On Wednesday, November 9, our class took a field trip to Birch Aquarium in La Jolla. It was magical to watch their faces, glowing with eerie, underwater light, drink in the fascinating mysteries of the sea. They grabbed their sketchbooks with the excitement and seriousness of a new mission, and set off with crayons and colored pencils to record the visions floating before them. I've never seen children in an aquarium so intent and focussed as this group with their sketches. With tools in hand, they were given the opportunity to slow down and be still in the moment. To reach through the glass with their silent, observing eyes so that they might more faithfully impress their papers with the truth of what they saw. How to get the shapes of those many fluid legs right. How to show the constant dancing movement of the fins. How to capture neon colors and translucent skins... They went from one window to the next, never tiring.
And then they learned about sharks. About fusiform, cartilage-filled bodies. About teeth that continuously fall out, the 6th sense that helps with hunting, and the persistence of millions of years of existence. They enacted a 6th-sense game where one played shark and another played prey. They pet a born-in-captivity baby. And they learned the long fancy name for those freckles on the shark responsible for their "6th" sense -- but I can't tell you what that is; I only remembered it for about 20 seconds.
Afterward, they thought it very sad that people would catch sharks just to cut off their fins for soup and then throw them back into the ocean. They understood that sharks do not seek out humans for lunch -- they don't even like the taste of us, actually. It's just too bad we look like seals sometimes. They had a much better idea of what's going on under the shimmering surface of our expansive back yard. And a feeling to take care of it, as it takes care of us in so many ways.
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