Time flies.....

I have not written since 2020. The reason for this long absence was that I was regrouping trying to figure out next steps. Our effort to get the school district to honor its promise to become sustainable failed. Our efforts to get the district to acknowledge and work toward the goal they themselves set in 2020, resulted in the school board rewriting the rules so that you could only speak to them about something THEY had put on the agenda. If only they valued the issues of Climate Change and the environment should have shown them the importance of their work in this simple two-minute video

We stopped presenting data to support the human and budgetary value of becoming sustainable and reflected on what our little valient group of committed adults could tdo to make way for needed change. My work within a large urban district that was being buffeted by the extreme right-wing agenda to destroy public education, with the constant rhetoric about its presumed failure, taught me much. Leaders, though well-intentioned, were trying to appease the beast by working harder to meet standardized testing goals, and in some ways, this produced some positive change.

More money was directed to help teachers hone their skills in teaching their content, or in the case of elementary schools, on how they taught fundamentals such as reading. At the outset reforms helped reset the importance of accountability and goals. Initially, there was a flourishing of different programs that allowed educators to adopt what worked for them in their individual classrooms, and recognition that all children learn differently as they achieve various benchmarks at different times.

Unfortunately, this ended in an attempt to replicate and codify a single success and force teachers to usescripted lessons instead of responding to the individual and class needs at any given time. What we have now is a complete abrogation of the expertise and creativity of educators!

Knowing that we could not address this greater injustice that was being perpetrated by people who were ignorant and unwilling to listen to teachers, our little group fought on ONLY TO GIVE CHILDREN THE LOVE OF NATURE that gives them healthy mental interactions and a sense of possibility. Our only question following the defeat was, what needs to happen for people in our community to understand how important nature education is and activate them to communicate with their leaders.