The Antelope Van

Remarks by Program Leader Zhang Hehe

As soon as you reach the Friends of Nature's homepage, a cute icon will immediately attract your attention: a van under towering green trees. This Antelope Van is the Friends of Nature mobile educational classroom.

Both the educational philosophy and the teaching materials of the Antelope Van originate from the concept of Flow Learning, which is now quite popular in the West. It features educational activities emphasizing and evoking a love of nature.

During the past few years, the Antelope Van project has not only gained practical experience but also introduced original reference materials to China. Equipped with teaching materials and facilities, the Antelope Van offers children in Beijing and other places opportunities to play nature games, participate in environmental education and perform on-site investigations. Over the years, the Van has visited hundreds of schools, sharing environment-related educational activities with thousands of students.

As an educator and organizer in charge of the Antelope Van project, I believe Flow Learning in China is facing several challenges., These not only include certain aspects of how students are taught, but also, more strikingly and more urgently, whether we educators have digested and understood the essence of Flow Learning thoroughly enough. Have we paid too much attention to the form of operation and the method of application? Perhaps the real goal of Flow Learning-building and sharing emotions-is being neglected.

As to the result of environmental education, we consider the spontaneous actions of students a wonderful reward for the teachers.

Here is an example: one summer vacation I took ten children to a mountain to experience nature. While we were appreciating the gifts of mountain and stream, we saw some trash by the stream. Apparently some tourists had had a picnic and left the trash on the spot. When I was feeling sorry about the scene, the children had already started to take action-they collected the trash in bags and tied them to their backpacks. Later, when they were sharing the feelings and motivation for their action, I learned that it was the mountain spring that aroused their desire to protect the natural environment. Although they only stopped by the clear spring for a brief rest, they fell in love with it.

Finally, I would like to extend an invitation to those who are interested in our program. The Antelope Van program for natural education is now five years old. It is necessary for us to reflect on what we have done in the past. If you are interested in Flow Learning, if you have read books such as Sharing Nature with Children and want to share them with others, or if you have tried similar teaching activities, please get in touch with us.
(Translated by Guan Hui)

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