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• INTERVIEWS WITH CONSERVATIONISTS

  
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• THE BEST OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

  
  Learn the secrets of successful environmental education programs! Read the perspectives and opinions of experienced teachers! Discover new ideas that can turn your classroom into an innovative and dynamic hub of place-based learning! The Best of Clearing is full of fresh ideas and old wisdom to help you create powerful learning experiences for your students.
  
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• ENVIRONMENTAL LITERACY and the CLEARING COMPENDIUM

  
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• Teaching Resource Spotlight

  
  
  
  Roots and Research in Urban School Gardens
  
  ©2011 Veronica Gaylie. This book explores the urban school garden as a bridge between environmental action and thought. As a small-scale response to global issues around access to food and land, urban school gardens promote practical knowledge of farming as well as help renew cultural ideals of shared space and mutual support for the organic, built environment. This book examines the practice and culture of the urban school garden as a central symbol for environmental learning. Roots and Research in Urban School Gardens can be purchased at Peter Lang Publishing.
  

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• Guest Writers: Voices of the PNW

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  Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon
  

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  Harmony Roll,
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  Megan McGinty, North Cascades Institute

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  Jim Martin,
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Rick Johnson has served as executive director of the Idaho Conservation League for 16 years.  ICL is Idaho’s leading voice for conservation.

Interview by Chris Gertschen

CG: Is there one particular event or series of events that led you to a profession in conservation?

RJ:  Yes, if you focus on the profession part.  I got into conservation as a volunteer for a lot of reasons wrapped around love of Idaho’s outdoors and a sense I could contribute, but I got into the profession because of a single event. Read more

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Interview by Chris Gertschen

Charles Saylan is co-founder and executive director of the California-based Ocean Conservation Society.  He co-authored with Daniel Blumstein, a biology professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, “The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It)”. Read more

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by Chris Gertschen

For the past three decades, I have been an activist, a volunteer, a student and a teacher of conservation.  My activist years gave me an advocacy perspective but I quickly saw a great need to expand my own natural science education – to give some foundation and balance to my life and love of the earth.  My studies of biology as an undergrad were focused singularly on human biology and physiology.  The word “ecology” was not then part of the curriculum.  As a graduate student, I was introduced to a whole new world.  In the natural history interdisciplinary program that I designed for myself at Boise State University, I studied geology, zoology, ecology and public affairs.  And, I began to learn about conservation biology. Read more

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