Lessons in Nature

“We went to Fore River Sanctuary on Thursday.  I could hear the water from the waterfall but it didn’t have a lot of water in it. And I could also hear birds but I didn’t see them. I saw a squirrel and I saw a big spider web! And I touched the moss. It felt soft. […] Everything was so lovely! The thing I loved the most was the Aster and Goldenrod flowers. They were so beautiful. […] I touched Maple leaves and Oak leaves. I felt so relaxed in Fore River Sanctuary, overall it was a very peaceful experience, and an amazing place.”

 That’s how one of Shoshana Hoose’s former ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) students described their class’s field trip to Jewell Falls. Each year, Shoshana leads her students on a walk through the Fore River Sanctuary, naming the trees they pass, the birds they hear, and the flowers they smell. Her students take notes as they go, not just of their new vocabulary, but also how being in the natural world makes them feel. “Being in a very quiet area full of trees with rivers, I felt relaxed,” wrote another student in their post-field trip reflection.

Shoshana enjoying time in Baxter Woods this winter

Shoshana, recipient of the Maine Adult Education Association’s Outstanding Teacher Award in 2023, teaches English to New Mainers at Portland Adult Education (PAE). She has been taking her classes on field trips to the trails since 2018, when she shifted her curriculum to incorporate information about Portland. “One of the things I love to do is tell students about free resources that are available to them,” she said. “The trails are just an obviously great resource, and many students don’t know too much about them.”

Ahead of her field trips, students read a short article Shoshana has written about Portland Trails, and then she shares a slideshow to review the plants and animals they might see on the trails, “some of which they’re familiar with and some of which they aren’t,” she says. “Before we go, every single time, students freak out about snakes. Over and over again, they ask about snakes and whether they’re poisonous.”

“Our field trip on Portland Trails started when we left PAE, we walked to Metro at the bus station. I was excited to see the Portland Trails. We took the Metro Bus number 4. We walked for a few minutes before we arrived at the site. There, we heard the songs of the birds, we smelled the fresh air of the field, and we saw many interesting things.”

As an ESOL student describes above, one of Shoshana’s key lessons begins on the way to the trail. “The students realize how easy it is to get to the trails from METRO,” says Shoshana. “They’re much more likely to go back themselves when they see how quickly they can get there. It becomes a more meaningful field trip.” The transit commute and short walk from the Hillcrest Ave. trailhead to Jewell Falls is an easy trek for her students, who can range in age from their early 20s to mid-70s.

For most of her students, this is their first visit to the Portland Trails network. “A lot of my students tell me they haven’t been in a natural area since they left their home country,” says Shoshana. Ahead of the trip, her students can feel nervous about the unknowns, but after their visit to the sanctuary, many of them “are really thrilled by it,” she says. “It’s a revelation for them that these trails exist and they can get to them so easily.”

“I heard different sounds of birds singing to glorify God.” 

“I felt the good fresh air, the perfume, the aroma that came from the flowers, the grass with the morning dew.”

“I felt very good, I was not alone but with all my class and the teachers, I felt a lot of people around me. Sometimes, when I stay at home, I go out for a walk; take in the air, the sun, the good oxygen of the trees, for 2 hours or more. and I draw new inspirations by looking at nature. and that day I got a lot of inspiration while touring the Portland trails.”

 The primary goal of these field trips is for the students to learn new vocabulary. When they’re walking through the woods, “We look at tree holes, we look at moss. It can be a really tactile experience,” says Shoshana.

One student took photos of tree holes made by woodpeckers

However, she also hopes these trips to the trails inspire emotional reflection. “It’s about how they can use their language to describe the quietness or some of the different sounds they heard.” She’s had students write beautiful, poetic descriptions about their experiences, demonstrating the emotional resonance of these field trips.

Shoshana began this tradition five years before Portland Trails’ inclusion program, Healthier Neighborhoods for All (HNFA), kicked off in 2023. Since then, Portland Trails has partnered with ESOL teachers of all levels at PAE to introduce hundreds of New Mainers to the trails. Together, the HNFA program and Shoshana’s field trips are helping to reduce the barriers that prevent some community members from enjoying this free resource.

“The last time we went to Jewell Falls, the students loved seeing the signs there welcoming people in different languages,” she says. “That was a hit.”

“I saw many beautiful flowers of different colors, some were white and others were red, l also saw others yellow, all the flowers had different aromas, the flowers that l liked the most were the yellow ones because their aroma was very nice. You can also see many birds that sang very beautifully one of them was my favorite bird which is the chickadee. l also found different kind of mushroom, some were gray color and others were red color, the gray ones l found in the trees and on the ground, and the red ones l found on the ground. The nature is the most beautiful in the world.”