Frogs

Holly Hogan

EN 102

2/09/18




Author Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses a time where she took her college students outside for a lesson. They spent time along the Lake and exploring the wilderness. This is something that I believe is important for her students, so to understand their environment. I believe that in order for people to comprehend anything, they must first hand experience or witness what they want to learn. To be immersed in education is highly beneficial to learn.

I remember being a small child and knowing that springtime was “frogtime”. This was the time of year when my mother, who is an elementary school teacher, would watch frog eggs hatch with her students. I would visit her classroom, and impatiently wait for the tadpoles would swim out of their jelly-covered marbles and greet us with their rotund bodies and slippery tails. My mother was teaching us the life-cycle of amphibians, in a hands on approach, instead of the textbook method.

Once the eggs hatched, and the tadpoles grew to pollywogs, we saw them gain their funny little legs, and lose their slimy tails, becoming frogs. The frogs outgrew their tank, and were then placed back in their home of a small fishpond in my yard. From here, we fed the frogs and watched them grow to be large and fat. I would always try to catch them, and treat them like pets.



Sometimes we learn best outside of a classroom, when our noses are not stuffed in textbooks, but instead a flower. When we are seeing how butterflies make cocoons, instead of being cocooned by walls. We cannot expect students to comprehend a subject until they are immersed in it themselves. Learning and experience are different things, but they go hand in hand.