Art, Design, and Biology

Rationale

Our students’ future will require them to utilize the largest amount of data ever. The need to effectively interpret this data will show that neurodivergent thinking compliments ways in which we think about the environment. Environmental biologists use data to measure and explore impacts of climate change, especially in Humboldt Park. Data comes in many forms, and one way to analyze it is through comparing visual depictions of historical art and conditions that can be observed today. The comparison between the past and present allows for some explanation for problems with our school garden and its potential for success in the near future. Working to answer these questions together, my students and I will investigate The 606 trail, Humboldt Park’s biodiversity and biogeography, architecture and organisms that live among us. My biology class includes projects that require unique problem solving strategies. Many of our classes start with a lab that leads to generating questions about outcomes. Conducting experiments reveal more problems and more questions, thus making a thousand happy accidents that we, as a class, can learn from.  The purpose of this practice is to teach neurotypical high school students to learn to accept neurodiverse peers’ contributions to solving a problem. It is essential to include within problem based learning many ways to look at a challenge and many ways to rise to it so that a positive outcome is achieved. It takes all students’ unique thinking and application of theories to create the best results.

Teenagers have a difficult time accepting themselves and each other. By setting classroom norms that are inclusive, each student has a chance to contribute and to be heard. In my class labs are always conducted in teams. All students contribute in their way and our class acknowledges all of the creative and compelling responses to improving shared spaces, like our school garden and Humboldt Park.  Chicago’s Humboldt Park is known locally as the Puerto Rican neighborhood. Officially named Barrio Borikén by the people in 2024⁴, a rich woven community of many nationalities and cultures converge in this special area on the West Side of Chicago.

My research has uncovered that German and Eastern Europeans, Jews and Poles settled the area in the 1870s. Additionally, I learned that Alexander Von Humboldt⁵ traveled throughout the Caribbean, Latin and South America (Fig. 1).  For five years, he documented in his journals large swaths of land, minerals, and animals to take back to Europe and study. He is known as putting “South America on the Map”⁶.

Alexander Von Humboldt took notes and kept journals of his exploration of the Spanish Americas, including the Orinoco River through Venezuela and Colombia. “Humboldt compiled, analysed, and represented that data in tables and distribution maps alongside prose that urged an aesthetic appreciation of nature.”⁷

Figure 1 “A. de Humboldt's large map of New Spain and other materials.”

He detailed in writing vast descriptions of areas covered by forests, plants, animals, fish, and birds. He understood the importance of relying on his observations as well as his sketches to catalog and count his samples during his travels.

Revealing small details by writing notes and drawing pictures, Humboldt delivered to the world a complete picture of his physical view of the lands he saw. He designed cut-aways of the Earth’s crust, he was able to imaging layers under the ocean, he could see in his imagination and draw the settings accurately - similarly to how we understand how the neurodivergent students process information today.⁸

Alexander Von Humboldt used art to explain ecology and biogeography. He understood that specifically landscape paintings, “explained transformations in artistic depictions of nature to transformations in our knowledge about nature.”⁹ By utilizing paintings and drawings, Humboldt teaches us to examine nature in a fixed location, humans’ impact on it, and its change over time. He was concerned with farming practices in South America, particularly as he had witnessed a drought caused by the removal of trees for farming. He made the connection that the soil nourished the trees and the trees nourished the soil. He learned by talking to the indigenous people and by listening to the enslaved workers, that indeed areas of land and forest were irreparably harmed due to human interference. He also witnessed, particularly in Cuba and Mexico, that enslaved Africans were removing essential plants and soils all the while not being compensated or respected for their expertise and knowledge of the land. Humboldt used his [political] connections to help American slaves. With Humboldt’s prodding, the Prussian King enacted a law in 1857 that any slave would become free once on Prussian soil.¹⁰ Humboldt understood that man supported nature and that nature supported man. He also articulated that man supported man and he abhorred slavery. Many notes in his journals record his witness to harm done to man, by man. Humboldt knew in the 1870s that communities, people and the environment must inform each other. There could be no other way for biodiversity to succeed in any ecosystem and last the tests of time. However, city planners have been successful at avoiding this basic rule of mutual benefit in Chicago for years. As current at April 2025, a study conducted by Ahram Cho revealed that residents in the southern part of Humboldt Park may be particularly vulnerable to highly allergenic species like London Planetree and White Mulberry, which have a high allergenicity rating of 4 and have been included in the planting list for the greening of the area by city authorities.¹¹ The City did not ask residents to participate in the greening and renewal of the southern section of Humboldt Park. As a result, they planted the wrong trees, essentially exacerbating the asthma of the residents, when in fact, the goal was to relieve it by planting trees.

Alexander Von Humboldt’s scientific alliances and partnerships with various countries in the nineteenth century seemed to have little, to no connection to our Boricua heritage today. However, by connecting the past with the current, a beautiful link between the communities and the celebration for the natural is slowly revealing itself in a positive and significant way. In 2025, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Great Cities Institute has set a goal to bring scientists and residents in Humboldt Park together to solve the pollution issues in the neighborhood. A cross-collaboration between UIC and institutions collecting data about climate science formed a working group called CROCUS (Community Research on Climate and Urban Science). CROCUS specifically combines the anecdotes from the residents’ and develops methods to combat climate change and pollution. “Climate change became a top priority for Humboldt Park’s leaders after Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.”¹² It only took 170 years, but scientists and residents of Humboldt Park are finally informing each other to preserving culture and climate in the Barrio Borikén.