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Archived Events
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While touring the scenic mountains of North Carolina, Woodlawn School's 7th and 8th graders considered topics ranging from elk relocation to the politics of Southern visual art. We started our odyssey in historic downtown Asheville at the Asheville art museum. The exhibit was called, "Thinking with Blood: Conflict and Culture in the American South." A student writes of the exhibit,
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"This exhibit seems to send out a message that displays the Southern stereotypes, racism, and self-destruction of the [Civil War] conflict. Old ways that destroyed lives, communities, and homes were emphasized in many of these pieces of art. In the whole exhibit, you don't see any pieces that are just art for art's sake. They all have a message..."
Before catching species of trout food (the mayfly, caddis fly, and stone fly), we learned we had to keep our distance from the elk, a species currently involved in a North Carolina Wildlife Feasibility Study. A feasibility study is a scientific way to release the animals in a safe environment and study their population growth while observing their daily life. We imagined the elks' lives as our own and wrote narratives from their point of view:
"I cannot remember Canada. I don't see why I should miss it because the broad, juicy leaves here taste just fine. Sometimes, though, I do wonder what lies beyond the blue hills in the distance. Perhaps there is a place where the trees have no leaves and the fields have no grass. For now, though, I should just think about closer things..."
Finally, we stopped by the home of the late Carl Sandburg, the poet in search of the American voice. A Woodlawn student writes from an imagined Sandburg perspective:
"At home I sit out on the top porch. My home looks over the Blue Ridge Mountains. We just moved here in the fall, to an old home that's about 100 years old. My wife and I love the traditional setting, and the environment makes me want to write a lot."
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