online at
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/literacy/ocean_literacy.pdf. I also have them on my web
site at http://www.gaiaschild.org/II/NOAA_OceanLiteracy.pdf.
When I was teaching Upper Elementary, we had the wonderful tradition of a thematic year. One
spring, we were honored to have Deborah Cramer, author of Smithsonian Ocean, speak to us on the
importance of Ocean Literacy. We decided that the following year’s theme would be the ocean.
All learning begins with experience. With the exception of infants and toddlers, every class
participated in our Going Out program, which was centered on the ocean. Children’s house went to
the rocky tide pools and observed the life there, discussing it for many days that followed each
outing. Lower Elementary was challenged to compare the sandy beach with the rocky beach. Why
were they different? What caused each?
2
BUILDING AN OCEAN LEGACY THROUGH OCEAN LITERACY
Friday Aug 2, 2013
My upper elementary class went to the beach every week. We started at Patch Beach where the
ancient granite rocks show a black basalt intrusion, rock that had come from what is now the
continent of Africa when we were part of Pangaea. The students wrote in their journals, wrote
ocean poems, and brought back salt water for their science class. At other times, we went to the
rocky tide pools of Lynch Beach. Working in small groups, the students made careful notes of the
kinds of life they saw - both plant and animal. Because they had visited this beach many times
before, they noticed a decrease in the number of starfish (sea stars) and Periwinkles. We diverted
our science curriculum for a month to explore the question of why these species had seemed to
decrease in just a few years.
The students, in groups, did significant research and came up with several hypotheses. They
presented their ideas to each other and engaged in scientific debate. One group suggested that
ocean warming was killing the starfish. Another group argued that starfish reproduce faster in
warmer water.
We would not find the answer until the same students were in middle school, where we continued
our engagement with the ocean. We participated in a study of invasive species and found that
Asian Crabs, that had been introduced to our area several years earlier, were preying on the
starfish and Periwinkles.
As well as Going Out, we added an ocean focus to our science curriculum. We found that we could
tie the ocean to most units of the existing program. Any unit on climate and weather needs lessons
on the great ocean currents. Life originated in the ocean and almost any lesson on Biology is tied
in to the ocean. Land forms, tectonic plates and many other physical science lessons were tied to
the ocean as was history and many cultural lessons.
We began to realize how central the ocean is to almost everything.
Our art teacher worked closely with us to develop an ocean focus as well. The creation of the
“Fossil Club” promoted wonder about where life began (in the ocean) and how it has changed. The
children in lower elementary drew imaginary fish that might be found in the 95% of the ocean that
remains unexplored. Children drew pictures and created coral reefs in several different media, all
the while learning and talking about them.
In the 1980’s, Harvey Hallenberg developed the idea of students creating an Imaginary Island. I
loved the idea and decided to do it as a year long project for my 6th year students. Each student did
several units of research, each of which tied into their three year science curriculum:

The Geography and Geology chapter allowed them to use their studies of latitude and
longitude, tectonic plates, ocean currents and weather and climate to think about how
each impacted their island.

The Biology and Ecology chapter allowed them to use their studies of food chains and
biomes to think about how life on the island worked.

The History and Culture of the Island allowed them to use their cultural
studies to tie their island’s history to that of the rest of the world.
3
BUILDING AN OCEAN LEGACY THROUGH OCEAN LITERACY

Friday Aug 2, 2013
The Ocean chapter helped them realize and describe how all of the elements of the
island were tied to the ocean.
Students built relief models of their islands in the art room. A parent who was an architect
volunteered to show the students how to scale their islands. The students painted their island
with colors representing the different ecosystems on the island and surrounding ocean.
Each student created a presentation of his or her island discussing all the elements and then
showing a particular element of their island. This allowed the students to connect their passion to
the island. One student created an underwater art gallery to show her paintings that she had done
over the year. Another served us all a bowl of fruit soup she made from the “fruit found on my
island”.
The final project consisted of a five chapter book (20 pages) about their island, a one meter square
painted relief model, and a presentation to the entire school community.
The Ocean Timeline
Two colleages and I have created a cosmic timeline centered on the ocean. This ocean timeline
helps children understand the importance of the ocean in their lives. The timeline begins with the
Big Bang and the formation of our earth. It traces the development of life in the ocean and its move
to the land. I have used it to launch many of our science units. When teaching Life Science, I use it
to start the course and then use the individual posters of events to demonstrate the changes life
has undergone. Students understand how long life has existed in the ocean and how it supports
our lives on the land.
Passionate understanding of our interdependence with the ocean is central to our larger
connection with nature. Connecting to nature is critical for our children’s survival. We live now on
the cusp of a great choice. If we choose to turn our backs on nature, we may not survive.
But the worst case scenario is not that we will fail to survive but that we may survive and remain
destroyers of life, of ecosystems. We may survive but so degrade the planet that we are left bereft
of beauty, soul-less and hollow.
We must teach our children what it means to be caring, compassionate human beings, connected
to all life on the planet. We need to help them see and understand the beauty of the system that we
are part of. In teaching the understanding of our ocean we must convey our passion about the
birthplace of life, the nurturing waters that surround us and support everything else that happens
on the earth. I believe we need an ocean curriculum in Montessori schools that stresses the
wonder, the beauty, the power and the fragility of our one ocean.
Victor Young August 2nd 2013
www.teachingoneocean.com
4