After reading about wolves, some of Stephen Blair’s students were able to see some up close during a recent field trip to the Wolf Conservation Center in Salem, New York.
Blair, who teaches English at the Resilience Academy, likes to bring nature into the classroom. This year, his students read, “To Build a Fire,” by Jack London, a short story about a man traveling with a dog described as “the proper wolf-dog, gray-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf.” The pair were traveling along a trail in temperatures that went to 75 below zero.
In the story, the man succumbs to the cold while the dog survives.
“It made me think about the vulnerability we have to nature,” Blair said.
The students looked at the story from the dog’s perspective. “They were interested in looking at the instinctual intellect of the dog and the man’s reasoning” for his actions, Blair said.
As they discussed this, Blair had students read about the differences between wolves and dogs. He spoke with them about the center and several expressed interest in going.
While at the center, the six students were able to see the wolves up close in an educational setting and hear a presentation on their environment, preservation and how wolves have been mythologized in American culture.
On the way home, as a reward for proper behavior, students ate lunch at McDonald’s.
