Campus Without Boundaries: The Brooklyn Green Walk

Abstract

This chapter considers how interdisciplinary education that reaches outside the classroom and encourages the mixing of student-teacher roles can engage students and transform general education by looking at a walking tour, the Brooklyn GreenWalk, developed and led by students at New York City College of Technology on the topic of urban sustainability in 2008. The chapter starts with an overview of the project and then gives a detailed account of its evolution. Then, each of the faculty narrates the stops of the tour that were lead by his or her students. The chapter uses Richard E. Miller’s comparison of “writing to tell” and “writing to see” to consider the differences between “teaching to tell” and “teaching to see.” John Trimbur is referenced in a consideration of how to move beyond the traditional model of authority in the classroom. In conclusion, the impact of the Green Walk project on the college as a whole is mentioned.

“Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!”

Walt Whitman