Overnight on the Island

I have been making slow, but steady progress in my effort to contact and interview participants in last year’s Explorers Day on Governors Island program. I’m up to six interviews now, and I am hopeful that I can do at least two more. I have tried calling everyone on my list and eliminated those numbers that are disconnected or never answered. Now I just need to actually talk with some people for whom I have left messages!

I have been transcribing my interviews as I go along, so I can already begin looking through them for themes. I am noticing that the participants were particularly interested in the historical aspects of the island, that they enjoyed the opportunity to meet youth from other groups, and that the primary environmental education lesson learned was to pick up one’s trash. I am especially interested in the youths’ perceptions of how wild or developed Governors Island is. Some described being outdoors and camping for the first time as a great adventure while others mentioned that they were expecting fewer buildings, but for all of them, the experience of spending two days and a night on a deserted island without amenities was a real journey away from home. The proximity to Manhattan and Brooklyn improved the view at night but did not really foster a sense that they were learning about their own environment and own history. For the youth, the experience was more about trying new things with new people.

Because my dissertation research focuses on memory as an indicator of program impact and explores how the residential component of an environmental education experience can lead to more influential, longer-lasting episodic memories, I began my CUSP research with a similar focus. I was wondering what the youth would remember and what aspects of the program would stand out. However, as I struggle to increase my sample size and reflect on my interviewees’ comments, I am beginning to wonder whether I might more effectively frame this study in relation to a different research question. My original dissertation plan was to explore the different learning outcomes created by day and overnight programs. A few days ago, it occurred to me that combining my interview data with my observations and informal assessments of this year’s one day programs could be quite useful. The activities, location, and participants are similar—just the length is different. Based on my interviews, I am now particularly curious how the knowledge that one is camping out on the island influences feelings of novelty, excitement, remoteness, and applicability of learning to home. Combing data collected a year later with those collected on-site still bothers me a little after emphasizing the unique value of long-term reflection in another study, but I am excited about adding this new day-residential lens to my work. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me earlier, seeing as how I wrote pages and pages on the topic last summer for my A-exam!