Middle schoolers are your next opportunity
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Last month, I traveled from Chicago to Pittsburgh to attend my first Rally. I returned home energized and full of ideas! I'm the education manager for the accredited Openlands in Chicago and on the first day of Rally, I co-presented a full-day seminar with four other environmental education professionals who are part of the K-12 Community of Practice Steering Committee.
John Cawood is education manager for Openlands.
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Last month, I traveled from Chicago to Pittsburgh to attend my first Rally. I returned home energized and full of ideas!
I'm the education manager for the accredited Openlands in Chicago and on the first day of Rally, I co-presented a full-day seminar with four other environmental education professionals who are part of the K-12 Community of Practice Steering Committee. Our objective was to help other land trusts incorporate K-12 education into their land conservation program strategies, but I ended up learning a lot myself.
After hearing from my peers, my big takeaway was the enormous opportunity that exists with the middle-school audience, specifically grades 5-8. Rob Wade of the Feather River Land Trust in California wisely noted that if we, as a community, offer programming for elementary students but not middle-school students, it becomes more difficult to re-engage students when they reach high school.
Admittedly, some of my fellow professionals have avoided programming to grades 5-8 in the past because those students can be difficult to engage. But it's worth the effort! Keeping a student connected to the land throughout their formative years can make them a lifelong supporter of conservation.
This has caused me to re-evaluate my organization's education strategy to ensure that we offer sufficient programming for grades 5-8.
Realizations and reminders like these made Rally so worthwhile for me. But my favorite part of the conference — by far — was seeing enthusiastic people doing inspirational work. There are so many success stories emanating from land trusts everywhere, and you never know where your next lesson or idea will come from. I'm carrying the energy I felt at Rally back to Openlands and passing it forward through our education programming. We will connect even more kids now to the land, to each other and to the mission of land conservation.
To access K-12 materials that can help you and your land trust, log in to the Land Trust K-12 Educators topic on the Conservation Resource Center Forum, creating a free account, if necessary.