Our Daily Bread

I watched "Our Daily Bread" and it had a very powerful impact on me. I feel that since there was no direct talking to the camera and just listening to the sounds of industrialization made it's point stronger. This movie is very powerful in the sense that it is very persuasive to try and change people's eating and consuming habits. More than anything I think this movie just opened my eyes to the horrors that are happening behind the scenes of our food, mainly. Initially this movie is a good educational tool, but it doesn't really set up people with ways to change their daily habits. Industrial food is EVERYWHERE so it's very hard for most people to change where they get there food right away. Changing people's habits and perspectives is going to take a lot of time. I think this movie portrayed awareness and knowledge but it didn't give people options of what to do next and how to act, which is what environmental education does.

This movie had a big impact on me because I am already environmentally aware, but I feel that people who don't have the same perspective as me wouldn't think anything is wrong with industrialization. A lot of people think that industrialization is the best thing that has happened to this world. But this movie might change people's perspectives a little by the method of filming. The movie was filmed by showing what goes on behind the scenes. It was very interesting to see and hear what went on behind the doors of the industrial chaos. I actually had to watch the movie is segments because I could only handle so much! I watched this movie a few weeks ago so not all the images are still vivid in my mind, but the one image that I can still clearly see is the mass amount of little baby chickens riding on these escalator things to be checked and then shipped off to live in a tiny, dark room until they were big enough to be killed. It was like that for all farm animals but I think the chickens stayed in my mind because they were so tiny and cute and I love eating chicken but after that I felt sick to my stomach.

"Our Daily Bread" did a very good job of portraying it's view and what it wants people to know, but like I said it's hard to change people's perception and habits. The movie changed my perception though and made me want to change my habits. It's hard to get to the farmer's market on Saturdays but I really want to make it a habit. I really liked this movie and I suggests others to watch it.

King Corn as EE-Heck Yeah It Is!!

I believe King Corn is a great example of teaching environmental education. The film is well done, easy to understand, and entertaining (plus, the guys aren't too bad to look at either). It not only tells a story of small town farming communities, but ties it to things that are in our every day lives that we don't think come from small farmers in Iowa. It was also great because you watch the film and not only feel like you are learning something, but that the guys that created the film are learning and about what they are learning their roots to the land.

The film starts off a little slow. We find out that the guys both have great grandfathers who were farmers in the same small town in Iowa. They find a guy to house them and who will let them grow one acre of corn on his land. One acre is pretty small, but when the film start, you get the feeling that they think it is going to be A LOT of hard work. It's amazing to see the process of them growing corn and the small amount of money that is made from their one acre. Since they don't have too much to do in their small acre, they try to follow all the possible places where their corn could end it. They travel to CAFO's, learn about High Fructose Corn Syrup and the low income people that it affects, look at grocery stores at all the ways corn could be used in everyday foods. They then look at the way corn had been grown and used back when their grandfathers were farming and the ways in which farming has changed over the years and who this change has happened.

So why do I consider this EE. Well, it teaches people to think about where their food comes from. When you go into a grocery store, I guess you just assume that everything comes from something that was grown by a little farmer on his farm as you sing "Old MacDonald" in your head. Not the case. Most things do contain corn, but the farmer has so little to do with the production of this corn that it doesn't even feel like a farmer-consumer relationship once it hits the shelves. It also teaches about the affect corn has had on the citizens of the United States and the problems that have come along with it. We learn that because of our diet, we are almost made completely of corn. Well, there's the old saying "you are what you eat" coming to haunt us. They talk about problems with diabetes in young children and the diabetes rates among lower income people. They also talk about the affect soda has had on obesity rates. Not only do you lean about the way corn is grown, the health risks, socio-economic impacts, but also about the history of corn and the way corn and farming has changed over the years. It is sad. It's nothing like us kids from the city would every think of. And, that is the problem, we don't ever have to think of any of it.

Which, is a great thing about the film, it makes you think. It makes you think about what you buy, what you put into your body and what it is doing to you and us as a nation. It makes you think of the farmer that grows this food and the way it must be grown. It makes you think of the injustices that happen to the farmer that doesn't listen to the big corporation and the way they tell him to farm. It makes you think of our change from slow foods to fast food. It makes you think about our connection to our land and to our food. It just makes you think, what else is EE all about?

DIRT! The Movie.

I've been working on curriculum all day long. Hannah went to Michigan for the weekend...a good time to get some work done. After my brain hit 3rd grade overload I decided to watch DIRT! The Movie. I'm not sure where to start. Let me premise the rest of this blog with these tidbits of information: I finished the movie even though I wanted to shut it off after the first 15 minutes; I had to put Mumford and Sons (buy this immediately) on the turntable before I started writing; and I fully recognize this year is going to change my life.

I did hate the first 15 minutes of this movie. Every time I watch a documentary like this I feel that I need to watch it as a 18 year old student. As this 18 year old, I hated it. For some reason the documentary didn't capture my attention at first. I thought Jaime Lee Curtis was going to narrate the whole thing, and I was annoyed. She didn't narrate the whole thing, and I decided to stick it out.

Maybe it's the mood of the day, or maybe it's this movie. I ended up loving it. If I did show this movie to students, I would encourage them to stick through the first half. There are a lot of super cheesy graphics. I don't think these graphics are necessary. I'd delete them if I had super powers. These movie tricks almost caused me to quit, but I'm glad I stuck it out. The movie has a message that can change lives...that's another blog I guess.

Is this advocacy? The movie can definitely be seen as a movie based on advocacy, but it doesn't promote itself as a movie for change. Aren't those the best? The ones that sneak up on you. It did me. I'm not sure if I can look at soil at the same way after seeing this movie. I hope it's not a camp high. I don't want this feeling to change...to fade.

From a friend - Bill McKibben!

But just remember 2 hats and we can wear both of them - we just have to make a choice of when!

-------


http://j.mp/BillGetMad
We’re Hot as Hell and We’re Not Going to Take It Any More
Three Steps to Establish a Politics of Global Warming

By Bill McKibben
7:40am, August 4, 2010

Try to fit these facts together:

* According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.

* A “staggering” new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950.

* Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.

* And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn’t do less than they could have -- they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided not even to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions.

I wrote the first book for a general audience on global warming back in 1989, and I’ve spent the subsequent 21 years working on the issue. I’m a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is fucked up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy.

For many years, the lobbying fight for climate legislation on Capitol Hill has been led by a collection of the most corporate and moderate environmental groups, outfits like the Environmental Defense Fund. We owe them a great debt, and not just for their hard work. We owe them a debt because they did everything the way you’re supposed to: they wore nice clothes, lobbied tirelessly, and compromised at every turn.

By the time they were done, they had a bill that only capped carbon emissions from electric utilities (not factories or cars) and was so laden with gifts for industry that if you listened closely you could actually hear the oinking. They bent over backwards like Soviet gymnasts. Senator John Kerry, the legislator they worked most closely with, issued this rallying cry as the final negotiations began: "We believe we have compromised significantly, and we're prepared to compromise further.”

And even that was not enough. They were left out to dry by everyone -- not just Reid, not just the Republicans. Even President Obama wouldn’t lend a hand, investing not a penny of his political capital in the fight.

The result: total defeat, no moral victories.

Now What?

So now we know what we didn’t before: making nice doesn’t work. It was worth a try, and I’m completely serious when I say I’m grateful they made the effort, but it didn’t even come close to working. So we better try something else.

Step one involves actually talking about global warming. For years now, the accepted wisdom in the best green circles was: talk about anything else -- energy independence, oil security, beating the Chinese to renewable technology. I was at a session convened by the White House early in the Obama administration where some polling guru solemnly explained that “green jobs” polled better than “cutting carbon.”

No, really? In the end, though, all these focus-group favorites are secondary. The task at hand is keeping the planet from melting. We need everyone -- beginning with the president -- to start explaining that basic fact at every turn.

It is the heat, and also the humidity. Since warm air holds more water than cold, the atmosphere is about 5% moister than it was 40 years ago, which explains the freak downpours that seem to happen someplace on this continent every few days.

It is the carbon -- that’s why the seas are turning acid, a point Obama could have made with ease while standing on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. “It’s bad that it’s black out there,” he might have said, “but even if that oil had made it safely ashore and been burned in our cars, it would still be wrecking the oceans.” Energy independence is nice, but you need a planet to be energy independent on.

Mysteriously enough, this seems to be a particularly hard point for smart people to grasp. Even in the wake of the disastrous Senate non-vote, the Nature Conservancy’s climate expert told New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, “We have to take climate change out of the atmosphere, bring it down to earth, and show how it matters in people’s everyday lives.” Translation: ordinary average people can’t possibly recognize the real stakes here, so let’s put it in language they can understand, which is about their most immediate interests. It’s both untrue, as I’ll show below, and incredibly patronizing. It is, however, exactly what we’ve been doing for a decade and clearly, It Does Not Work.

Step two, we have to ask for what we actually need, not what we calculate we might possibly be able to get. If we’re going to slow global warming in the very short time available to us, then we don’t actually need an incredibly complicated legislative scheme that gives door prizes to every interested industry and turns the whole operation over to Goldman Sachs to run. We need a stiff price on carbon, set by the scientific understanding that we can’t still be burning black rocks a couple of decades hence. That undoubtedly means upending the future business plans of Exxon and BP, Peabody Coal and Duke Energy, not to speak of everyone else who’s made a fortune by treating the atmosphere as an open sewer for the byproducts of their main business.

Instead they should pay through the nose for that sewer, and here’s the crucial thing: most of the money raised in the process should be returned directly to American pockets. The monthly check sent to Americans would help fortify us against the rise in energy costs, and we’d still be getting the price signal at the pump to stop driving that SUV and start insulating the house. We also need to make real federal investments in energy research and development, to help drive down the price of alternatives -- the Breakthrough Institute points out, quite rightly, that we’re crazy to spend more of our tax dollars on research into new drone aircraft and Mars orbiters than we do on photovoltaics.

Yes, these things are politically hard, but they’re not impossible. A politician who really cared could certainly use, say, the platform offered by the White House to sell a plan that taxed BP and actually gave the money to ordinary Americans. (So far they haven’t even used the platform offered by the White House to reinstall the rooftop solar panels that Jimmy Carter put there in the 1970s and Ronald Reagan took down in his term.)

Asking for what you need doesn’t mean you’ll get all of it. Compromise still happens. But as David Brower, the greatest environmentalist of the late twentieth century, explained amid the fight to save the Grand Canyon: “We are to hold fast to what we believe is right, fight for it, and find allies and adduce all possible arguments for our cause. If we cannot find enough vigor in us or them to win, then let someone else propose the compromise. We thereupon work hard to coax it our way. We become a nucleus around which the strongest force can build and function.”

Which leads to the third step in this process. If we’re going to get any of this done, we’re going to need a movement, the one thing we haven’t had. For 20 years environmentalists have operated on the notion that we’d get action if we simply had scientists explain to politicians and CEOs that our current ways were ending the Holocene, the current geological epoch. That turns out, quite conclusively, not to work. We need to be able to explain that their current ways will end something they actually care about, i.e. their careers. And since we’ll never have the cash to compete with Exxon, we better work in the currencies we can muster: bodies, spirit, passion.

Movement Time

As Tom Friedman put it in a strong column the day after the Senate punt, the problem was that the public “never got mobilized.” Is it possible to get people out in the streets demanding action about climate change? Last year, with almost no money, our scruffy little outfit, 350.org, managed to organize what Foreign Policy called the “largest ever coordinated global rally of any kind” on any issue -- 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries, 2,000 of them in the U.S.A.

People were rallying not just about climate change, but around a remarkably wonky scientific data point, 350 parts per million carbon dioxide, which NASA’s James Hansen and his colleagues have demonstrated is the most we can have in the atmosphere if we want a planet “similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” Which, come to think of it, we do. And the “we,” in this case, was not rich white folks. If you look at the 25,000 pictures in our Flickr account, you’ll see that most of them were poor, black, brown, Asian, and young -- because that’s what most of the world is. No need for vice-presidents of big conservation groups to patronize them: shrimpers in Louisiana and women in burqas and priests in Orthodox churches and slumdwellers in Mombasa turned out to be completely capable of understanding the threat to the future.

Those demonstrations were just a start (one we should have made long ago). We’re following up in October -- on 10-10-10 -- with a Global Work Party. All around the country and the world people will be putting up solar panels and digging community gardens and laying out bike paths. Not because we can stop climate change one bike path at a time, but because we need to make a sharp political point to our leaders: we’re getting to work, what about you?

We need to shame them, starting now. And we need everyone working together. This movement is starting to emerge on many fronts. In September, for instance, opponents of mountaintop removal are converging on DC to demand an end to the coal trade. That same month, Tim DeChristopher goes on trial in Salt Lake City for monkey-wrenching oil and gas auctions by submitting phony bids. (Naomi Klein and Terry Tempest Williams have called for folks to gather at the courthouse.)

The big environmental groups are starting to wake up, too. The Sierra Club has a dynamic new leader, Mike Brune, who’s working hard with stalwarts like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. (Note to enviro groups: working together is fun and useful). Churches are getting involved, as well as mosques and synagogues. Kids are leading the fight, all over the world -- they have to live on this planet for another 70 years or so, and they have every right to be pissed off.

But no one will come out to fight for watered down and weak legislation. That’s not how it works. You don’t get a movement unless you take the other two steps I’ve described.

And in any event it won’t work overnight. We’re not going to get the Senate to act next week, or maybe even next year. It took a decade after the Montgomery bus boycott to get the Voting Rights Act. But if there hadn’t been a movement, then the Voting Rights Act would have passed in… never. We may need to get arrested. We definitely need art, and music, and disciplined, nonviolent, but very real anger.

Mostly, we need to tell the truth, resolutely and constantly. Fossil fuel is wrecking the one earth we’ve got. It’s not going to go away because we ask politely. If we want a world that works, we’re going to have to raise our voices.

Bill McKibben is founder of 350.org and the author, most recently, of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Earlier this year the Boston Globe called him “probably the country’s leading environmentalist” and Time described him as “the planet’s best green journalist.” He’s a scholar in residence at Middlebury College. To hear him discuss why the public needs to lead the fight against global warming in Timothy MacBain's latest TomCast audio interview, click here or, to download it to your iPod, here.

Copyright 2010 Bill McKibben

Step 1 is about telling the truth, not obfuscating it with what might "connect" with the audience. However, it is also important to state why "global warming" is an existential issue: is it because of the heat, droughts, floods, fires, hurricanes, arctic melting, glacier melting or sea-level rise as the AIT slide deck emphasizes? All these issues are perhaps, mere inconveniences to the well-heeled as they can crank up their indoor climate control systems and move inland. If anything, emphasizing these issues may have the effect of persuading people to secure more wealth for themselves by hook or by crook so that they can afford the climate control system or the house in the mountains when they truly need them in the future.

Actually, "global warming" is an existential issue mainly because it is going to accelerate the mass extinction that is already underway. It is the rapidity of the change in climate that is the problem as ecosystems are unable to adapt to the rapid change and they are being trapped in the wrong climate and dying out. As complex life is snuffed out, every one of us will feel the effects as our food security gets affected. It is not possible to take to the hills and ride it out when the local grocery shelves are bare. This is why the climate crisis and the extinction crisis are inextricably linked and the root cause of the current extinction crisis - our over consumption - is such a glaring omission in the AIT slide deck.

Step 2, the cap and dividend approach, if implemented as Bill McKibben advocates, will be branded as "socialist wealth redistribution" and indicates why there is such a left/right divide on taking action to solve climate change. By taxing carbon emissions, governments would be asserting commons rights over the atmosphere and the private sector would much rather own the rights themselves and make a business out of the pollution. Also, if biofuels such as firewood are exempted from carbon taxes, this might accelerate deforestation and may eventually be detrimental to preserving Life on earth.

contributed by Sailesh Rao on Aug 5 10:24am

Why is Minnesota so cool?

I dated a girl that lived in Minneapolis so I spent some quality time there. Minneapolis is cool for several reasons. Bryant Lake Bowl is at the top of the list for me. It's a restaurant, bowling alley, and theater all wrapped up in one location. It's also in a movie called "Beautiful Girls." If you haven't seen it, rent it soon. The movie captures the inner mind of men perfectly.

The thing I'll never forget about my trips to Minneapolis is how cold the winters were. The huge amounts of snow and the freezing temps never seemed to bother the locals. Tanya, maybe you can identify with this. I have a friend that is a principal at a school in Arkansas. He says the school shuts down when the forecast even mentions snow.

Oooo...side note...a Screech Owl is calling outside my window. That sound always hits my core.

Back to MN. I wonder if snow is a mindset. Arkansas freaks out because they are not acclimated to driving in snow. We do pretty well here, but Minnesotans do even better. They seem to embrace it. Maybe they have a stronger connection to nature. They see the aesthetic and economic value.

Plus, they elected a former wrestler for their governor and a former cast member of Saturday Night Live to the senate. Who else does that?

fears...

Holding a picture of being most attentive to the faces & voices of the little ones...though, not on the trails per se, I try to be aware of being excited to explore with kids. There is a sense of satisfaction with the plant communities I became familiar with back in chi. As these are still new terrains for me altogether, I don't want to be fearful of not knowing the "right" answers, but able to probe and connect with them as we trek along. "Boring" anything is of course the worst wall to break down, so bringing it back to them & the land will be key.

Be very afraid!

It's strange, but even though I run a children's community garden and have a 5 year old, kids still make me nervous sometimes. They ask some really great questions....and I wonder, what if I can't answer them? I do have a fear that perhaps some little guy will ask me a simple question like- "what kind of tree is that?" and I won't have the answer to it! What if i don't have ANY answers....whaaaaaaaa!!!!!! Ok, that's just my nerves talking. History has shown that kids tend to like me, listen to me, and sometimes make me really cute pictures. Whew. Now, if only I could get rid of that stage fright issue.....

Fear on the trails and my utopian guides

I have to say that my fear on the trail is that I won't be able to answer some kids question. There is so much to learn and know in order to effectively lead kids on the trail. I feel as though if I tell them that I don't know, they will be disappointed even if I am able to look it up later. I am not so worried about connecting with kids. Kids usually like me. In nature, kids really like me. I like to look at nature through a child's eyes. I like to help them explore things. I remember walks with my grandfather when I was a kid. It would take us an hour just to go 50 feet. He knew so much and let me explore so many things that we never got too far. The thing is, I never got bored with him. I remember one time laying in the grass with a hand lens and looking at insects that walked by a quad that we had laid out. It was the coolest thing ever when I was 8 years old! So, I guess my fear stems from the fact that I won't know enough to make nature interesting and fun for kids.

I have many utopian guides for my way of living. Many of them have just begun and some I have been taught since I was a child. Recently I have been working on thinking globally and acting locally. It is hard and I know that sometimes I don't always succeed and sometimes can't. But, the fact that I think about it even when I don't do it is good enough for me. At least I am aware of what I need to work on in order to live this life.

Another one is "the meaning of life is to live it". I use this in order to allow myself to look on the lighter side of things and have fun. It reminds me to stop being so serious and just enjoy the fact that I am alive.

fear response

What I am most afraid of when taking kids on trails is the kids not having fun. I want to be the humorous trail guide that gets kids excited about nature, heck I want to rock their socks off! So I do become a little nervous thinking about how the kids might take to my teaching. Sometimes my mind just becomes blank and I forget what I'm about to say so then I just stand there with a ridiculous look on my face and then one kid whispers to another "this is boring," that's what I'm afraid of. And I'm also afraid of loosing my cool when I come face to face with a sider, that would just be embarrassing! There are many things that freak me out when I think about them, but then I just think that it's going to take practice till I become the greatest trail guide of all time, and I mean the greatest! haha jk guys jk.

fears and guides

What are my fears.

I always wonder if this is just me or if it happens to everyone. But sometimes I just dont connect with kids. They think that I am the most boring person they have ever met and I think that they are little annoying creations whose mission is to bug me. I think that is my biggest fear when working with kids on the trail or where ever. Another minor fear would be a teacher contradicts me on information. Especially because some of the information I know I cant back up with evidence, it is just what I have been told. Oh someone might want me to pick up a snake and I wimp out

There are not any utopian documents that guide my life. What guides me in decisions and like is peace. I consider myself a pacifist (sometimes not a good one but I try) and so through my daily life, purchases and anything else I might do, I try to be aware and make the effort to not hurt other people. Not just though non-war but way of living too.

Fear!

Deer ticks, lyme disease, poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, dirt, biting flies, mosquitoes, sinkholes, caves, bats, bear traps, mountain lions, prickly plants, hunters, the cold, frostbite, falls, blisters, and nervous parents. I could go on, but I won't. There's a lot of danger out there. There's a lot of fear. For some reason, it's not scary to travel 65 mph in a car down a highway, but it is scary to enter the foreboding woods. Remember the Blair Witch Project? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention witches and ghosts as well. These images are ever present in our minds, and in the minds of nervous parents. Before I take kids to the Everglades I meet with the parents. I'm completely honest about the dangers. I tell them we'll encounter alligators, crocodiles, poisonwood, poisonous snakes, stinging jellyfish, (the plane trip down!), and more. It helps that I've taken this trip 12 times now, but I know parents are still nervous. Sometimes I'm surprised that parents will even let their kids go on the trip. Maybe deep down they understand the importance of seeing rare places. Maybe they know this experience could be life changing. I hope so. We've vilified nature in nursery rhymes, novels, and the media. It's time we reclaim nature as a place we learn and grow rather than a place to be feared.

Bike the walk

There are many different aspects to environmental thinking when I think of how CMU did. Where they all talk or not.

Students. Mostly students did fairly well with being environmental. Most people lived on campus or were able to bike to school (I think on an average winter day there were about 15-30 bikes at school), car pooled, bused or walked. So I think that they did fairly well with this.

Food services started composting after I left and I am glad that they have started with kitchen scraps and plate scraps. One issue with food services is compostable vs real cups and plates for coffee breaks. Because of the extra work most people don't want to pay the extra price for real things. So although people want something environmental they don't want to pay for it.

Many teachers support scrap paper for papers.

I think that the people at CMU care and therefore have made changes. The people up top are sometimes not concerned with it and don't want to ever pay extra. It is a battle but I think the people are winning.

Walk the Talk.... Goshen College style

I felt that Goshen College did a pretty good job of walking the talk of things. In most of my science classes we defiantly talked about things that tied into environmental education and sometimes it would show up on tests, more in my environmental science classes. But my campus as a whole was defiantly aware of environmental education and the environment for that matter. We would always have people come from outside the campus to talk about the environment. For example, we had Dave O and Luke and Paul come to our campus to talk about the environment during chapel and convocation. GC did a very good job at getting well known people to come to campus and talk about environmental issues, like E.O Wilson, Bill McKibben, etc. I was a part of Ecopax (environmental club) that would put on events for people on campus to come to like earth hour (turn the lights off for an hour), 350 day, wild edibles, canoe race where people raced but also had to pick up trash in the Elkhart river. Ecopax would also join with other clubs to reach a greater audience but it incorporated environmental stuff. And last year GC finally got our dining hall to compost! We did a pilot run and it was successful so this upcoming year composting will be in place. So yeah I think GC walked the talk pretty good.

Walking and Talking....

Assessment is something art programs are good at. For every studio art class you take, generally you create a portfolio for that class by the end of the semester. Throughout the semester, we would have weekly or by-weekly critiques of the work that was being made- both students and faculty are involved in this process. I got a lot of good feedback from these critiques- and always felt I knew what direction I was going. Portfolios are a very good way, I feel, to assess work and also have a good "summary" of all the things that you learned that semester.

The biggest assessment process that a Bachelor of Arts Program initiates is the BFA review. This is a BIG review that is for all BFA hopeful students- just because you are enrolled in the classes, doesn't mean you are in the program! This takes place about late sophomore year, and it is a day long event. You wait until you turn, sitting in the hall while clutching the selected items from all the different studio art classes that you have taken, while still having most of the work represented from the field you would like to go into to (in my case, it was photography). Then, someone called your name, and you walked into a room where all the prof were, and they spend an hour or so assessing your work- looking at everything, asking questions, making comments . They want to see if you have been learning while making art- and if you can actually make art! Then, you get notice the next week if you have been accepted into the program....or not. If you don;t make it, you can always try again- revise your work, make new work, learn how to paint/draw/photograph/print BETTER. (thankfully, I made it in the first time!)

Walk the Talk.

I went to Taylor University from 1990-1994. I feel that the science department (especially the biology and environmental science departments) walked the walk, but we didn't talk about it that much. I believe Taylor had a recycling program, but it wasn't the main focus. The campus overall didn't focus on the environment like many campuses do today. It just wasn't something people talked about. Honestly, students there were more concerned about mission trips than they were about the environment. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong. It has been a long time. Sustainability wasn't a word used at Taylor. I tried looking on Taylor's website to see if there was a policy concerning the environment. I found this quote, "The School's academic programs actively explore the many facets of Creation, and seek to more fully understand the ways in which God our Creator is revealed in Creation." Is this walking the talk? I guess so...if you are into that sort of thing. I wanted something a little more rounded. What I got was a debate on evolution vs. creationism rather than how you pair stewardship with sustainability. I would not be surprised if some faculty believed that the oil spill was in God's plan. Whew. I have a hard time thinking about my undergrad days as you can see.

walkin' da talk...

creative assessment? not for the general requirement courses...the few highlights that have stayed with me are from Spanish for bilingual native speakers -perhaps b/c Miriam was on her way to a PhD program, she was innovative in her assessment by assigning films that had to be reviewed (assessed our grammar/syntax skills) and we had to lead a discussion in spanish for our peers. One of my latin american/latino studies professors made us "work" quite differently by attending community-oriented events, outside speaker engagements, volunteering our time at a community-based org./center from which we wrote about in relation to the concept areas we we're covering. Some folks def. complained, b/c it wasn't as easy as just taking a test. You could of gotten away w/o reading and writing, but the time commitment for these "outside" assignments were real.
Bringing it back to that self-consciousness space about how our skills/attitudes/perspectives/and or behavior had changed from the inception of our class participation to its' ending was really rewarding and why not -most inspiring- some of my classmates had some real transformational experiences that really shifted the perceived ways we thought of interaction about some of the high-philosophizing subject matters we covered.
I'm really fascinated by this indicator of student self-assessment being facilitated from the start by encouraging involvement in the learning process. How to do this ?

Walking the Talk at Texas State

I feel as though some of my professors at Texas State did "walk the talk" of assessment. In the Geography department, my favorite professor and mentor hated testing and really didn't believe that it taught students much at all. In every one of his classes, he gave students the test a week before hand. He knew that we were only going to memorize the answers for the test and forget the information afterward, so he did not want us to spend time stressing about it. He simply thought that if he had to give tests, since we were at a state school, he would at least make it so each student basically got an A each time. Although he would have loved to think that all of us would grasp the information and know it after the test, he didn't believe that it was the only way to see what we had learned about the particular subject. His focus in each one of his classes was the project at the end of the semester. This project counted for most of our grade and he expected it to take some time and utilize the information that he taught throughout the semester.

In my Geography of Texas class, we had to make a guide to Texas. We could do this in many ways. In my guide, I chose a certain greenspace that was along the Balcones Fault Line and showed how the fault line changed the geography in a small area. Then I related it to the state of Texas as a whole. In this I had to look at the ecology, elevation changes, rivers, temperature and weather patterns, as well as changes in culture and history across the state. It was fascinating to be able to learn this on my own and put it into a well crafted presentation.

In my Nature and Heritage Tourism class we had to design a presentation that could be presented to city council that demonstrated a 3 activities that could be implemented in our area. Mine involved how to bring EE into after school programs in elementary school using many parks in the area as well as the river. We used many of the concepts that were learned in class to put this together and then had to present it to the class in a professional manner.

I also found that in my creative writing classes this was also true. Although I felt that this is just the basic flows of a creative writing class/workshop. In all of my classes, we did not have tests. Our grades were based on 3 portfolios that were submitted throughout the semester as well as our participation in workshop. We continuously brought in work to be critiqued by our class members as well as our professor. Some of our professors made sure that we wrote in certain forms in our portfolio in order to learn how to write different types of poetry. Throughout the semester we also read many poet in order to learn different forms and styles of writing. This was extremely helpful to me as a poet and as a critic.

Besides these, most of my classes were based on papers and tests. Although some had great projects that made up a good part of the total grade, tests were still held very high. I knew the way I tested, I am a horrible multiple-choice test taker. I made sure that most of the classes that I took were writing intensive, because I knew that written essay tests were the only way that I tested well and would make the grades that I wanted.

Friday's Visit to the Fair

Be ready for a wild and wacky fair that offers a giant ferris wheel, all the cows and horses you desire and a variety deep fried items including sticks of butter!

Double click on the map to make it bigger!

Multiple Intelligences Test

Linguistic - 25
Logical-mathematical - 25
Musical - 25
Bodily-Kinesthetic - 22
Spatial-Visual - 22
Interpersonal 22
Intrapersonal 20

I must say that I am not the biggest fan of these types of tests. My answer depends on the first example I think of that has to do with what they are asking. I don't think that these explain me very well. When I do look at my intelligences I am surprised that Linguistic, logical and musical were up there the most. I can't express myself that well (hence all the noises), I suck at figuring things out (like how the toilet dispenser stays on) and I suck at music, although I enjoy listening and watching people play.

All Powerpoint Presentations

All Powerpoint Presentations that you have seen in class are now on Moodle for your perusal. Enjoy!

M for Moodle and Massasauga Rattle Snake!

What is needed in your curriculum for class

Create a 4 hour non-formal field trip lesson plan
Create a 2 week / 3 hours per day curriculum for a school of your choice.

Below is the list of things I would like addressed but if a certain activity comes from a certain curriculum guide just mention the title of the guide, the title of the activity and the page number.

Let's talk about us all creating a two week curriculum for a certain class and all choose a different theme for the two weeks so then we actually create 12 weeks of class which I think someone like Krista Troyer, the fifth grade teacher today, would appreciate!

Title
Summary/General program description
Grades
When
Length
Maximum Students
Materials needed
Goals 
Objectives
Activities/Procedure
Concepts addressed
Correlations to science standards and to other subjects
Wrap up - how to bring it all together
Pre and Post Activities
Resources

Warsaw Raft Schedule

August 25

We will meet at the Grassy Creek Public Access off of E. 500 N. (where the E. is on the E. 500 N.) at 9:00 am and then Camp Crosley is at the far west end of James Lake.



10:00 Students arrive/announcements/raft assignments
10:30 Launch into Grassy Creek
-Topics: watersheds, plant id, water tests
11:30 Enter Tippy Lake
-Topics: Lake facts
12:00 Arrive Pie-Eyed Petey’s to board Pontoons
-Topics: Lake Eco-Zone, Secchi reading
12:45 Arrive Camp Crosley/Lunch
1:30 Watershed Activity
-Two rafts will be assigned to each tarp
2:00 Load buses

Race to the Top: an Odious Problem

Especially important viewing after our Friday discussion.

-------------

"We're lying to our kids," says professor and former charter school advocate and supporter of No Child Left Behind Diane Ravitch. High-stakes testing and punishing teachers for low-scoring kids is failing, according to her research; moreover, charter schools are only successful, when they are, because they can select the best students from the failing districts in which they are located.In a new piece at The Nation, and in her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, Ravitch lays out the case against the policies she once supported. ; She joins Laura in studio to discuss the problems with education--and how Obama and Arne Duncan might be making things worse, not better.

http://blip.tv/file/3902166

Give a dog a bone

I really was intrigued while reading David Sobel's article. Two quotes that really stuck with me were, "What's important is that children have an opportunity to bond with the natural world, to learn to love it and feel comfortable in it before being asked to heal it's wounds" and the other quote was, "knowledge without love will not stick. But if love comes first, knowledge is sure to follow" by John Burroughs. I really liked these two quotes because they helped me think of what would be enticing to a learner and teacher. If people (whatever age) just get outdoors and explore what is around them they will start to value all the little things that make up the big picture. So I think being outdoors is the key factor to engaging kids and educators. It does suck that now with the economy that schools are cutting fields trips because those were the best perks of being in school. But since field trips are being taken away, teachers should not let that affect the children having the opportunity to go outside during class time. Teachers should take their kids around the school and explore whats near them. Educators should also have a lot of hands on activities for the children.

Now to reach adults and high schoolers EE should get those people by learning their interests and tying them in that way. It's all about playing to what people are interesting in. I like to think of it like giving a dog it's bone...... just give people their bones, but with EE involved. The media helps a lot in this arena

Enticing EE....

The same premise of allowing feeling & intellect being intimately involved in the learning process for students, goes for educators. At the end of the day, as learners we need to be hooked. Surveying teachers' to understand how to meet them halfway can be a standing grounds to providing them with a transformational experience.
It may very well take financial resources as Jennifer said, that account for teachers' participating in programming that builds their awareness & interest, so they can break down their own fears and misconceptions.
It seems like folks in the area of non-formal EE could be a resource for school-based administrators attempting to be inclusive of providing professional development on EE. Seems like school administrators also need to be pulled in within a circle amongst their own, to become inspired. Real-life examples of models in their region would also speak loudest to making this commitment become real-life application!
I whole-heartedly agree & know from experience that Sobel and others that confirm that things need to start from the very place we inhabit is the way to go. Being in the city, has been the greatest teacher in this respect. Challenging but powerful. It's actually the reason I decided to do Merry Lea as opposed to venturing to the west coast (just yet), because this first part of my living has been connected to the great lakes/midwest.

This approach would personalize the context for educators as well, having to deal with their immediate surroundings -such as on school grounds -i.e. is there only lawns or gardens too?

Why NOT EE? That is the question.......

David Sobel's paper resounded heavily with me (though I didn't really care for his comparing "victims of EE" to child abuse victims- kinda tacky!). HOWEVER, he made some really good points about how EE could be so much more enticing if educators focused on what is in their own backyard. A couple of weeks ago at the kids garden I run, I had couple of kids point at a fallen down stop sign in front of the garden and tell me that we needed to get rid of it so it wouldn't hurt the spotted cheetah. Cheetah? I asked. Where are there cheetahs around here? They just stared at me blankly, and then yelled "Save the Cheetahs!". Later, I checked out one of the classrooms and saw that they had posters of endangered species all over their room, and also a corner where a paper "rain forest" was being built (though, i don't remember cheetahs being there either....). Anyway, last week I pointed at a big hole that we had in the garden. What could it be? I asked the young ones. All hands went up. " A BIG, FAT SNAKE!" they said in unison. I shook my head. Very unlikely, but cool nonetheless. What about a groundhog, I suggested. Once again, blank looks all around. What is a groundhog, they inquired. BACKYARDS, teachers. Backyards........ that is the answer.

How can we make EE more enticing for educators and learners?

I don't know if the question is HOW, but WHEN. When will EE become more enticing for educators and learners. I know that it has got to be sometime soon, at least I hope so. When I look at the current state of the environment, it feels as though EE may be the only thing that can give any of us hope.

I think in order to make EE enticing, we have got to make the environment a top priority. Eventually the average joe will want to know what is really happening with global warming, climate change, deforestation, pollution, etc. I feel like when this begins to happen, and I think and hope it is now, people will want to learn about the environment and teachers will want to teach about the environment. I feel as though this is happening at smaller scales right now. If not, why would we be in this program at all? Why would Merry Lea exist?

In Texas, I would walk into my mentor's office at least weekly and complain about the common man. I would sit there and tell him that I was SO different from everyone and so was he and how could we ever expect anything to change. He told me every single time that I was being silly because so many people feel the same way and never say anything. One time, he even posed the question to one of my classes and every single person raised their hand.

So maybe the way to make EE more enticing is to speak about EE. To make EE matter and really advocate for it. Maybe there really are those people, like the rest of us that are everywhere and just need someone to hold their hand through the process. I think EE is enticing in itself. I think that it has to be one of the greatest things ever, especially when it comes to education. I just think people need to know about and to know about the issues. With this, EE is enticing in itself.

Eatin' It Up

Why don't people eat up environmental education. I wish it was like that game Hungry Hungry Hippos. Those hippos really loved marbles...even when they weren't that hungry. Poison Ivy, mosquitoes, poisonous berries, and monsters! all contribute to teacher fear. I know there are many reasons why teachers aren't eating up environmental education, but I do believe it all boils down to fear. So many teachers fear that they don't know how to take kids outside. Questions like, "What if they fall down, what if someone gets stung by a bee, what if there are bears" all plague teachers. We live in a litigious society, and administrators know and fear this. This past year a 5th grade teacher in our corporation told her class that she was taking them to a bog. I offered to show her some things before she took her students on the trip. She never contacted me, and I found out they never went to the bog. Maybe it was a time thing, but I don't think so. Stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel & Gretel are deeply ingrained in our psyche. In these stories "the woods" are seen as dangerous. We need to remove these elements of danger so that teachers can explore. If we can teach educators to embrace adventure rather than fear, we can transform environmental education. Educators only need a little training to be comfortable with the outdoors. It is a change in mindset that will revolutionize environmental education.

Standards

Standards are like rules and laws and if we didn't have those I feel that our world would be one be mess. There always have to be some boundaries so that people are all on the same page. Now I do think some standards are a little over board and sometimes not necessary. Like schools being order to make cuts because they didn't meet the standards on the state wide test. So I guess what I'm trying to say that there needs to be standards set up but the restriction those standards have needs to be well thought through and think of all the aspects.

Standards

While doing our reading about these standards, I kept going back to different times in my life when I felt the "force" of standards. One big moment was when Oliver was a little (little!) guy, and we had a wellness appointment with his pediatrician. At the appointment, the doctor asked me how many words Oliver could say. At that time, he was mostly using grunts and hand motions to communicate- not like the clear sentences his little girl friends were using. I was petrified! What was I DOING WRONG? Did he lack words because I didn't believe kids should be stuck in front of Baby Einstein to learn about the world? Were the 8 books a day I read to him not enough? Should I have knocked him down when he started walking before he turned 1? I later went back to have another appointment, and there was another doctor there, with another set of standards. Besides Oliver's 3 words that he could say, she also included the 5 words that he signed (in sign language) as vocabulary. Whew! We made the grade! And i learned a VERY important lesson that day- everyone is different! And to not be afraid of one person's standards. And yes, these standards are put in place for a reason- to make sure kids are progressing in development (which is essential!). However, everyone progresses at different rates, and standards cannot predict the learning curve for everyone. I am happy to say that lil' O progressed very nicely, and I actually have a difficult time getting him to NOT talk.......

ps.

Standards should be taken for face value- and not as scare tactics!

Standards

I think the idea of standards is a good one. Not only for educators, but for parents and students. Educators should be given an idea of what they are supposed to teaching and held accountable. The problem with this is that they also have a lot more on their plates. The standards set by the State on Indiana for Science, and the NCATE for Environmental Educators are great, but I do not know if they are realistic. I don't feel like I got the kind of education that is being described and I went to one of the top public schools in Ohio that had an A rating each year. I feel as though when it came to Science and Math that my education was lacking. I was horrible at science and math, so what did they do? They put me in remedial math and science classes so that I could "catch up". All this really did was remind me that I did not do well in these classes, so the education that I got was not up to standards. In these classes my teachers focused on getting the remedial kids to pass the standardized tests so that our school score didn't go down.

I have not only noticed it in these subjects but in many others. I was in Honors English classes since 7th grade. Funny that I was in remedial math and science and honors english. My english classes were much better than the remedial classes or just regular english classes. I would ask my friends what they did and it didn't even compare to the type of education that we were getting in the honors classes. I assumed this was similar in honors classes for math and science, but i wasn't even close to being allowed in those classes.

So, do I think standards are good? Yes. Can their expectations be realistic? I don't think so. At least not right now. In order for it to be realistic we need much better teacher education. We would also need a way to get every kid engaged in every subject, which is also a very hard thing and I am not sure where you can even start with a solution.

Multiple Intelligence Test Results

Interpersonal 33

Musical 33

Spatial-Visual 31

Intrapersonal 31

Bodily-Kinesthetic 27

Linguistic 23

Logical-Mathematical 12

Pretty much what I thought!

Standards

Let me premise this post with a statement. I'm not an expert on standards, but I do have a strong dislike for the misuse of standards. I do believe standards are important. Without standards important concepts would be lost. Teachers who don't feel confident with scientific concepts rely on standards to guide them. Unfortunately, administrators use standards as regulatory law. Many high school teachers are required to write the standard they are teaching on wipe boards outside their classrooms. Administrators feel students need to visually see the expectations/standards for that day's lesson. If you have ever met a teenager, you already know they won't and don't read those wipe boards. Maybe it's an accountability thing. Teachers need accountability, but I don't believe wipe boards are the answer. Writing the standards outside teacher classrooms becomes a chore rather than a teaching tool. The Indiana standards for Environmental Education are fairly progressive, but are seen by many as unnecessary paperwork.

No one called me normal

What are standards for?

I am sure that there are many reasons for standards but I have thought of three.

1. Accountability. We are always putting our trust into other people, whether for education, driving, electric wiring. Without standards people could do things without the qualifications therefore leading to harm of others.

2. The "real world" In most job interviews that I have had people always want to know how well I can use a computer. It has become the standard that people know word, excel and other programs. Another reason for standards is that the skills people "need" in the real world are aquirred

3. Efficient teaching. The final reason that I could think of is efficient teaching. If a teacher didn't follow the curiculm for that year the teacher next year would be screwed. Having to get kids up to snuff with last years learning and this years.

Sometimes I think that there is a lot of emphasis on standards and it makes our world go in circles. But I think that they can do positive things.

Standards of the day...

Over a year ago, I started training as a doula aka birth assistant -not the midwife, but the person supporting the mother) and one of the most amazing reminders time after time is the amazing intelligence of a woman's body in preparing and laboring to give birth. Unfortunately, when interventions that are not absolutely medically necessary are the norm, the birthing experience is hijacked for many women. In short, we were constantly reminded of certain "expectations" and more or less the sequence of stages in labor that kind of serve as the template for what to expect, but the journey's stage is ultimately set by the woman's body, and things happen on her body's time/space. Reading about standards brought me back to the idea that we all need (i.e. EDUCATORS)support in journeying through whatever the task at hand is. It didn't surprise me to read the following within the IN Environmental Education Teacher Survey General Conclusions:
-Most teachers do not use the outdoors to teach a variety of subjects more than 3 times each year.
-Among teachers who do not integrate environmental education into their teaching, there is a strong feeling that it is not relevant to what they teach.
-The primary perceived barrier to integrating environmental education in the curriculum is lack of time in the school day.
The recommendations for what to target sound great, but where is the capacity-building model for schools, districts (the wholeness of it all), and above all teacher support to actually be in position to implement? I think teachers would be better equipped in creating the responsive learning environments we all envision by making things actually feasible on a real tangible level.

At the end of the day, everything comes down to fund$, so policy really can be a force to mandate the future of EE in public education. How much are those military spending figures #%@%! again?



The truth about Farmer Joe-movie critique

One word reviews: good, unique, dramatic, sad, hopeful

Overall I did like the movie, it was edutaining and provided a farmer with a face.

When I thought about if this movie is EE this is what I came up with:

This movie seems to have a variety of elements that we have been talking about.

The movie seems to start at the affectiveness end of things. Making people feel something towards the farmer, especially for the older generations who can relate to great community, farming, tractors, horses and hard times. And there are numerous mentions of love, which is also very relatable. They are creating a feeling and emotion that the viewer feels towards the characters.

Next the film moves into a more informative stage where farming, economics, politics, life styles, are discussed. Giving a little more information for people so that they know (even if it is just a little) about the land and situations that surround it.

Finally the action part. I was glad that the difficulty of farming organically was shown. It is not just love and party but really hard work, which may be why some farmers choose not too. But with the help of the community it turned out and it wasn't just dependent on the farmer. Seeing the people help with the farm and ultimately purchase some land was not only hopeful but motivating for me to become part of a community that cares for each other and the land like that.

Although the film was able to do all of these things, making me aware, feel, and want to take action, it was not about telling facts and giving multiple view points, with that in mind I would vote no for being environmental education. But I do think that it can be an effective tool, one part of EE.

Those are some of my thoughts.

I suck. Or I am an Idealist and it hurts somedays. I want the ideal world.

I suck. I suck because I haven’t “really” converted my friends to become greenies. None of them. I’ve made them think. I’ve made them feel guilty. I’ve made them say “oh no here comes Paul.” But as an educator somedays I feel like I failed....
I have a morning routine of making coffee and then washing dishes while looking out at sunrise pondering the meaning of life and some days staring at my neighbors 5 barrels of trash. I consider them friends but they still have not heard my urges of recycling cardboard or the preaching of lessening impact before we perish in the firery depths of hell.
Some days I feel like Debby Downer from Saturday Night Live and I wish I could just watch soccer with my buds and not think about the carbon footprint of a large stadium or the BP spill and my friends disinterest in talking with me about it or the amount of waste I created by watching that soccer match. Chip bags and bottles.
The average American produces from 3-5 pounds of trash per day, which adds up to 50 tons per year. That means over 200 million tons of trash are produced by everyone in the U.S. every year! Up to 70% of this trash is buried in landfills.
I’ve been in EE now for 20 years and I’ve lived in Goshen for ten and I know my friends are not perfect and neither am I but this idealist is allowed to get down once in a while.
If you remember in that list that compared yesterday’s with today’s emphasis in environmental education, one comparison that I pointed out was “business as usual” versus “urgency”. I do feel it is more urgent now to make a difference.
My friends do do their part and I wouldn’t say reluctantly, by recycling, shopping at the Farmers Market - but I want more! We need more! I want them to act out! I want them to go to the city council meetings! I want them to run for some sort of political seat on a sustainability ticket! I want them to understand – I want to make a difference in their behavior and attitudes. Shall I test them?
I am anxious about the future and I want to make people change now – but how do we do it? We help them remove their barriers - lack of time, Money, Confidence, Interest, Lack of information about opportunities to learn, Scheduling problems, “Red tape”, Problems with child care, Transportation. I must continually refresh my hope, increase my knowledge base and keep active in the environmental/ecological community. Part of my job as a friend, father, neighbor, educator is to help remove these “barriers” so we can all become more environmentally literate and responsible citizens!
Wouldn’t that be great?

Musical 36
Interpersonal 36
Bodily-Kinesthetic 35
Spatial-Visual 34
Intrapersonal 30
Linguistic 28
Logical-Mathematical 26

I believe like Stevie Wonder that there should be music all the time to sooth savage beast but I was surprised I was so high up in the musical rankings!

Old Farts.

My grandparents had this picture framed in their home. For some reason it always cracked me up. Two kids talking about how long they've been farming. At some point those "farm

er's", may lose the innocence of childhood. They won't care why the sky is blue, or why zebras have stripes. Why do some people lose their ability to be curious? Is it house payments, credit card bills, laziness, or age that cause them to lose a lust for life? My friend and colleague Bob has changed. He's 64 years old and still teaches history at Manchester High School. He hasn't lost the desire to learn. I can't remember the last time he didn't mention something he had read that day. Bob is one of the hardest working teachers I know. I guarantee he hasn't used one worksheet he used the year before. I believe he has a desire to learn because he has never lost the desire to learn. Sometimes I think he reads so much because it's become a habit. He can't stop even if he wanted to stop. When he reads he learns, and many times I've seen changes.

Here are the scores:

Interpersonal: 37

Intrapersonal: 33

Spacial: 32

Musical: 29
Linguistic: 26
Math: 20

Kinesthetic: 19

Multiple Intelligences Test

My scores were:

Interpersonal: 37

Intrapersonal:35

Musical:34

Linguistic:32

Spatial-Visual:27

Bodily-Kinesthetic:23

Logical-Mathematical:22

Basically what I thought my 4 highest would be. I did not think they would be in that order though, so that surprised me a bit.

Old Dogs

While working in bars I began to notice all the things that we threw away that could have been recycled. It made me so angry to know that there were hundreds of bottles from one bar being thrown out on a daily basis. At one bar I worked at we only served bottled beer. When I started working there I thought that we recycled since we put all the bottles back in the boxes. When I started working nights, I realized that we did not recycle and the boxes were thrown away each night full of glass bottles. When I started counting the amount of empty bottles in cases on busy nights, it made me sick.

So I proposed something to my boss and co-workers. I had started taking as many cases would fit into my Kia home with me each night, which was only about 6. I would take them and put them in my recycling bin or take them to our recycling center in town. I asked everyone else if they would be willing. Since it was Texas, and everyone drove trucks, they could take a good amount and wouldn't have to empty it each night. No one would do it! They just didn't understand the importance of recycling.

After I quit that job, I moved on to another bar in town. Everyone called it the "liberal arts" or "hippie love" bar. I knew most of the employees there because they were mostly Geography majors and I had taken some classes with them and we had been to some "green" events together. When I brought the recycling idea up to them, they said that it could happen there but they just needed a few more employees to help take recycling each night. We worked out a schedule and talked to our boss about it. He gave us a few rules about the recycling, but we got it working and it worked well. Then, we decided that since our boss wanted the bar to be a restaurant, but food sales sucked and we were throwing food away each night, that we needed to start composting. We convinced our boss of this as well and made sure the food went home each night with employees or customers who had gardens that needed it.

Now the reason why I mention THIS boss is because he is not the guy who would usually go for recycling of composting. I have heard him say many times that he "loves his gas-guzzlin F-250". Somehow though, after years of hiring all us "hippies", we had convinced him of doing something a little bit environmentally friendly. He even started helping with the recycling and would fill up the back of his truck once a week.

I don't know if he actually cared about it or just did it because we had been bugging him about it and it still got taken care of. I know he enjoyed the fact that there was much more room in our trash cans each night and we no longer had problems with raccoons getting in the trash because the tops wouldn't close.

"Old Dogs"

I can't think of one particular person that I remember changing their old impacting ways......however, I can think of a group of individuals. Last year for Earth Day (April 22), I thought it would be really awesome if Maple City Market (the co-op) would eliminate their plastic shopping bags. I brought this idea up to the store manager in January. He was very skeptical of this idea. He didn't tell me that it couldn't happen, just that it wouldn't happen by April 22- maybe the end of the year at the earliest. He said it would take a good year to educate our customers to bring in their own bags...and what about the new customers? Where would they put their groceries? Me, being optimistic about our customer's learning curve, I went forth with my idea nonetheless. I hung up signs around the store warning people of the upcoming change. We had it printed in the newsletter. I spread the word. Earth Day came, and there were no more plastic bags (I made sure to stop the order of them in time!), and you know what? It was just fine! Sure, there were (and still are) some complaints about the lack of plastic bags, but in general, we have received really good feedback for our decision. And it was a really quick fix for a really huge problem too! Moral of the story:sometimes, it pays to not listen to the authorities :)

Them old geezers

It's kind of hard to think of a person who has changed their habits but if I had to pick a someone it probably would have to be my parents.

I would say now they are environmentally aware as new ideas and findings come to their attention. My dad is defiantly the type of person that is up to date on all the current events and he never stops reading and with reading all that information, he somehow has the ability to absorb it and keep it in his brain forever! ok maybe that was a little bit exaggerated, so lets just say he is a book of knowledge. Also with having that knowledge my dad is able to change his ways if he sees fit. For example, my dad watched the documentary food inc and after that he decided to start buying organic milk because all the chemicals from the cows poo poo got into the water and the thought of that freaked him out.

My mom has also been able to change her ways. She only uses reusable bags when shopping and tries to by organic food as much as she can. She also recycles and there isn't a recycling center in my town, so when we go to Albuquerque which is 2 hours away she takes the recycling.

So yeah I would say my parents have been able to change their ways, even though they are over that hill

Oh and my score for the multiple intelligence test was
Kinesthetic: 20
Musical: 18
Linguistic: 17
Intrapersonal: 15
spacial: 14
interpersonal: 13
math: 12

I wasn't expecting those scores

Old Dogs that are young at heart?

My parents grew up in southern Manitoba around a lot of Russian Mennonites, I like to say they grew up in a box where they mostly knew there world and maybe the world of relatives in Saskatchewan. And although they are not that old they loved the modern conviences of life (fast food, packaged foods, cheap clothing), especially when my sisters and I were young. As us sisters grew up we surprisingly were soically aware of our actions (where are clothes were coming from, buying local, or fair trade, using our bodies for transportation), it has been interesting to see our parents adjust. Starting them on composting, they were so excited and were now cooler. (even though they often forgot and I emptied the pail 80% of the time.) They were more then open to it and were willing to put the effort in. They have also started talking about social issues that surround the environment, they have the knowledge and are slowly relating it and connecting it to their actions and are changing their actions. It is slow process and I know that my parents won't change some habits but they learn through work and us kids and make the changes that they feel they can make.

Literate/Illiterate

I grew up in the suburbs of Indianapolis during the '80s. During that time when the "more is best" mentality prevailed, my parents, being affected by the Mennonite traditions, decided to take a different approach. We had a large vegetable garden, in which they sectioned off plots for us kids to individually grow produce, no air conditioning, 1 car, giant chest freezer for putting up food, canned food in the basement, and a very tiny television that you had to turn on with a wrench. As a young child, these things didn't seem to bother me. I preferred to play outdoors- we had the best climbing trees in the neighborhood! It wasn't until I got older and realized how "uncool" not having cable was that i started to resent this lifestyle that I was part of. Thankfully, those years are long gone, and as now as a parent myself, I am very thankful for the "propaganda" that my parents so graciously instilled into my life so much that I am passing my "liberal" views down to my son. Thanks mom!

Iiterate....

I feel that a hyper-awareness of environment surrounded me, for a lot of reasons, I suppose. What sticks out is my background being first generation on turtle island, a daughter of parents who immigrated north, and wanting to know the stories that shape people, expanding that to stories of the land came afterwards.
My grandmother from my father side was at my side since I was a child and she was an herbalist of sorts, carrier of medicinal plant knowledge that I gravitated to. I feel that was an entry point into wanting to know about place. Of course, being able to visit my relatives and the land of Peru also opened up horizons and prompted questions in me. In general, being able to travel and spend time outside of my familiar "home base" has contributed to an eco-literacy. There is a lot that has yet to make it to my literacy bank, and I feel exposure is the first step to pursue on gaining vision.

Literate/Illiterate

We are creatures of habit, aren't we? I believe that's why so many teachers still stick with the old ways. They teach the way they were taught. I do see changes, but not as many as needed. Also, teaching more thoughtfully is way harder. I hate to say this, but there are a lot of lazy teachers out there. It's a lot easier to copy a lab out of a lab book rather than design your own experiment, and we all know how evil textbooks are.

Sami brought up a good point about age. The older I get the more literate I become. I used to fear getting older, but know I embrace it. I feel the need to spend more time preparing for my classes. I love reading current articles I can use. The older you get the less time you need to worry about the kids "liking" you, and your disciplinary methods seem to become more established.

What makes me illiterate:Fox News.

Below are some of the challenges that I believe have made me illiterate to the environment:
-Fear. As some of you know I am not the biggest fan of touching animals. Why? I can't really say, as a child and youth I had a number of bad experiences with animals (wild and tame) but over all my exposure was extermly limited so I never became comfortable with them.
-Science, Math, Economics. Not my stongest subjects in school and I have never really had the energy or interest to explore them outside of school.

Here are some things that have made me literate to the environment
-An understanding that my actions effect the environment on a local and global level, whether it is where I get my coffee, clothes, food, travel. This I mostly owe to my older sister who was/is a little activist.
-Opportunities. Working at summer camp and learning about the forests and land around us, working year round at camp and learning about different habitats for work so that I could teach them to kids, in Winnipegs inner city which inspite of the opstacles has done a lot of amazing work for the environment. Personal interest in the environment, learning more about composting, exploring.

I know that I have things to learn to become more environmentally literate, but as I stated in the last blog, I think that maybe too much education is put on environmental literacy and that sometimes experiences more then make up for education. I am more or less happy with whether I am. I view the importance of my community and how we as a group are literate, because they understand economics and science, explore the insides of a woodpecker, because like me they have a sense of their impact.

Literate or Illiterate?

I would like to think that most likely I am a mix of both.

My family is made up of some pretty environmentally literate people and I feel like this has been a part of my life. My grandfather was a naturalist. We used to go on walks in the woods and never get farther than 50 feet in an hour because he knew so much. Although, he primarily taught me about the physical environment. Some of this I retained, but not much. From him, I learned to be questioning about the environment and look around my surroundings for things that could be hiding.

My mother and father were also very active in the environment and many political movements throughout my life. My mother had taken macrobiotic cooking classes long before I was born and truly believed in this diet...that is until she had 3 children and a full time job. My dad has always been interested in the environment and the history of the land. He has tried to get to me remember bird calls for as long as I can remember. He has also engaged me in many conversations about global warming, overpopulation, water quality, the use of coal, and the importance of maintaining a garden close to home along with certain survival skills. My parents have also made sure that I thought politically about what has been done to the land in many ways and the reasons behind it.

I would also say that my church helped me as a child. I still remember a service where the "children's time" was all about water. I was most likely 6 or 7, but I will never forget being asked to put a jug of water on my head and trying to walk. I was then told that this is what so many people in other parts of the world have to do multiple times a day and all I have to do is turn on the tap. I think this has especially stayed with me throughout my life and made me want to learn more.

This knowledge was basically given to me by my family. The knowledge that I began searching for on my own came later in my college career when I met my mentor and took my first geography course. My eyes were opened to many different issues, not only with the physical environment but also in the way that humans interact with the natural world. It was here that I really learned about all sorts of environmental issues that are taking place globally and the thoughts that many different people have about them.

I will say that what has made me illiterate is fear. Fear to be totally different than the majority. I feel as though I may have been much more active in educating myself and taking part in the environment if I would not have felt so alone in doing so. I think most of this is about the place that you are at and how conducive that place is to learning and growing. I believe that there is potential in myself as well as many others, but it just takes finding the right place and the right people to help it flourish.

I also think that I am so young that there is no way that I could be totally literate about any subject, especially something as vast as the environment. I hope that with age my literate side will grow and my illiterate side with fade away, but I don't think I can ever be totally literate about any one subject as large as the environment.

Environmentally literate or illiterate?

Some ways I think that I am environmentally literate:

Science classes

Education classes

being outdoors

first fridays-- stands about the environment or community building

conversing with people about issues--- either environment, social, etc

reading articles

watching and reading the news

being up to dates of current events

recycling

buying local--trying

conserving electricity, water

not buying plastic water bottles

reusing plastic bags

riding my bike as much as I can

thrift shopping

environmental conventions

flea markets

farmers markets

natural food stores

Things that I need to work on, where I am illiterate would be that I'm not active enough by trying to get people aware. I need to spread the word and knowledge to friends and family and other people who don't necessarily care, and try to get them up to date on why they should care or at least know about the environment. Try to change my "natural behavior." Try to learn more, active methods ways of learning that will generate change for the better.

Human nature is very hard to change. From the readings it is clear that the human being is a very complicated being. And I think what I need to take into consideration is that there are ways to approach human nature and change but that just takes a lot of work. change is slow, nothing is easy.

Why are People Afraid?

The more I read these papers, and particularly the three additional ones highlighting our interviewer for the day, I felt myself getting more and more upset. I tried to understand their point of view, as I have in past when other conservatives have given me their views on the environment, but lately I am finding it harder and harder to listen. And that is a problem! We, as educators in the EE are sometimes accused of being liberal, agenda toting, fear mongering individuals. If I want people like Michael Sinera to listen to me, I need to do the same for him.

However, this level of educating children to be objective listeners is so frustrating! What about the current environmental issue at hand- the giant oil spill. What would happen if we all were just objective listeners....wait! That's why the spill happened in the first place! I believe that education should encompass teaching kids how to become active in their world- it was children who really brought the whole recycling movement in the U.S. to what is is today.

I guess the question I am asking myself is, am I forcing my liberal views about the earth when I ask my son to help me hold the groceries, instead of putting them in a plastic bag because mom forgot to bring her bags? Am I spreading my radical agenda when I am teaching city kids how to grow a "happy garden" (their exact words!) without the use of chemicals? Or, am I being a responsible human being- one created by a Higher Being who very early on in the Bible told human beings about our responsibility of being stewards of this beautiful earth, when I hang my laundry out to dry in full view of all of the neighborhood kids? I think the answer is pretty simple. Maybe Michael needs to watch Wall-E one more time.

EE has its issues but so do other people

A few thoughts
-While reading A questioning Framework I started thinking how narrow minded EE puts the operational aspest (in this particular tect). The text lists things like knowing the migration of human populations. This seems like a good thing to know but I don't think you need to know it to be environmentally literate. Native cultures around the world knew more about the earth then I do now or maybe ever will and they never had formal or informal education.

-What is wrong with political activism. I would have loved to learn more about how to make change in government effectively. I think that as citizens we need to be more involved in governments and it is apart of literacy not EE.

-Sanera, seems to be making the suggestion that teachers don't think for themselves and that they are all tree loving hippies. Most definatly not!! A question I have (maybe you can answer Jabin) even though EE is encouraged or law to be taight, is it included in any standardized testing? My impression is that is what controls teachers habits more then the environment.

Scared People...

About three years ago at a family reunion my Uncle asked me what I was majoring in and I replied Environmental Science. When my uncle heard this, he first smirked and then said "so you will just be cleaning up water pollution." I'm not sure why he said that particular comment but from the tone of his voice I could sense that he just thought I was some tree hugger and not getting a degree in something where I could get a real job and earn a distant amount of money.

I'm using this example to prove that many people judge "environmentalism" right off the bat and have those tree hugging stereotypes. This proves that people are environmentally illiterate and don't understand what environmental education is and most people don't care to understand.

Most people are just afraid of the unknown. And most people select a certain person to be categorized as an "environmentalist." There are all types and forms of people that can be considered "environmental."

What Makes People Scared of EE?

I believe the main reason people are scared of EE is because they don't understand what it is and the way that it is taught. Although EE will rely heavily on its teacher, like any other subject, it seems that critics of EE point the finger at educators that teach Environmental Advocacy INSTEAD of EE. In the "Question Categories" article they state the difference between EE and Environmental Advocacy. It says, "EE differs from Environmental Advocacy in empowering people with knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to make informed choices RATHER THAN simply advocating specific choices." Isn't this what education is meant to do anyways? Educators should teach each side of everything and even if they do not, hopefully the student has been taught to take the information and make their own choice about a topic after researching it a bit more.

I thought the points brought up in "Defusing Environmental Education" were very good ones and made a great argument against the critics of EE. It seems as though critics like Sanera and Shaw do not understand what EE really is. Along with not understanding the definition of EE, they have never seen EE in action. Critics have made arguments against what is presented in certain texts, but have never seen HOW the texts are used within the classroom. I was amazed that Sanera and Shaw wanted EE to only contain science and economics. This is not EE. This is something else. I do not know if they have thought about that. They would not be changing EE, they would be eliminating it. If EE was taught more as a science, there would be less people interested in it. I know that if EE was based on science and economics, I would not be partaking in the program at Merry Lea.

I think instead of critics only looking at Texts, which are never perfect, they need to watch EE in action. Critics need to experience EE for themselves and not only from one group or individual, but multiple individuals who call themselves Environmental Educators.

Scared of EE

Whoa boy. Here come the crazy hippies wearing their PETA buttons and vegan shoes. You better look out. They might try to throw some red paint on you. Although I'm not a card carrying member of PETA, I do like several things they try to accomplish, but for some reason there are many people (especially in the Midwest) that think EE=PETA. I once had a student who wore a "PETA" shirt. The front said P.E.T.A. The back said People Eat Tasty Animals. He thought it would tick me off. I chose to use reverse psychology, and so I told him that I thought it was funny. Sometimes that reverse psychology stuff works. Luckily for me, this was one of those times. Science teachers get a bad wrap from conservatives. Supposedly we love Darwin, Earth, and Nature we somehow hate God. I believe there is a lot of misconception about EE. It's one of those ignorance fears...a preconceived notion about a concept many know nothing about. Have you ever prejudged someone, and then soon found out your judgement was unjustified? My friend Darby recently introduced me to his friend Jaime. I knew that Jaime was a card carrying NRA and promoted his redneck heritage. Darby was worried we would not get along. I wasn't so sure either. A surprising thing happened. I loved Jaime and he loved me. We got along perfectly. In the end I know we will never agree on everything, but I do know that I could easily hang out with that guy again. Maybe EE is like that. I wish we could all just get along.

What's makes people scared of EE....

...may stem from the seemingly uncomfortable place of having to both ask questions about and question what is business as usual, what makes up our "normal" lifestyle, our worldviews.
Granted, there are ways in which people (who are passionate and knowledgeable) can emphasize the urgency and calamity of the multiple "issues" surrounding our environment, so much so, that tension rather than inspiring hope is the end result. We don't want children to live in fear and in midst of the milieu of experiences that do incite fear/worry, we cannot evade assuming responsibility for approaching in an honest way our collective reality, along side our animal/plant relatives.
Sometimes I get the feeling that it's not so much fear that triggers peoples' response, but almost a sense of entitlement for simply not wanting to "deal" with things.
It doesn't help of course, that people who immediately politicize an issue are resistant to seeing beyond labeling (i.e. liberal/conservative). Hopefully, as the principle of interconnectedness becomes more evident and LIVE for folks in front of their t.v. sets, the supermarket cashier, and other places of commons, we'll be forced to come up with solutions that consider the impact of our attitudes, our decision-making.
I think of those who are intentional about putting a spin on the whole world food hunger discourse to the benefit of multinational corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill, etc.
This kind of opportunistic usage of "issues" is very problematic for motivating people to have a different point of entry into the conversation, which should be broadening (we hope, at this point in time!)