Biocitizen Day Trips provide students with exciting immersive experiences in the vibrant pocket-wilderness areas of our
Los Angeles River biome.
Over the course of the day, students learn to identify the native flora and fauna that characterize our delicate ecosystems. They are encouraged open their senses to the beauties and complexities that surround them, and the questions they raise invite discussions about the roles each organism plays in the biome, the larger life that we all share. Through that combination of physical exertion, stimulated intellect and emotional feeling, they begin to appreciate that they too are a member of and participant in what Aldo Leopold called the “land community”.
“When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
-Aldo Leopold
Through our place-based curriculum, Biocitizen participants develop a historical awareness that is biocultural: ecology and cultural history are the same subject. We consider the historical interactions humans have had with our natural environments here in California and how those interactions have impacted local ecosystems.
Every day trip is a Field Environmental Philosophy learning-adventure; we are detectives on an eco-treasure hunt, helping each other up the ridge and over the stream, gathering clues and puzzle pieces, sharing what we perceive and what we know, gasping at the views, telling stories, putting things together, breathing the fresh air: bonding with each other and with our place – Los Angeles.
