Courtesy of recmanagement.com

By Kelli Anderson

Five years ago, with the addition of new management at Tamarak Nature Center in Maplewood, Minn., programming for children and their families began to take the road less traveled. It began, in effect, to go off trail.

“When Marcie, our new acting outdoor education supervisor, came on board, she asked a question,” said Jody Yungers, director of park services and recreation in Ramsey County, Minn. “If we really wanted our kids to connect with nature, why did we have signs posted that basically were saying don’t touch, don’t engage or really appreciate the outdoors? Marcie started the ball rolling and really worked with us to start the whole notion of asking the important question of how do we connect families with nature.”

An answer followed shortly afterward. One afternoon, while observing the reluctance of young mothers with children to venture beyond the interior of the nature center, Oltman began to realize that the mothers’ unfamiliarity and discomfort with the outdoors might be to blame. Her idea for a solution turned out to be wildly successful. It was also counterintuitive.

“We put up a simple split rail fence around a wooded island and put an inviting sign that invited them to play,” Oltman said, describing the 1/3-acre space. “And it made all the difference. With the perception of safety and boundaries, parents felt that they could let go a little bit, and it became the beginning of what we now call our destination to discovery and nature play. We call it The Wild Place.”

Perhaps wilder still, however, is the fact that Oltman and Yunger’s greatest fear (that kids would trample the plants and destroy the area) was never realized. The destruction simply didn’t happen. “They made it their own,” Yungers said of the surprising result. “They made their own pathways and didn’t destroy it. It was amazing. We just took a chance, and it stood up remarkably well.”

Since these first adventurous steps into the unknown, not only has Oltman been recognized for best practices with the success of the Wild Places concept, the nature center has developed whole new goals and strategies as a result of what they are learning.

Helping mostly urban children with what they call “gateway experiences” to overcome fears of the imagined lions and tigers lurking in the woods has had to be part of the process by introducing nature through more manageable elements like a play stream in their children’s garden that mimics natural water. Such gateway experiences are enabling children and their families to venture out with more confidence beyond the designated Wild Places into the 800-acre area beyond.

Switching from a traditional environmental interpretation model toward one that emphasizes helping people to discover the value of nature through art, play, exploration and inquiry, the nature center has developed goals and objectives that inform every program they create.

With best practices for programming to help foster children’s connection to nature still in its formative stages, many park and recreation facilities, nature centers, preschools and communities are diverging from the traditional programming trails to forge their own paths in an effort to be more effective in what has become a topic of international concern. As a result, creative specialty camps are booming, programming that focuses on nature-based play is all the rage, and new partnerships abound helping to make these changes a reality.

Read more from Rec Management on connecting children with nature: http://www.recmanagement.com/features.php?fid=201109fe01&ch=2

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If you haven’t seen the advertising on this website, or seen reference to this document before, you should check it out… the best articles, activities, and reviews from past issues of Clearing compiled and published together on a CD-ROM. “The Best of Clearing, Volume VI” is a way to get the best of back issues of Clearing at a very low price (even less than the previous cost of a one-year subscription!).

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If you’re interested in helping to keep Clearing alive, this is one way to do it. Buy a copy of Volume VI in CD-ROM and keep an eye out for Volume V when it comes available. Click on the “Best of Clearing” link on the nav bar above to buy your copy!

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The US Forest Service Conservation Education program (CE) helps people of all ages understand and appreciate our country’s natural resources — and learn how to conserve those resources for future generations. Through structured educational experiences and activities targeted to varying age groups and populations, the USFS CE enables people to realize how natural resources and ecosystems affect each other and how resources can be used wisely.

Welcome to the USFS Region 6 and thank you!

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by Mike Weilbacher

With the new wave of interest in the environment, will we finally give students the tools they need to become environmentally literate citizens?

In just a few weeks, high school seniors all around the United States will walk proudly across stages, hoisting their diplomas as they graduate from formal K–12 education. As their teachers, we’ll look on with some wistfulness, for the world into which they are graduating—one of spiraling financial crises coupled with huge international challenges—is vastly different from the one in which they started their senior year only 10 months ago.

But wait, it gets worse. If you place your finger on the pulse of the planet, this is what you’ll discover: global surface temperatures rising, glaciers melting, oceans warming, sea levels rising, rain forests burning, coral reefs dying, old-growth forests disappearing, deserts spreading, the world’s population increasing, and species vanishing at the highest rates since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

In short, the ecology that underpins our economy is also collapsing. And the solutions to this challenge elude not only most of our graduates, but also us—their teachers, administrators, and parents.

Will our graduates be ready for these new realities? Will they confidently stride into this world as college students, workers, voters, consumers—in short, as competent, caring adults capable of making good decisions on the pressing issues of the day?

Environmental Ignorance

Forty years ago, in the first issue of the Journal of Environmental Education, William B. Stapp (1969) defined the goal of the nascent field of environmental education as producing a citizenry that “is knowledgeable concerning the biophysical environment and its associated problems, aware of how to help solve these problems, and motivated to work toward their solution” (p. 30).

Today, a new U.S. president actively seeks approval from the American people for repairing the economic collapse while preventing the ecological one. There will be fierce pressure on President Obama to forego environmental projects in lieu of economic ones. Have the past 40 years of environmental education met Stapp’s challenge and created the environmentally literate citizenry we need to negotiate the coming trade-offs?

In a word, no.

A typical high school student is aware of environmental issues, has discussed and debated climate change or rain forest loss in some class sometime, and might have bumper-sticker answers to lapel-pin questions. But do our students know where the trash goes when it leaves their house? The leading source of greenhouse gas emissions? Why we recycle? (Glass and aluminum, after all, are not rare resources.) If you ask a group of students what we can do to combat the warming trend, several will chime in that we need to remove chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from hair spray. (Many high schoolers conflate global warming with ozone depletion and haven’t been told that CFCs were removed from the market 20 years ago.)

My organization surveyed high school students on these questions and more and discovered that although students are overwhelmingly “pro-environment,” they possess remarkably little information about breaking environmental issues. One small example: We asked them to name one bird they can identify by song. The leading answer? None. If local birds disappear from the landscape because of extinction, or arrive three weeks late because of warming climates, it’s possible that no one will notice.

Oh, there are numerous bright spots in the environmental education movement, but progress is hardly keeping up with the increasingly urgent issues that face us today. When Stapp coined his definition four decades ago, the United States was riding a wave of interest in the environment triggered by the Santa Barbara oil spill, Ohio’s Cuyahoga River catching fire, Lake Erie being declared biologically dead, and charismatic birds like eagles and peregrine falcons vanishing. As we addressed these issues, the wave crested, and interest in ecology quickly ebbed.

Today, even though an interest in green ideas is resurging, the issues are far more global, complex, and intertwined with politics. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels currently exceed 385 parts per million, almost 40 percent higher than pre–Industrial Revolution levels, and they are rising every year. Consequently, the Arctic Ocean is changing dramatically as the Arctic warms more quickly than anyone expected, and our graduates may see an ice-free polar cap in the summer in their lifetimes.

An International Union for the Conservation of Nature report (2008) noted that one in four of the world’s mammals are at risk of extinction from habitat loss, poaching, and climate change. Many critically important rivers—such as the Nile, the Yellow, and the Colorado—no longer empty water into the sea. Mountains of discarded cell phones and computers make their way to destitute Chinese villages, where they are picked apart for valuable metals, exposing the villagers to high concentrations of incredibly toxic materials.

To address today’s geopolitically entangled world of large, complex eco-issues, students simply have to know more than they did 40 years ago.

What’s the Problem?

Four issues have become huge obstacles to environmental literacy. First, students are extraordinarily disconnected from the environment. Richard Louv’s revelatory 2005 book Last Child in the Woods called attention to a world of children rapidly retreating from outdoor play and time spent in nature. Instead, modern kids stay indoors, “’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are,” as one 4th grader famously said (p. 10).

Viewing screens has become a child’s full-time job. Kids are plugged in 24/7, watching an average of 25 hours of TV a week (Gentile & Walsh, 2002) and then logging additional screen time on the Internet, browsing the Web, playing video games, and engaging in whole new verbs, like IMing and Facebooking. Louv coined the phrase nature-deficit disorder to describe the “human costs of alienation from nature” (p. 34), including diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illness. Just when students need contact with nature more than ever, they have abandoned it.

Second, ask any environmental educator and he or she will bemoan No Child Left Behind, whose pressures have caused many schools to trade outdoor field trips for test prep. Science teachers routinely eliminate such concepts as environmental education, which do not appear to relate directly to questions on the tests. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Web site (2009) bluntly states, “No Child Left Behind is contributing to an increasing environmental literacy gap by reducing the amount of environmental education taking place in K–12 classrooms.”

Third, students’ exposure to environmental education depends on the luck of the draw and the amalgam of the interests of whichever teachers they happen to have throughout their school career. In my daughters’ school, there were two 5th grade teachers, one contagiously obsessed with birds and birdwatching and the other in love with Broadway musicals. One class went on an all-day birding trip; the other performed a play for the entire school. Both are equally interesting and important activities, but why didn’t the two cross-pollinate and give all 5th graders equal access to both? My daughters caught the birding bug, but one-half of the 5th grade never saw a nesting piping plover.

And finally, the downside of the large nonprofit universe of environmental education facilities—zoos, museums, aquariums, nature centers, parks, arboretums, children’s gardens—is that schools approach environmental education like a Chinese menu. They pick a field trip from column A and a lesson plan from column B; toss in an occasional Earth Day assembly, litter pickup, and letter to the president; and assume that their charges are now environmentally literate. And the nonprofits, wanting students to return the following year, emphasize fun over content, immersing the students in activity-based education that is designed to serve as an appetizer for environmental literacy but ends up becoming the main course. They often retreat from tough concepts like water shortages and stay with politically lighter ones like the water cycle.

The upshot? Even though there are more centers for environmental education and more college degree programs in environment-related fields than ever, and even though building green schools has suddenly emerged as an important idea (pre-economic meltdown), we are perhaps even farther from environmental literacy than we were in 1969.

Students are graduating from our schools thinking that green is good. But we haven’t given them the tools they need to become environmentally literate citizens.

New Research May Turn the Tide

Fortunately, several important research efforts are threading their way through the education system. For example, the Children and Nature Network, a Web-based organization (www.childrenandnature.org) that reports a wide variety of data and activities related to repairing the nature deficit disorder, showcases data illuminating the educational benefits of immersing students in the outdoors and environmental education experiences. And there’s tons of data.

The American Institutes for Research (2005) studied the effects of weeklong residential outdoor education programs in which most of the participants were at-risk youth. Comparing students who experienced the outdoor education program with those in a control group who had not had the experience, the researchers found a 27 percent increase in measured mastery of science concepts, plus enhanced cooperation and conflict-resolution skills, higher self-esteem, and gains in problem solving, motivation, and classroom behavior.

A Canadian study found that children whose school grounds include diverse natural settings are more physically active, more aware of nutrition, more civil to one another, and more creative (Bell & Dyment, 2006). Another study discovered that children playing in green settings have reduced symptoms of attention deficit disorder (Taylor, Kuo, & Sullivan, 2001).

The more studies are published, the more they agree: Exposure to nature raises test scores; increases creativity, cooperation, and self-confidence; reduces stress; and enhances cognitive abilities.

Promising Models

When the next wave of environmental interest washes over our schools, as it inevitably will, this body of research will support the new ideas for truly fulfilling Stapp’s dream of environmental literacy. Here are a few intriguing efforts now underway.

No Child Left Inside

In response to Louv’s book, more than 1,000 nonprofits with almost 50 million members have launched a variety of efforts loosely organized under the title “No Child Left Inside.” For instance, the National Audubon Society has pledged to place a family-oriented nature center in every congressional district. Connecticut governor M. Jodi Rell launched a special Web site (www.nochildleftinside.org) promoting state parks, an idea copied by many other states. And the U.S. Congress has considered a No Child Left Inside act that would provide federal funding for environmental literacy plans and for state efforts to train teachers in model environmental education programming, including outdoor learning. In the last session, the act passed the House, and supporters are eager to try again in the new Congress.

Green Charter Schools

For better or worse, the charter school movement has been sweeping across the United States in the last decade. A growing number of charter schools have been designed around the simple premise that the entire science curriculum can be taught through environmental education.

The Green Woods Charter School in Philadelphia is located on the campus of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, a 340-acre living laboratory of forests and fields, streams and ponds. The center’s naturalists are integrated into the science faculty of the school, and the students spend quality time immersed in the woods.

Wisconsin’s River Crossing Environmental Charter School, located in a one-room schoolhouse, provides a hands-on curriculum with subjects integrated through environmental studies. Students in 7th and 8th grade participate weekly in field trips and real-world ecosystem restoration projects, such as restoring the prairie and building rain gardens for storm water.

Other sites include California’s Environmental Charter High School, Connecticut’s Common Ground High School, and Florida’s Academy of Environmental Sciences. A Green Charter Schools Network (www.greencharterschools.org) has formed to assist teachers and staff. Sadly, precious few students are fortunate enough to attend these schools.

Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning

Another innovation that has grown in popularity in the last decade is the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning movement, a cumbersome name for a simple concept. In place of the rigorously scheduled school day of science, English, and gym periods, these programs use the environment and the outdoors as the centerpiece of students’ curriculum. This format breaks down barriers between disciplines, stresses team building and individualized learning, and involves students in real-world community issues.

In suburban Philadelphia, for example, the pioneering Watershed program at Radnor Middle School engages students in outdoor field studies all year, including stream testing, canoeing, trout rearing and release, and more. Students in the program spend all day together, except for math and foreign language classes, in which they are integrated with the rest of the school. Students hone their communication skills at conferences and youth summits.

One analysis of 40 Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning programs (Lieberman & Hoody, 1998) discovered that students in these programs outscored their peers on standardized tests, had better grades, and acted more independently and responsibly. At one school using this approach, reports to the principal’s office declined 91 percent in the three-year study period.

Wood Kindergartens

A rather radical movement has leapt across the pond from Europe and, coupled with Richard Louv’s work, has begun making inroads in the United States. In the Wood School model, child care workers and youngsters ages 3–6 spend the entire day outdoors in nature. The program is held outdoors in all seasons, although the group moves indoors in extreme weather. Proponents of this process assert that playing outside for prolonged periods strengthens the students’ immune systems and improves development of manual dexterity, physical coordination, tactile sensitivity, and depth perception.

Here in the United States, many nature centers, such as the Chippewa Nature Center in Midland, Michigan, have begun opening variants of Wood Kindergartens, versions that might not strictly adhere to the European’s outdoor component but still allow the students full and frequent access to natural areas and nature-based play (Reynolds, 2007).

Greening of the Culture

U.S. schools teach what American culture considers important. Once society decided that computer literacy was central to a solid education, computer classes invaded schools at warp speed, and the “digital divide” became an important and contentious issue.

As environmental issues heat up (pardon the pun), the culture is coming to consensus—again—on the importance of the environment. Green cable channels, green Web sites, eco-chic clothing, green roofs on green buildings, and innumerable products made from recycled objects are beginning to infuse the culture with a newfound interest in sustainability—an interest that ideally will create a ground swell of support for environmental improvement.

But the four horsemen of the global apocalypse—warming, species loss, water scarcity, and population growth—are bearing down on us, and many environmentalists worry about a vanishing window of opportunity for addressing these issues. Science fiction writer H. G. Wells was prophetic when he wrote in 1920 that “human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”

Environmental literacy is one race that education must win.

What Every Student Should Know About the Environment

There are scores of possible models of environmental education programs, and most have many of the following large concepts in common. As students go from kindergarten through high school, they can work their way down the list.

1. Earth overflows with life.
One of science’s biggest mysteries is how many species share this planet— estimates range from 5 million to 100 million species. Many environmental education programs begin with the premise that life is vanishing; young learners should first know that Earth teems with a huge number of creatures.

2. Each creature is uniquely adapted to its environment.
Every species evolved to possess a unique set of adaptations that enables it to survive and thrive in its ecosystem. Students should be on a first-name basis with many local creatures.

3. The web of life is interdependent.
Organisms evolve complex relationships, each depending on numerous other species for their survival.

4. Materials flow through ecosystems in cycles.
All creatures need water, air, and nutrients to survive. These materials cycle and recycle through ecosystems. The water we drink today is the same water we’ve always had, and always will.

5. The sun is the ultimate source of energy flowing through ecosystems.
Food grows from sunlight energy; our houses are heated by fossil fuels created many millennia ago from ancient sunlight.

6. There is no waste in nature; everything is recycled.
In nature, every waste product is used by other creatures. Humans have bent those circles into straight lines, where things are used once and tossed.

7. We consume resources to live.
Every student should know where the trash truck takes the trash, where water comes from, and how the nearest power plant makes electricity.

8. Conservation is the wise use of finite resources.
We are physical creatures with real needs—to eat, drink, build houses, write on paper. But how do we use these resources sustainably?

9. Humans can have a profound effect on environmental systems.
Fossil fuels pump carbon dioxide into the sky; habitat loss is causing the extinction of large numbers of species. Our actions profoundly affect the ecological systems that sustain living things—and us. Nature can often repair these systems (forests grow back, for example); but humans are changing systems faster than nature can adapt.

10. Each of us can powerfully affect the fate of the natural world.
Because each of us is directly plugged into the planet, the actions we take—or fail to take—profoundly influence earth’s systems.

Mike Weilbacher is Director of the nonprofit Lower Merion Conservancy in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania. He travels the United States as an environmental educator, performer, and workshop presenter. E-mail: mike@dragonfly.org; Web site: www.mikeweilbacher.com; Blog: www.mikeweilbacher.blogspot.com.

References

American Institutes for Research. (2005). Effects of outdoor education programs for children in California. Palo Alto, CA: Author.

Bell, A. C., & Dyment, J. E. (2006). Grounds for action: Promoting physical activity through school ground greening in Canada. Toronto: Evergreen.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation. (2009). What has NCLB done to environmental education? [Online]. Annapolis, MD: Author. Available: www.cbf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=act_sub_actioncenter_federal_nclb_done

Gentile, D. A., & Walsh, D. A. (2002). A normative study of family media habits. Applied Developmental Psychology, 23, 157–178.

International Union for the Conservation of Nature. (2008). IUCN Red List reveals world’s mammals in crisis [Press release]. Gland, Switzerland: Author. Available: www.iucn.org/about/work/programmes/species/red_list/?1695/IUCN-Red-List-reveals-worlds-mammals-in-crisis

Lieberman, G. A., & Hoody, L. L. (1998). Closing the achievement gap: Using the environment as an integrating context for learning. Poway, CA: State Education and Environment Roundtable.

Louv, R. (2005). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Reynolds, C. (2007, January 22). Everybody in the vegetable patch! MacLeans, 42. Available: www.macleans.ca/education/universities/article.jsp?content=20070122_139722_139722

Stapp, W. B., et al. (1969). The concept of environmental education. Journal of Environmental Education, 1(1), 30–31.

Taylor, A. F., Kuo, F. E., & Sullivan, W. C. (2001). Coping with ADD: The surprising connection to green play settings. Environment and Behavior, 33(1), 54–77.

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By Mike Weilbacher

The following paper was presented as the keynote address at the 2005 conference of the Association of Nature Center Administrators (ANCA) at the Chippewa Nature Center in Midland, Michigan, August 2005.  Mike is a former PAEE president, newsletter editor and Outstanding Environmental Educator (1991), and directs the Lower Merion Conservancy.

Global surface temperatures are rising, glaciers worldwide are melting, the ocean is  warming, rainforests are burning, species are vanishing at the highest rates since the end  of the Mesozoic, coral reefs are bleaching and dying, old growth forests are disappearing,  deserts are spreading, the world’s population is rising, the future of the Arctic National  Wildlife Refuge hangs by a thread, the new energy bill left no lobbyist behind, yet much  of the attention of the western world is preoccupied by a question critical to the fate of  humankind:

Just what is Brad Pitt’s relationship to Angelina Jolie?

For the next hour or so, we’ll nibble at the edge of that question to see its importance to our work, but what we’ll really do is talk through the state of environmental education,  looking at emerging trends and practice using our crystal balls to make predictions for the  road ahead.  We’re going to place our fingers on the pulse of popular culture and take a  reading as to where we all stand.

ALERT: You need to be a CLEARING subscriber to read the rest of this article.
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By Paul Hawken

From a commencement speech given at the University of Portland, May 3, 2009.

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there. Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food — but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refugee camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown — Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television. This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

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by Lyanda Haupt
Seattle Audubon Society

Birds are everywhere.  Their lives hold myriad ecological lessons, some obvious, some subtle.   No matter where we live, or where we teach, there are birds to be found.  They may not be wondrous, rare, or exotic.  They may be an uninspired mix of starlings and pigeons.   But they ARE birds, living definitively avian lives, and as such, they are the perfect subjects for schoolyard studies of bird behavior, flight, social habits, feeding preferences, and much more.

We’ve all seen hot-shot birders, calling out the name of every bird that flies by.  It’s easy for teachers to feel intimidated, and believe that since they don’t have that level of competence, or perhaps don’t know the names of any birds at all, that they are not qualified to teach students about birds.  The truth is, all you need is a schoolyard with a pigeon or a crow in it, to begin studying birds with some depth.  The secrets of birds lie not in their names, but in their lives.    Observation is the best, and most direct pathway to learning about our avian neighbors.  Explore birds holistically, and learn their names as you go.

The study of birds can complement any environmentally minded program.  Avian observation increases understanding of adaptations, species, biodiversity, and food webs.  Schoolyard observations can lend depth to concepts such as native versus non-native species, and biodiversity.  Watching birds can even complement studies in paleontology, since many prominent geologists now believe that birds are living dinosaurs!  With guidance, students can gain competence in data collection and field identification.  Perhaps the most enriching aspect of schoolyard birding is that it increases students’ awareness of the natural world as it surrounds them day to day.  When they journey to a natural place, they will be awakened to the presence of birds, and ready to see more.

Birdwatching with Kids
The most important thing on a bird walk with young people is to have an enjoyable time that increases their interest in birds and the natural world.  You don’t have to be seriously and silently slinking around, stalking birds every second.  It’s probably best to go on a bird watching walk – a fun hike punctuated by times that everyone stops to look for birds.

Being in the outdoors, working with binoculars, field guides, and searching for birds is a lot to do.  You don’t have to overload the time with planned activities.  Here are some simple suggestions that can be incorporated into your walk.  These are foundational ideas that can form the basis of a bird walk for any age group or experience level.
Enter a Place Quietly.  Groups of people have to be particularly aware of the noise they make. Try to plan your bird walk before a recess, or well after one, so the birds have time to recover from frolicking youth.  The less talking on a bird trip the better.  If you enter a place quietly and respectfully, the birds will grace you with rare glimpses into their lives.

Starting Off. Sometimes a group of students will be pretty hyped up at the beginning.  Try to start with an activity that gets students quieted down and focused on their surroundings.  With eyes closed, have students listen for birds around them.  Give them some time – four or five full minutes.  Have them open their eyes, and still sitting in one place, quietly notice any signs of birdlife around them, without trying to identify or analyze any of it.

Experiment with Birding Methods. What works best?  Some birders walk around and just see what they see.  Some birders see a bird from afar, and then quietly sneak up on it until they have a good view.  Some birders sit quietly in one place that looks promising and wait for the birds to come near.  Have students experiment with these methods, and see what they think works best.  Do some birding strategies work better for some species of birds than others?

Use Real Names. Young people are ABLE and WILLING to learn the real names for birds, other animals, and plants.  Look at how well some five year olds can rattle off the long scientific names for dinosaurs!  Use complete real names for the species of birds that you know, and encourage students to do the same.  If the name of a species is difficult, repeat it together several times.

“Pishing.” This is a secret technique that birders use to get birds to come out of the bushes and show themselves.  Make a sort of spitty pishing sound – “PISHHH-PISHHH-PISHHH.”  Many birds are curious about this sound, and will come out to investigate.  If you sit very still and don’t talk (other than to PISH) some birds may come startlingly close.  Very fun!

Field Notes. Keeping a field notebook is probably the best thing anyone can do to learn to appreciate birds in the field.  It’s a place to record individual observations, sketches, strange things that birds do, new species, and literally anything that occurs during the day that may help a student to remember a bird walk, and the birdlife experienced.  It’s a place to ask questions and seek answers from the birds themselves.  By putting pencil to paper in the field notebook, observations become crystallized, and experience becomes focused.  Field Notes can include a record of the day – weather, time, other observers, etc., a list of species seen and their behaviors, vocalizations, habitats, sketches and descriptions, anything that makes the experience memorable.

Expect UFOs.  Even expert birders encounter unidentifiable flying bird-objects.  Let the kids know that not all birds can be identified by everyone, and that’s O.K.  It’s part of the mystery that keeps bird watching fun.

A Note About Attracting Birds to School Grounds.
There are many great resources that can assist you in choosing native plants and feeders to create an avian sanctuary on school grounds.  With work, you can attract new species to an urban area.  Just make sure to use feeders specific to the kinds of birds you want to attract, and take steps to minimize use by non-natives.  Don’t let worries over the long-term existence of your feeding station stop you.  Contrary to popular belief, it IS okay to feed birds for awhile, and then to stop.  Birds use feeders because it’s easy, not because they have to.  When your feeders are removed, the birds will go back to natural sources for food.

Birds are everywhere!  One great thing about watching birds is that you can pretty much always find one.  Crows, pigeons, and starlings are all good examples of “birdness” that are readily available.  They are walking around vocalizing and exhibiting interesting behaviors all day long.  Even if you can’t swing a major field trip or uncover an exciting avian rarity,  you can take advantage of the birdlife that’s around you everyday, and engage birds as a powerful educational tool.

Resources at the Seattle Audubon Society
Seattle Audubon offers an educational kit called “Birds in the Field.”  Ten field bags contain binoculars, field guides, bird calls, and field notebooks for each student to keep.  A leader’s pack contains all of the above, plus flash cards and the booklet “Sharing Birds With Students,” to help you get started with field guides, binoculars, identification, taking walks and field trips, using field notes, etc.
We also have two other kits to complement bird studies.  “Symphony of the Birds” is an audio-visual introduction to avian vocalizations.  “Feathers, Fossils, Flight” is a hands-on introduction to the adaptations that birds have for flight.  It includes a reproduction of the first fossil bird Archaeopteryx, as well as many wings, bones, feathers, and more”

Kits are available to rent for one week at a time, or a Seattle Audubon naturalist can visit your site to present a program.  Contact Lyanda Haupt, Seattle Audubon Education Coordinator at (206)523-0722, lyandah@seattleaudubon.org

Schoolyard Birds
Here is a short introduction to the species that you are likely to encounter in an urban or suburban schoolyard. With a little practice and observation, the various species can come alive in their uniqueness.  Many of the common schoolyard birds are non-native birds that thrive in disturbed habitats.  While it may make them less interesting ecologically, many of these birds exhibit fascinating behaviors, and are quite intelligent.  They are still great tools for learning about birds in general.

Eurasian Starling Many people call starlings “blackbirds,”  because they are about the size of a blackbird, and they are certainly black.  Actually, they are not closely related.  The starling can be separated from the locally common Red-winged blackbird by its yellow bill, and spangled plumage.  In the summer, the starling looks like it is covered with iridescent jewels, as bright flecks of gold mingle with its black feathers.  People are often mistakenly convinced that a bird they have seen up close could not possibly be a starling, because their bird was so pretty!  Winter starlings are more drab, and the first-year birds are all brown, with a black beak and legs.

Starlings were introduced to the U.S. in the late 1800’s, and have proved to be an ecological disaster.  They compete with native birds for nest sites and food, and are implicated in the decline of many sensitive native species.  Even so, starlings are extremely intelligent and interesting.  They are one of the best bird mimics in the country, imitating the calls of gulls, killdeer, cats, honking horns, and whatever else strikes their fancy.  Listen for their long, fanciful whistles, and complex vocalizations.  Starlings can learn to talk as well as mynah birds and parrots.

Rock Dove Calling the pigeon by its “real” common name, the Rock Dove, makes it sound a little more interesting.  Like the starling, the Rock Dove is not native to our area.  Rock Doves were introduced from their native homes in Europe, North Africa, and India.  Most of the birds that we see in the schoolyard are passerines, or perching birds.  The Rock Dove is not – its feet are adapted for roosting, rather than grasping tightly onto branches.  Pigeons are unique in that both males and females produce a milk-like substance in their digestive system to feed their young.   The baby doves plunge their bills down the parents’ throat and suck out the milk.  The typical gray and purple pigeon resembles the extinct Passenger Pigeon.  The numerous hybrids among city pigeons produce some intriguing color combinations – genetics in action!

House Sparrow Yup.  Another introduced bird.  And this one isn’t even properly named!  Taxonomically, the House Sparrow is not a sparrow at all, but an Old World Finch.  Find it at the very end of your field guide, rather than in the sparrow section.  These are the small, brown birds that jump around under your feet at outdoor cafes, awaiting the crumbs of your bagel.  They also chirp about the shrubbery of schoolyards, and nest noisily beneath the eves.  The males have a gray cap and black throat.  Females are a drab gray-brown, with a light brown eye stripe.  House Sparrows have a beak made for seed-eating.  Watch them forage on the ground for bits of plant material.

American Crow The amazing black bird with the raucous “CAW CAW CAW!”  The crow is one of the most intelligent birds out there.  They are known to  use tools, problem-solve, mourn the loss of family members, and PLAY.  Crows are scavengers that will eat just about anything, but they prefer meat.  Even though they are so large, crows are passerines, or “songbirds,” just like robins and chickadees.

Steller’s Jay The Steller’s Jay is in the crow family – closely related to the larger American Crow.  If you have trees around your schoolyard, you may attract this brilliant blue bird with the unwieldy black crest.  Like crows, Steller’s Jays are quite intelligent, and will think up all kinds of mischievous way to win more food than all the other birds.  They will even sit at feeders and imitate the call of a Red-tailed Hawk to scare smaller birds away.  Jays can cause problems for other birds, attacking and eating their eggs and nestlings.

Black-capped Chickadee This is another bird that requires some cover – at least small trees or shrubs.  These tiny gray and white birds with black masks are a birdwatcher’s treasure.  They are common, but constantly delightful, gleaning insects, caterpillars, and seeds from  the branches.  The chickadee repeats its own name in its call – a nasal  “chickadee-dee-dee.”

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